Week 4’s track is one I’ve really liked for a while, but I was unhappy with the final sound. I’m part way through the home mastering masterclass with the venerable Ian Shepherd. 

Mastering has something of a mystique to it. The Mix (all the individual parts of a track) is already fixed: the balance between the the different elements, the notes, the arrangement are all locked down. When you master you get to work only on a single file, like the one you’d get if you ripped a track from a CD.  

With Mastering, you make the grand, but ever so subtle changes to the already-nearly-finished piece of music, which make it sound as good as it can stand. It requires a more critical perspective, concentrated listening, and a very delicate hand. You make almost imperceptable changes, one by one: correcting small aspects, tightening things up here, loosening things up there. 

Ian likens the process to photoshop, and I nearly agree. Except: in photoshop you can work quite invasively, going deep into very specific elements of the photograph. I reckon it’s more like Lightroom, where you make overall changes to the image. Think of a photograph that seemed great when you took it but when you view it later, the whole thing has a colour tint that shouldn’t be there, or it looks washed out with no contrast. 

I’ve always found mastering a scary process as you can easily ruin things with a overly heavy hand. But take a listen to the before and after sounds of the track – I hope you’ll hear the improvement. Small changes can add up 🙂