Learn Mastering Tips to Create Balanced and Dynamic Songs

Mastering is the final creative process in the production of a piece of music.

The song is written, recorded, mixed and finally mastered. The mastering engineer’s job is to provide an objective view of the sound of a piece of music and make an experienced decision on what processing can be done, if any, to improve the quality of the sound, as well as prepare the tracks for their intended medium (a CD album for instance.)

Basically, if the recording captures all the tracks together to make a song, and the mixing stage is to align those tracks together through processing to make the song as good as possible, then mastering is adding that extra 10% of polish on top.

However, the mastering process can be a little intimidating. Understanding the meters and knowing what plug-ins to use can be scary so I’ve put together a few posts to help you overcome that anxiety.