Mastering

It's been quite a week in the studio. Squeezing time to record, mix, master the album, and have rehearsal can be a taunting task; yet it never gets tiring.

We're officially days away from sending a master CD to be copyrighted. We're definitely done recording, and pretty much about the same for mixing. All there is left is mastering.

What is mastering?

Let me use an analogy first before getting technical. Let's use cooking for example. Before you cook a meal, you have to buy all the ingredients on the recipe list. [We could compare that step to recording the songs.] Then, you need to cut and prepare each ingredient to make sure there's the right amount of each. [Mixing the songs.] The final step would be putting all those ingredients in the pan and cook everything and make sure they all blend in together to make a delicious meal. That final step would be mastering when it comes to making an album.

In engineering terms, each songs was recorded and mixed in different ways, one by one, with sometimes different instruments and elements, which lead to songs having different levels and sounding different. The purpose of mastering is making the album sound as a whole; to make something consistent from track to track. It also brings up the overall volume of the album, making it as loud as it can be and making it sound better as a whole.

Little did I know this step would be much harder than I thought. I personally feel it's the hardest step of them all. It's a very delicate process that can make it or break. A perfect example would be Metallica's last album, in which the mastering killed the album after the mastering engineer followed the producer's demands.

I'm wasting one CD after another to make sure I don't do that same mistake. I go in the car, play it on the computer, play it on the PS3, ... anything I could get my hands on. You have no idea how much difference there is going from one place to another.

Hopefully, sooner that later, we'll find the perfect balance.

In the meanwhile, we have a gig this Sunday in Eagle Rock. More info later. We also might have another gig in Baldwin Park on the 20th of this month, but that one has yet to be confirmed.

Much love,
Jeremy