Are you going to release your precious recordings to the world? If the answer is yes, you should probably use a professional music mix and mastering service. Whether you’ve landed here and know exactly what you need from a mixing and mastering engineer, or if you’re new to all this and wondering about the difference between mixing and mastering and aren’t sure exactly what’s involved, there’s more info below.
I’m happy to offer a complete package of mixing and mastering services. I mix pretty much 100% of the productions I’m involved with, but I also enjoy taking tracks produced elsewhere and putting on my mixing engineer hat. Sometimes you just need fresh ears, or a different approach to the mix and master, even if you’re skilled in music production.
When it’s time to submit the mixed song or album to the mastering process, if you have the budget, I recommend using a dedicated, high-quality mastering engineer. I send lots of my mixes to Joe Vegna in Sweden for mastering. He strikes the perfect balance between the technical and artistic considerations involved in this final stage of the production process. He’s also one extra layer of quality control. Another pair of fresh ears to make sure your release sounds great!
That said, if you end up loving my working mixes so much you cannot imagine handing them over to Joe for the last bit, or you simply don’t have the budget for separate audio mixing and mastering, I have mastered a number of releases, so let’s talk. I will get the mixes to sound as close as possible to professionally mixed and mastered.
Basic introduction to music mixing and mastering
You’ve probably heard of ‘music mixing’ or ‘audio mixing and mastering’. Perhaps you’ve seen photos in your favourite albums of ‘mixing consoles’ (also called ‘mixing desks’). These wonders of creative technology (sometimes just the size of a laptop, other times big enough to fill one whole side of the room) are where all the individual tracks (the different music elements, e.g. instruments and vocals) of a gig or a recording are brought together by an audio engineer so that they can control how loud they are in comparison to each other. We can change how each instrument or voice sounds using equalisation, compression, reverb and more. These days, mixing often takes place inside a computer, using a virtual mixing console, but we’re doing exactly the same job, just completely “in the box”.
Mastering is the final link in the chain before your recorded and mixed song goes off to Spotify or a CD or vinyl pressing plant. Your mix is checked by the mastering engineer for ‘loudness’, inconsistencies or digital errors, and they might also apply their own effects to change how ‘bright’ or ‘warm’ the final mix sounds, or how wide the stereo image appears to be on a pair of speakers or headphones. They will think about things like maintaining a musical dynamic range while ensuring your song doesn’t sound quiet compared to others on different playback systems. For digital releases, this is also where all relevant metadata can be added to make sure your track can be recognised among the many millions of others out there.
FAQs
In the world of music, mixing is when we bring together all the different elements of the recording or live performance and blend them together to create the sound we want to hear. Mastering is the final technical process that takes place after recorded audio has been mixed.
Mixing is where all the different elements of a gig or recording (drums, guitars, vocals, bass, piano, whatever!…) are brought together so that we can control how loud they are in comparison to each other, but also we can change how each instrument or voice sounds using various different treatments.
Mastering is the final link in the chain before your mixed song goes off to Spotify or a CD or vinyl pressing plant. Your mix is checked by the mastering engineer for technical inconsistencies and they might also apply their own effects to change how ‘bright’ or ‘warm’ the final mix sounds, or how wide the stereo image appears to be on a pair of speakers or headphones. For digital releases, this is also where all relevant metadata can be added to make sure your track can be recognised among the many millions of others out there.