My entry for the Chase & Status remix competition

[x2k]

Thought had have a stab at the competition since everyone else seems to be lol

 

[texas pete]

Like it!

 

Godd job !

[Jimmy]

nice one tom!!!

[Guest loop skywalker]

sweet stuff

[muzzell]

cool cool. Its interesting to hear a track pre mastered from them.

[x2k]

Thanks guys.

 

cool cool. Its interesting to hear a track pre mastered from them.

 

Yeah definitely, it's been a really educational experience recently having tracks mastered by different engineers and seeing how different their approaches can be as well as hearing other peoples tracks pre & post mastering and seeing the differences.

[muzzell]

damm right... mastering is deff not for fixing tracks but it can hide a few mistakes. you cant polish a turd tho.. (im in no way reffering to your stuff btw) I want to hear more pre and post mastered material. I also need to build a good reference folder. I been told (shouted at) for a few months now that without referencing constantly when mixing down that your basicly "drawing in the dark". Its hard to belive sometimes cos you think your tunes sound ok, punch in the right places and all that but when you compare to radio ready mix;s they sound so off. Its a annoying cos i been writing for over 20 odd years and still cant get it right. practise more I know but fuck how much time does it take.

 

Your stuff is sounding tight but i bet you hate the sound still???

 

: )

[x2k]

damm right... mastering is deff not for fixing tracks but it can hide a few mistakes. you cant polish a turd tho.. (im in no way reffering to your stuff btw) I want to hear more pre and post mastered material. I also need to build a good reference folder. I been told (shouted at) for a few months now that without referencing constantly when mixing down that your basicly "drawing in the dark". Its hard to belive sometimes cos you think your tunes sound ok, punch in the right places and all that but when you compare to radio ready mix;s they sound so off. Its a annoying cos i been writing for over 20 odd years and still cant get it right. practise more I know but fuck how much time does it take.

 

Your stuff is sounding tight but i bet you hate the sound still???

 

: )

 

It's all ways a strange experience waiting for a master to come back for me, part of me expects it to sound exactly the same and part of me hopes it's going to make may tune sound amazing, normally it's somewhere in the middle.

 

I've had stuff mastered by 2 different engineers and both do stuff very differently, the guy who I go to directly for mastering seems to keep the sound very true to the original, I'm not sure what it is that he does to the bass but is really impressive, to me though the top end I wasn't so keen on and it seems to be dulled. I probably should've gone back to him on that but I didn't really have the time.

 

The other one is a very sought after and highly respected engineer and he seemed much more bold with the track he really tightened up the bass and make the drums punch but also introduced some sort of distortion which was especially noticable on the chorus, it didn't sound bad but it certainly sounded different. Which I analyzed the file a bit I found that the file was running at about -4db RMS so I tried had a bit of a play to see what I could do and to do it transparently the I could get about -7db or -6db, the only way I could get it to the same volume as the mastered copy was to clip it (well actually use Wavelabs Peak Master which clips it but rounds of the clips) and I got a very similar distortion. I've seen an interview with this guy and he said that for the dnb guys they want it loud and like it to distort a bit so baring in mind that this was mastered with the work of other dnb producers I came to the conclusion that that's the approach he had taken.

 

Things are changing in many ways, the way it used to be where recording/creating, mixing & mastering were all separate things but now as people have more power to do everything themselves and get the exactly sound they want things are getting blurred. Sadly this means that a lot of people a creating terrible home masters but also the more skilled people are taking stuff to mastering engineers and the engineers say there's nothing they can do, Deadmau5 is one example of this, Evol Intent also master stuff themselves because they find that the mastering engineers don't take it the way they want, however for most people a mastering engineer is essential for a decent release imho.

 

I'm also guilty of not referencing much but I found a really good tip which really helps for referencing, take about 10 tracks with the kind of finished sound you are aiming for them clip 20second sections out of each one and fade paste them one after another. Don't try & mix them so they flow, just roughly hack them together then adjust the volume so they all have the same perceived volume (i.e. the sound the same volume rather that look the same). When you listen through it/reference to it you really notice the differences between the different mixdowns/masters but also tune you ears to the range of sounds you are going for.

 

Also if you want some more pre-post master stuff hit me up, I can't post stuff up publicly but I can share you a few bits for personal listening.

 

Finally to answer you question...there's not a single track which I've finished which I don't hate the sound of haha.

[doppelkorn]

Great post Tom.

 

I'm kind of unsure of the boundaries between mastering, mixing and production and what expertise in each of the other fields is required to be able to do each one well. For example how far do producers have to be able to master and how well do mastering engineers have to understand production?

 

In recorded music this takes on another level because the band is the creative force so what's the difference between the producer and masterer's jobs?

[juse box]

great remix tom, i don't regularly listen to dubstep but your joint was dope. mix is good too.

 

 

dopp, let me add two cents by saying that a huge majority of serious producers these days are learning recording engineering on top of making beats. i wonder if most recording engineers today are trying to produce beats as well.

[x2k]

Great post Tom.

 

I'm kind of unsure of the boundaries between mastering, mixing and production and what expertise in each of the other fields is required to be able to do each one well. For example how far do producers have to be able to master and how well do mastering engineers have to understand production?

 

In recorded music this takes on another level because the band is the creative force so what's the difference between the producer and masterer's jobs?

