Lessons

Lesson Info

Demo: Mastering an Acoustic Track

Okay, so let me try to get one more done before while we do that. Let me find one of these that's a little bit more of a different example than this. So michael will be very disappointed if you don't give goliath a shot. Michael will be very disappointed if you don't give the goliath tracking shot let's. See which one of these is the best example for the kids. So that's definitely different and private opposed them different problems through this. That sounds really nice. No, what's you guys vote in the class which want one of those three do you think beam or interesting? The rock in one, the more acoustic one or the really heavy one? What would be more interesting for you guys to see? I'm gonna let you put this up to the call. I I don't think you should do that. Have you won? Just because you already worked with bass heavy music? Okay, yeah, I'm thinking, ah, then you should go back to mine. No, that was awesome. After listening to your song, I don't think I can handle acoustic music.

My brain is hating every programs this songs they play in the club now I would, I would probably say the more rock and roll one yeah, because the goliath seems little heavy. You guys got a say in it I'm a little bit interested the acoustic one because it is a bit different than everything else we've we've heard and just looking at the wave forms, you know, they definitely need some beefing up more than cool. Yeah. It's. My vote too awesome. Well, we're doing the acoustic one, I guess. Okay, so let me get this set up. So, first off, when I heard this one, I already thought, just like, braz is one I want this sounds pretty good. So what set that up in a b? Let me I'm gonna actually turn off all this stuff. Not sure if we can go back, but we didn't have a request from the from c harris wanting to know if we could listen to the track before and after just so we can get way did that. But yes. Why would I do that real fast? That would be great. Thank you. So this is grasses track with some loudness. Maximize er on it. Let me set that properly before a hit play. So yeah, here's it hitting it very white way. So we get volume, caribou volume comparison. That's accurate this's his original truck way. And this is what I just did do it, wait. I don't think I will say to is I think grasses tracks frequency span actually sounded cool. This is more my thing of like I thought that heise could be more exciting it's kind of funny because when I listened to it I would actually almost sometimes a lot of my clients I sent him two versions of the first track I do and I say here's one with more your frequency san here's what I'm thinking that we make a decision because there's parts of the less high hyped up thing that I do like about the beef to it and there's parts of it imagine but I do hear ah pumping it that makes me want to borrow my head more when I crank up the highs and so much of this is about the emotions you have and that's why I kind of never feel like anythings right or wrong it's what your taste is and what something makes it you have to find somebody who masters in line with your tastes and fills in what you want to hear and makes it better for you, right? Well, thanks for doing that of course let's do the same thing we just did last time, which is let's find a way to turn this up in here with so this track is called bring the bell no well foreal albatross so I'm assuming royal albatross is the band I'm since readable dibella well, sounds like a song title to me for some reason so let's hear this I'm pregnant the volume on it master during my three four out bring that way no way, no way so what's very nice is I'm not hearing a lot I want to do this I actually think this sounds fantastic, but I think this is also a great example some we haven't doing which is not have me have a super heavy hand and making doing all sorts of crazy stuff and just showing how gentle weaken be while still being informative so I do know that I want to play a little with the dynamic because this vocal seems like it does get a little bit much to me here compared to there, it seems like I would've personally I like to have heard that vocal not come out as much, so I'm going to see if I contain these dynamics a little bit first so let me bring my brick wall women or up on some my working track wait, wait bring the bell ring the bell so what I just did there is I added a slight amount of fox and I did nothing like the thickness knob that we did on any of the dance tracks or any of the medal or any of the rock trucks usually we're literally double on the thickness, but the thick this was bringing out some more of that made in attack on the vocal that I'm not really loving and I feel like this song will work a little better if we team that attack of that vocal down a little bit so I just have a subtle amount of um ceron here I'm now going to go over and start to do my queueing so I actually really find the setting and overall mix to be very, very, very pleasant to me when I think of how a song like this should sound I actually really like the overall in broad strokes that this recording did I have no idea who did this since I didn't get that information but kudos to you I am going to try to just do a little bit of carving in the mid try to make this vocal sound a little bit mohr write to me let me play around with wait so I know he said how high we ever go on this high pass filter because this is just acoustic and a little bit of almost foot stomp and claps mostly in the song thiss forty five seems like it's the first place where I'm hearing I'm chopping up some of the body it's hard so it kind of just going there just so nothing has to work very hard down below that um so the next thing I want to do is I want to find this part in this vocal that's not sounding right so wait my way my way wait, so that already pretty much got rid of what I didn't like and I'll tell you I'm very impressed with how well done this charges so here's the next thing is obviously I'm going to play around with a multi band compressor, but I'm not sure that I'm going to love this and I think this is actually like a very fitting end to this course because what this really does show is that one of things I think we didn't get to get into it because it's not as interesting as restraint, I don't feel the need when I think something's great to use all my tools, but I am going to try them and then if I can't make them better, I'm