AUS230 Mastering Project
Mastering seems to mean a few different things to a lot of different people. I am more than certain that my own understanding of mastering is not entirely representative of what mastering is as a profession or art. With that said, I now feel as though I have a far better idea of what it is that mastering engineers do day to day. The adage of making audio loud and entering metadata still rings true to a degree but is also dismissive. There is definitely a creative and practical decision making process that happens while the mastering engineer works that I know have a much better understanding of and it's this process that creates this "loudness" that gets spoken about a lot.
One thing I had not really thought about was thought about was the role the mastering engineer plays in creating consistency across a record. I had never considered the fact that 10 songs across a record will potentially all sound different to some extent and require a finer touch than the mix engineer can offer, or is required to do, to bring them all together into a cohesive, total piece of music. The way in which Joe Carra from Crystal explained his approach to creating cohesion really opened my eyes. Grouping all the songs that are similar in nature so that he can essentially batch master them back to back allows him to use similar settings for his gear as a starting point for each song. It is also the first step in generating continuity in the record. He then thinks about which songs flow into each other and how he might how go about creating links between each song so that as one finishes you aren't surprised by what you hear next.
When I heard this was how Joe approached his masters it completely changed my thinking that mastering is a fairly clinical process and really opened up the creative aspect. I don't think I really took that creative idea away from our intensives because we were mostly working on individual tracks. Implementing corrective EQ and applying sheen to a track with other tricks never felt truely creative, it felt more like servicing a car. Using practical knowledge to make something as good as it can be. It was this idea of car servicing that was sort of my preconceived understanding of mastering engineers. Guys with a handful of really expensive tools and a great set of speakers making your tracks sound great. I had never really considered their contribution to the sum of those tracks. If mixing a song is about balancing instrument and vocal stems in a way that creates a single track that moves and breathes then mastering can really be the same. Except that your stems are whole songs and you single track is an albums worth of listening experience.
It's a shame that the music industry and the general public that listen to music are trending in a direction that has all but left the album behind. Artists are also culprits here with a lot of people tending to release single tracks as opposed to whole LP's. This is pretty disappointing as I am definitely an album person. I love listening to a whole record front to back. If you enjoy an artist, wouldn't you want to listen to half an hours worth of music from them when they put something out? Not just a single song? I think this method of release would certainly have an adverse impact on the idea of making a cohesive master when you might only be doing a couple of tracks.
The other thing that I hadn't really thought about was the separation that a mastering engineer has from a project and the importance this separation plays. I know that with stuff I have worked on and mixed, by the time it does get to the mastering stage I am generally very over listening to the material and probably sick of dealing with the back and forth of some idiot in the band that has absolutely punished me with requests during mixing. I have never really been knowledgeable with the mastering process so I have never offered to master anything for anyone but I always wondered why mix engineers that know how to master don't by default do a lot of their own work. Obviously there will be occasions where a band has someone in mind that they want to work with but I have had a mix engineer in the past say that they would rather not mix a record and then recommended me someone that would be able to do a better job based on the sound of the record.
It's this idea of separation that someone who up until this stage has not been involved in the record at all and has no preconceived notion about how it is meant to sound. They have no bad blood or hangover from the recording or mixing process and are therefore able to view the record in a new light and listen with objectivity. That separation is crucial because they can implement their skill set in a way that the the mix engineer may not be able to. Mix engineer's rooms and equipment are also not really designed for mastering records either but that's splitting hairs.
I really enjoyed mastering. Aside from post stuff production stuff it's probably what I have enjoyed the most up until this point. Interestingly it is also the post aspect of music. I am not sure that it is something I would ever try to intentionally gear myself toward. It seems like an incredibly expensive and niche part of the industry to get into but then again the upside of listening to new and interesting music every day is incredibly appealing.