What You Can Do To Prepare Your Recordings For Mastering

• It is important to have a track sequence in mind BEFORE you arrive for the mastering session, unless you LIKE extra hourly charges.
• Always bring safety copies. If you don’t, you’ll need them. If you do, you won’t! Simple as that.
• If possible, bring everything in at 44.1 kHz. sampling rate. If you can’t, MAKE SURE THE TAPE IS MARKED, unless you want the music to be played 6% slow and a half-step lower.
• If you are brave enough to try a rough pre-master in Pro Tools or whatever, remember to bring the original mix tapes along as well as the Pro Tools version.
• Also, to head off horrible dissatisfaction in the mastering suite, it may be advisable to bring in multiple mixes with different vocal and solo levels, called “vocal ups” and “vocal downs,” as well as “solo ups” and “solo downs.” This is because compression at the mastering stage often changes relative balances of the leads to the bed of the track, so some production latitude is extremely handy and calming to the nerves.
• Also make an uncompressed mix available, along with the compressed mix that you prepare during mixdown.
• Use and bring really good documentation, with excellent notes, box legends, clean tapes, test tones. If you are using analog, get a DAT safety for sure. Analog accidents happen!!
• If you want noise removed during mastering (using NO Noise or DINR, for instance), remember to include examples (a couple of seconds is fine) of the noise floor you want nuked.
• It’s a good idea to bring along some recordings that represent a quality of work that you aspire to in order to give the mastering engineer a sense of what sort of sound you really want.
• Bring phone numbers for everybody you might need to talk to during the mastering session, such as the mix engineer, the bass player, the producer, the label, etc. Let them all know you may be calling them if there are problems, and that you’d sure appreciate being able to get through to them quickly.
• Bring mixes without fades in addition to normal mixes, so fades can be changed during mastering if necessary.
• Decide AHEAD OF TIME exactly who is going to bring the tapes and documentation. Believe me, you haven’t felt foolish until you and the rest of the band are standing in the mastering suite, looking at the clock ticking away your dollars and saying, “Whaddya mean, I was supposed to bring the tapes?”

So You Wanna Try Mastering Yourself

There is no technical reason you can’t master your own recording. You assemble your finished mixes, record ‘em on a DAT, make a log of where you want the start IDs to go, and send it off to the CD factory. Hopefully, there will be no problem and it will all go swimmingly.

Often, however, you notice that YOUR CD doesn’t sound quite as cool, intense, in-your-face and dramatic as you’d like. Or as your favorite CDs sound! The next thing to try is buying some mastering tools. The current hot number for home mastering is the TC Finalyzer (currently in its “Plus” version). Such devices give you a whole bunch of mastering functions, with good precision and resolution. Now you’re all set with hardware, assuming that you’ve got the editing under control.

Now, the TC Finalyzer and similar boxes will solve your mastering problems, once you get good at using them. But this is where it gets tough in a hurry. Most mastering engineers serve a fairly long apprenticeship, where they assist, document, dub and do other things for their mentoring mastering engineer, as well as get extensive opportunity to practice the same things on the same source tapes. It is gonna be hard, for you, to make up for this experience just by your sheer genius and creativity! Think of it this way: you’ve just bought a really good Steinway concert grand piano – maybe you’d better study and practice it some before you go out to give your first concert! Also, keep in mind that when you master for yourself, you are giving up a valuable objective voice that you may really need. As Mark Twain pointed out, “The man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.” Beware!

On the other hand, you may not be able to afford a really strong outside mastering effort, and you still need to release a CD. If you insist on mastering it yourself, take tons of extra time, take trial masters around for extensive listening, seek comments from everybody you can, and be as meticulous as possible. Also, try NOT to do the mastering the day before the CD factory needs your tape. A certain amount of timeless serenity and calm repose will really help your mastering efforts.

And try not to be disappointed if the released results aren’t exactly what you want, or if there turn out to be some manufacturing problems. That is one of the risks that you take.

Whatever, as my kids say. Happy masters!!