going to throw them away. I'm pretty positive I'm not going to go too crazy with this thing in a second and I'm gonna mostly likely he's going to do but it's, you can't always imagine what you'd do until you hear some of it, so I'm going to go around and I'm going to play a little bit with my alchemist and see if it does anything that makes this song some more pleasing my way wait really wait wait, wait so what I just did there is yet again I went over to that four k frequency that I'm really not liking the vocal and that's pretty much that in the bottom end I like that it kind of got away some of the give me more definition of the guitar and gave me a less flooding the guitar yet again. Very light. So then the question becomes, what can we do with sweetening? So my first question would be is can my air distortion do something interesting here? Um, interesting detail we didn't hit here is you always want to hit your stereo button on your air distortion. Um, I have this factory default. Set it to what? I like it out. So I should also tell you that this may not be how your sets to since I made mine do that. Wait, no, I do not like that. So my next question is, is will I like my father filter saturn? I highly doubt it since this tends to make things much more glossy and pop and I don't think that's his track needs bring the way. Wait and I am absolutely right that I don't know that this needs much harmonic enhancement I think that the way this sounds is so nice, so now I need to just determine a volume bring that way so I should also say I'm at the end of the song right now and obviously I would take a lot more time to do this but I was really do it, but as you can see in the way form here, the end of this song is a lot louder so that's gonna be the big determinant factor and what our volume khun b so if I'm working fast, this is what I need to hear wait, wait, no! So what I'm hearing here is that very much brick wall women ng also makes this too aggressive to me. I think that this needs to be so gentle and white I really like how the snare drums stay in the back, that the kicks rooms don't overpower with base like this is almost the opposite of how I produce everything where I want everything to be extreme and really pounding at you. They did such a good job with the emotion of this being gentle and vulnerable that I really don't want any compression take away from that. So that's one of the reasons I just decided to be so gentle with this track, so I'm barely touching with the brick wall limiter we're giving a slight amount of sarah about her twenty five percent less than I give any of the rock tracks I think that's really just bringing out some detail very light queuing and very light multiple be venting let's take a listen between the two you know what even hearing that I'm missing some air from his vocal I'm gonna pull back the multi band I put on the upper end of the vocal no wait and that seems properly team to me now the band is called royal albatross their frost the hla orange county area and there in the chat rooms right now well they're awesome you can tell them they do the people have been telling them that they're awesome and they have a free p that you find on ban him so that he has dropped the link here she has dropped link in the chat room so that's pretty cool that's great that's a great track they did a great job recording them so let's reiterate one last time this awesome flow chart that you want to go through your mix get it right find a vision for what you want out of your master make sure you get your objective perspective think about the frequencies think about the dynamics try to sweeten it a little but as this example shows sometimes you don't even need to do that because you have the right amount of sweetening on there finalize it and put it all together the key takeaways from him today I think we're there's not one way to master different genres and tracks will call for different things as we really got illustrated just now I thought that was awesome like you know, with grasses track we ended up using a different um what do you call it a kind of method that I used him to some others I wouldn't want it did three different surgically queues whereas because I'm mixing my own stuff I usually do that but that shows what happens when you're mixing something you don't have access to the mix with in the end always use your ears we showed so many times where I was doing the wrong thing but I still got a result and even though I went back and tried to do go by the rules and all the things that I was taught sometimes that's not the case I know the rules then break them all you want if you know you should break up um you have permission experiment it's okay turned to turn knobs just to see what happens there's a great undo button everywhere you'll probably find something yet again find a good preset warn what about it makes you like it tweak and learn why you like that setting um my closing thoughts are this has been really, really awesome that's been so good to get everybody's feedback and like I just learned so much and I'm like psyched to get in on my fight at one a m and start mastering again um you can find me on the internet at jesse cannon m us f or muse formacion bye jesse kennon em usf posts all my really mean opinions about the music world today where's muse formations just helpful links about the music business and recording facebook dot com dash cannon found foundation is my recording studio um I'm instagram a jesse cannon and you could see all the cool gear I have as well as all the nice meals I eat um my website is jesse cannon dot com which I keep up to date with every single thing I do in is a great recessed get subscribed to if you use a reader since I always have news and I provide tips and send out things I think people should uh check out let's talk about your book one more time to I have ah book that I'm very proud of called get more fans the d I y guide to the new music business it's seven hundred pages and would I like to think of as thie most complete guide how you as a modern band navigate the new music business not that old one that all the other books talk about where you write teo and our man's and hope somebody hands you the record label fairy weighs a contract under your pillow I talk about how you talk to fans and how you get them excited about your band on dh the ways I did that for the band's, I managed, you could find it and get more fans book dot com