emulsion wrote:
quoted 3 lines I firmly believe that thinking you're capable of mastering just
> I firmly believe that thinking you're capable of mastering just
> because you're a good producer is a BIG mistake. There's a reason
> those guys get the big bucks and it's not just their crazy gear.
I agree 100%.
I get asked quite often to master for people and I always turn every
request down because I know someone else who specializes in that
can do a much better job than producer-me. Plainly put, I'm not a masterer.
The importance of a well-done mastering job cannot be overstated.
I can only speak from personal experience because only I can know
what my material sounds like when sent off to be mastered in comparison
to hearing what the mastered version sounds like. Ditto for other
artists. As consumers, we can't listen to a mastered version of something
we've bought and know what kind of magic happened between what
we hear and what was sent to be mastered because we don't get to
hear the unmastered version and do an a/b comparison. I was recently wowed:
when I got the Mark "Vapourspace" Gage-mastered master of my
forthcoming album on Phthalo (pressed in the next couple of weeks),
I was so in awe at what he did with it, I wrote him an effusive thank
you email.
He brought things out in the tracks that took things to another level.
They're my songs, so I should know them pretty darn intimately, and yet
he's
made me listen to them in a whole different light with his mastering
job. The only
album of mine that has impressed me this much at hearing the difference
between
what I submitted for mastering and the mastered version was hearing my
Tim Spurway-mastered Highest Common Denominator album on Piehead.
Greg can correct me if I'm wrong, but Tim mastered most if not all of
the Piehead
stuff. For me, Tim, like Mark, took what I thought was my best work at
the time
and took things to another level.
If you can, I would always recommend mastering by someone else rather
than yourself. Sure, make what you submit for mastering sound as good
as you possibly can, but don't think that someone else's fresh ears can't
make your work sound even better. Your job as a producer is to produce
the best music you can. A masterer's job is to objectively take what you've
produced and make it sound as good as it possibly can.
My CDN $0.02.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
Andrew
--
Andrew Duke
scoring/sound design/source
http://andrew-duke.com
http://myspace.com/andrewduke
Cognition Audioworks label
[Andrew Duke, Foal, Clinker, Granny'Ark]
http://cognitionaudioworks.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org