Whether you are an artist, music producer or listener, aside the fact that everybody loves to listen to good music that goes well with their music taste, sound quality plays a huge role in giving artists a headstart, giving music producer and sound engineer more rating and potential job opportunities and giving the listener absolute satisfaction. Music creation matters mainly to three parties which are the artist, music producer and sound engineer and the listener who is the final consumer.
WHAT IS MASTERING?
Mastering according to Wikipedia, a form of audio post production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device (the master), the source from which all copies will be produced (via methods such as pressing, duplication or replication). In recent years digital masters have become usual, although analog masters—such as audio tapes—are still being used by the manufacturing industry, particularly by a few engineers who specialize in analog mastering.
Mastering requires critical listening; however, software tools exist to facilitate the process. Results depend upon the intent of the engineer, the skills of the engineer, the accuracy of the speaker monitors, and the listening environment. Mastering engineers often apply equalization and dynamic range compression in order to optimize sound translation on all playback systems. It is standard practice to make a copy of a master recording—known as a safety copy—in case the master is lost, damaged or stolen.
In this article, WaysHowTo will discuss 5 solid reasons why considering mastering a song properly is important.
1. BALANCE
First on the list is balance. Aside having a great mixing for your song, one thing that is certain is that a good mastering brings out the best version of the mix through overall reduced muddiness, clarity and loudness. You can have a good mix and still have your song sounding as if it’s still missing some final touches and that’s where mastering comes in.
For beginners who want to pursue a career in music production or sound engineering, mastering is always the last step they learn in order to finish a song or beat. Mastering is constantly overlooked, but this stage of music production is very vital and that is why it is done both in beat making and general song mixing.
One important trick to know if your song is balanced enough is to play the song on different devices after you have finished working on it. Try playing your song in the car, room sound system, different phones, headphone, MP3 player, earpiece and if possible a DJs sound device or a standard show or concert speakers.
2. READY FOR AIRING
For upcoming artists, this is very common at the first stage of their career when they start to promote and engage listeners. Aside making the music, airing it gives you a better idea of how neat your music sounds.
If you are an upcoming artist, you must have probably come to a stage where you couldn’t really understand the sound of your song while playing it elsewhere despite having it sound well on your headphones, earpiece or portable devices like phone, MP3 player and PC. This is usually caused by unprofessional mastering or mastering negligence and it can lead to radio airplay rejection.
3. COMPLY WITH DIGITAL STORES STANDARDS
What most producers or sound engineers will not tell you or they probably don’t know is that you need a separate version for your song. This reason is to satisfy the requirements of digital stores like iTunes, Spotify and others. If you have ever sent your songs to distributors or read their requirements, you will find out that every distributor suggests uploading your songs in a .wav format.
Why is this format preferred? The answer is simple. .wav format is bigger in size and this is because it retains quality more than MP3 or any other audio format. So while your song is ready, never forget to request for the .wav version just in case you have plans to promote the song across stores.
Another way bad mastering can affect your music is when curators find your song lyrics interesting and wish they can add it to a trending playlist but they just can’t add it because the quality doesn’t come close to the others on the playlist so typically, adding such song will have a negative impact to the listeners experience.
4. IMPROVED LISTENING EXPERIENCE
There’s no argument when it comes to pointing out the difference between a mastered song and a song that has not been mastered or that which has not been properly mastered. Funny enough, even top stars ignore this important part of music creation and that is why you sometimes listen to songs and have no choice but to reduce the loudness because it causes discomfort to your ears.
A properly mastered song will sound totally OK no matter the amount of loudness, except for songs that have beats that weren’t properly mixed and mastered. So if you are working with a separate beat maker and a separate sound engineer, you may experience this issue and the sound engineer will have less or nothing he or she can do about it because the changes they can make to the beat are limited due to no access to the beat data.
5. STANDOUT
Mastering is a common thing ignored by many artists because to a lot of artists, mixing is all that matters. So you find a properly mixed song lacking in loudness and by this, the artist can face challenges while performing in shows and concerts. Song that do not have enough loudness from the mastering tend to sound unprofessional when loudness is added to them by DJs.
An artist who has a song with good mix and mastering has an edge to the others who do not have such. This is because his song can be played anywhere and any time without the fear of having a low quality sound experience sent to the audience. Most DJs and OAPs have one common reason for not playing the songs of upcoming artists on radio and TV and this reason is because it lacks airplay readiness. This is the same for show organisers and promoters who drop artist due to their song quality.
For most artists, these personalities are just partial and wicked but sometimes it’s not just about that, it a matter of complying with their standards. So having a proper mix and mastering makes you standout in these situations.
CONCLUSION
If you are an artist or beat maker that pays less attention to mastering, it’s time to switch up your game by making sure that all sounds created are properly mastered. Music today has so much competitions and what you offer at first to a listener listening to your song for the first time can determine how your next work will be treated because the listeners who are supposed to know less about music quality now know so much than you would expect. A good production wraps up a good song. A proper production crowns the rest of the works.
