Mixing vs. Mastering (Visual + Audio Explanation)
The Songwriting Studio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szv32PCJfs0

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:00 hey music makers welcome back to the studio my name is dean and today we're going to tackle one of those age-old questions
0:06 what in the world is the difference between mixing and mastering and in this video i'm going to attempt to explain this in a really simple
0:13 way first i'm going to show you visually what a mix looks like and what it does then i'm going to show you visually what a
0:20 master looks like and what it does and then i'm going to let you listen to audio examples of a song that i mixed and then i sent it to a
0:28 grammy-winning mastering engineer and i'm going to let you hear the difference between the mix and the master so without further ado
0:34 let's dive in to start let's compare mixing and mastering on a broad overarching level and i'll go inside of a project so you can see the difference
0:42 visually as well mixing in a nutshell is where we process each individual track within our song so our
0:49 vocal tracks our guitar tracks our synth checks our drum beats and this is where we add effects to individual tracks like eq compression
0:57 reverb delay or even do automation if we want to hear manual effects at certain parts of the song and within mixing is where we also
1:05 volume balance each track in relation to one another so that you don't have say your drum performance way too loud and overtaking the mix or
1:13 maybe your lead vocals too quiet and drowning in the mix so that's the quick overview of mixing now let's compare it with a quick
1:20 overview of mastering before you get ready to master you actually export that mix and bounce it down into
1:27 one single stereo audio file so when a mastering engineer goes to work on your song this is what they're looking at and now
1:34 that you're working with only one single audio file the oversimplified goals of mastering art number one
1:40 to raise the volume or the loudness of that track so that it competes with other songs that you hear on spotify or any other
1:48 major platform the second goal of mastering would be to add subtle hints of warmth clarity and color and these are
1:54 not typically big macro adjustments these are micro adjustments so now that we have an idea what the
2:01 overarching differences between mixing and mastering are let's bring it into a real life situation so i'm gonna use my upcoming
2:08 single as an example to show you what i did as a mixing engineer and then what the mastering engineer did and even what we were asking from one
2:16 another back and forth to start i mixed the song and tried to get it sounding as good as i possibly could before i even had it
2:22 mastered and then i exported a file and i sent it to my mastering engineer for him to review and give feedback on one of his main comments was that the vocals
2:30 in the chorus were too loud so that means an individual adjustment like that was in my ball court as the mix engineer because a mastering engineer can adjust
2:40 the volume level of your vocals without massively affecting the entire rest of your mix so once we had gone back and forth a
2:47 couple times and i had the mix where it was supposed to be i then sent it back over to my engineer as an uncompressed wav file
2:54 and he began working on making it louder and adding those subtle hints of warmth and color so once his job was done as a mastering
3:02 engineer he sent me back a single file that would be a mastered song so now let's listen to the difference
3:08 between what i did in the mixing phase and what my mastering engineer did in the mastering phase
3:19 [Music] there's something beautiful about you i built a wall but then you broke through
3:32 number one right away you can hear the bump in volume it's definitely a bit louder and then number two there is a bit of warmth or
3:40 boom to the low end that wasn't there in my mix there's also just a little bit of brightness or sheen to the lead vocals that wasn't there in my mix as well
3:59 [Music] so let's wrap this all up by talking about how this stuff affects
4:12 you how it applies to your music making process number one i would say recognize which one is macro and which one is micro
4:20 mixing is macro that's where we do a lot of the big changes a lot of the big processing a lot of the customized things but mastering on the other hand
4:28 is more micro it's subtle changes to enhance your mix and get it ready to play in stream number two i want you to recognize that
4:36 if your mix sounds bad your master will also sound bad getting your song mastered is not an excuse to have just a half decent mix
4:44 you need to do all that you can to make it sound as best as it can in the mixing phase don't leave anything for the mastering engineer
4:51 then once you're all done that's when you send it to the mastering engineer and they can make it even better and then the last question and maybe the
4:57 most important question is should you get your songs mastered and i think the simple answer is yes but i think the more complicated answer
5:06 is what kind of master should you be getting so here's my suggestion i think if you're new or relatively new to the whole music making
5:14 process to writing to recording to releasing music then you should really consider something like an online mastering
5:21 engine like lander.com this can give you a great master that's louder that's brighter and it's really really cheap and
5:29 really really easy and no i don't have any affiliation with lander i just i think it's a cool tool but on the other hand if you're more experienced you've
5:36 released several single several albums and let's say you have some budget or backers behind your project then you might want
5:43 to consider getting a professional mastering engineer i paid eighty dollars to have my song professionally mastered by a
5:50 grammy-winning engineer but i've also been doing this for quite a while and i have patrons who back my project so they
5:58 actually paid for the song to be mastered thank you patrons y'all are seriously amazing but again if you're new i would
6:05 really suggest an online mastering engine because i would just hate for you to spend 80 dollars on a master and then be like
6:11 i can barely even hear the difference so i hope this has been helpful i hope it's really clarified and simplified the role of mixing versus the role of
6:20 mastering and feel free to stick around as this channel is all about equipping you to write record produce and release your own
6:27 music but not just to learn about it talk about it to actually apply the things we're talking about so you can complete
6:34 songs so you can release songs so you can impact your generation this is dean thanks for joining me today in the studio
6:41 and i will catch you in another video