 

 

Things have changed dramatically as we've moved into a world with more electronic production but in a traditional sense this is what each person did:

 

Song writer/composer: Coming up with the melodies, riffs, chord progressions, lyrics, etc.

 

Musician: Soloist, band, orchestra, etc who would play those notes.

 

Recording Engineer: This guy knows about different mics, micing techniques & placement and pre-amps. This person is responsible for getting the best recording possible, this job would also involve some compression & eq but the aim is to give the mixing engineer the best possible takes to work with.

 

Mixing Engineer: This guy talk all the parts and puts them together in a sonic 3d space. The first part of the job is to fix any problems and then put even thing together in it's own space. Eqs, compressors & reverbs are some of the important tools here along with the mixing desk. They might also add creative effects like echo or flangers.

 

Mastering engineer: It was this guys job prepare & cut the masters for pressing up the record, because there are certain properties of a record which have to be taking into account for a good pressing such as stereo width/phase and eqing it was his job to make sure there weren't any problems present and try and make sure the best sound possible was cut to record. Also because this is the final stage where all the tracks of the album come together it's a good time to listen to them and make them all fit together and sound like 1 cohesive album and that is more what a mastering engineer does now.

 

Producer: This is the guy that is present for all these processes giving guiding each of the other people with their job, they may not technically know the details of each job but they have an idea of the sound required of the final product and kind of act as the constant mind through the whole process.

 

 

 

In the modern day computer power & home studios have enabled people to do everything, some people do decide to do everything where as others like to focus on just 1 aspect. The fact that now you can do everything is why people like to now be through of as producers because they are the one in control of the whole idea. What's more where previously each job had to be completed before the next this is no longer the case (although some people choose to keep doing it that way). Now you can write the melody, create the sound for it and get it sitting in the mix all as 1 job, for some people this is better but for others it is not. With that is mind these are the individual jobs people can now take on:

 

Composer/Producer: People seem to prefer to call themselves producers, some people might write something tradionally think up and writing down notes where as others like do it more organically adding sounds as they think of them or in a more trial & error fashion. Also it might be notes but it might also be samples, sound effects or random recordings.

 

Musician: if you can play an instrument the great, why not use that.

 

Recording Engineer: Same as above really but rather than recording it all at the beginning you might record bits as you think of them.

 

Sound designer: Someone who make their own presets or layers and processes samples to make new sounds which might be used as instruments, drums or effects.

 

Mixing engineer: I think many people don't see this as a separate job anymore and just do it instinctively as they go along.

 

Mastering engineer: The black art that everyone things is going to make a shit song sound amazing but they gets confused when they get a track back and their shit song still sounds shit. One of the main jobs a mastering engineer is asked to do these days is make a track loud, they also try to make sure that the sound will sound great on as many different sound systems (clubs, radio, car stereo, home hifi, ipod headphones, etc) as possible. The better the mix that the mastering engineer is given the less they will do. The reasons that most peoples work requires mastering at the end is because what you are paying for is someone with a lot of experience in a specially designed room to listen to the track through very high end speakers with ears which have been trained to pick up problems. The other side of it is that they are a fresh set of ears because if you do everything yourself you can become deluded as to what the sound actually sounds like and to have someone who has never heard it before hear it for the first time and listen analytically to the whole piece can be great feedback.

 

For a better idea of what a mastering engineer does there's a great interview with Stuart Hawkes (who mastered one of the other tracks I posted up recently) on the redbull website http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/video-archive/lectures/stuart_hawkes_wino_made_me_do_it/

 

Finally does a mastering engineer have to understand "production"? I don't know really but I would be very surprised if there were any good mastering engineers out there who weren't capable of doing a great mix down!

 

Hope that rant was useful.

[doppelkorn]

That is very helpful Tom and brings me on to my next question:

 

When using samples to make a production, the sampled recording in question will already have been mastered and mixed and "produced" to a given standard, meaning they will have certain EQing on them, panning (if you sample in stereo), compression, filters and effects. I guess my question is how do you deal with that?

 

I appreciate that certain stuff, say Motown, has a certain sound and that maintaining that sound might be desireable when creatign certain other sounds so how much mastering is required on sample-based tracks? Is it, as I suspect, just as much if not more becasue you have to then fight to give each track (talking about a DAW track now) its own space in the mix so you're fighting with a potentially very messy set of sounds?

[muzzell]

owwww to much to say on this but writing it down would take toooo long...

 

Lets just say there is no right or wrong with music but experience and practise are key... plus there are 1000 different ways of getting the same result's.

 

""the sampled recording in question will already have been mastered and mixed and "produced" to a given standard, meaning they will have certain EQing on them, panning (if you sample in stereo), compression, filters and effects. I guess my question is how do you deal with that""

 

- I would never use a sample in its raw form. so look at it, eq, mono or widen... basicly make it fit your tune... or : ) write your tune round the sample.

 

Mastering is a pro set of ears (with experience) running through pro equipment, comming out of pro monitors in a treated (very inportant) room. People who say they can get the same results at home on the laptop are just kidding themselfs. IMO

 

@tom... clipping is something my mate has been telling me is ok recently. Go;s agaist every thing i (and many other's think) but is done more and more now. so if you had punchy drums with big peaks and the rest of the tune looked alot lower, but all sounded right in the mix, then just puch the overall vol by 3 - 6 db. You can get away with a little with it still sounding ok and loud. This is instead of limiting the whole track as this will squash the freq's which you dont want.

 

blah