The Most Difficult Thing About Mastering is…

…mastering more than one song at a time.

You see, making one song sound good isn’t that difficult.

We’ve talked about this before, and you should be familiar with the steps needed to get a good sounding master.

But when you throw a few more songs into the mix it becomes trickier.

Because the goal is to make this collection of songs sound like an album.

Mastering the Songs As a Whole

Mastering is like making a ragtag band of teenagers play as a team

You need to make every song sound like they belong together.

You can’t have one louder than the other and they need to sound similar both in dynamic range and frequency response.

A great way to start is to make sure each song is at the same volume.

I use Waveburner for mastering and it’s easy to raise or lower the gain of each song so that they all flow together nicely.

As for frequency and dynamic range goes, I use multiband compression with very similar settings across the board and I always use a reference track to gauge how my masters sound compared to a commercial track.

Back and Forth Comparisons

After that, it’s all about going back and forth between songs to make sure they blend well with each other.

Use metering tools to gauge the loudness and frequency response of each song. Looking at the frequency response in your meters might sound like cheating, but it is a good way to see if one song is lacking in a certain area.

And finally, like I said, compare. Go back and forth between all the songs until they sound like a record.

Because it’s easy to make one song sound good. The tricky part is to make your ragtag collection of demos sound like a record.

If you’re still struggling, check out my Master Your Mixes course right here.

This fly-on-the-wall course shows you exactly how to make masters that sound great. I’ll show you how to master a range of genres and take you through all the steps needed to make your masters sound like professional records.

If you liked this post, share the love: