By Jennifer Jones , Beginner Guitar HQ | Mixing and mastering are two crucial end-steps to producing a completed work. A common misconception, however, is that both of these terms are interchangeable, and therefore, result in them being glossed over and forgotten. This article aims to help you understand their importance, and why both steps deserve much-needed attention.
Mixing and Mastering – What’s the Difference?
As far as an individual song goes, mixing is the second last step in your process. This is where you adjust the levels in your song, combining elements such as panning, reverb, EQ, compression…etc. Your role in the mixing process is to tighten up the track, adjust conflicting frequencies, and emphasize certain elements.
Mastering more often than mixing gets overlooked because in this phase you’re adjusting the levels of several grouped tracks.
For example, let’s say that you’re producing for an artist who wants to release an album. You’ve finished each individual track, they’re all mixed and they sound great! However, when they are played back in sequence, they don’t sound that well together. An example of this could be because the bass frequencies are too high compared to the following track where there is very little emphasis on the bass. To fix this, one might reduce the low frequencies on the bass-heavy track or increase the low frequencies on the other to compensate. Adjusting both slightly may work as well.
The importance of mastering is that you want one song to flow to the next and not be in direct contrast with the others.
Music Production’s Natural Process
Within the margins of producing music, there are 6 major steps to creating a finished work. These steps from start to finish are:
● Composition
● Arrangement
● Tracking/Sound Design
● Editing
● Mixing
● Mastering
This is a fairly common sequence of how the process of producing music unfolds, however, sometimes it may vary. For instance, the recording/sound design process could move into the composition process and provide the foundation for the song. The result in that may mean that the editing process gets shifted to an earlier slot in the production process. The important thing is defining your process, as nothing here should be taken as strict advice.
Let’s dive further into each of these steps and cover what they’re all about.
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Go here to read this very interesting and informative article:
https://beginnerguitarhq.com/mixing-and-mastering/
Thanks to Jesse Stark of Happy DIY Home for letting us know about this article.
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Photo: Mix Master | https://beginnerguitarhq.com/mixing-and-mastering/