Mixing & mastering "Self-Evident Truths"

Once you have recorded all the raw instrument tracks you enter the “post-production” phase. For big name artists on major labels this can actually take longer than the recording did. Within the industry there’s a whole roster of “big name” engineers who are brought in because they can give a song their signature tone or the “hot” new sound. Since this is a form of branding for artists the stakes (and hourly rates) are enormously high. While not completely appreciated by most music consumers a lot of what helps you recognize an artist from the first note is what takes place in post-production. It happens in two parts: mixing and mastering.

The mixing engineer will take the recorded tracks and line them up (if anything was played out of time or on the wrong beat), clean up glitches and minor mistakes, correct pitch (if a note or voice was out of tune), then adjust the balance between the instruments, add effects, and fade parts in and out. In the digital age there are a bewildering number of options since one computer can ape the capabilities of hundreds of processing and effects modules. This is also where the artist or producer will exercise a lot of creative control to develop or match the sound they want for their tune. Given the complexity of the songs I had recorded we could have easily spent eight hours on each going over the fine points and comparing all sorts of variables, but here the “time and budget” constraint appeared and in the end I had to limit us to about 2 ½ hours per. But I was satisfied we did the most we could with what we had. Since the raw tracks are still available separately the album can be remixed at any time in the future, so you could say this is “Self-Evident Truths 1.0” to borrow from the computer world. This also presents an attractive option if there is interest from a record label. They might like the album, but have specific sonic demands for a re-release. Remixing is a relatively cheap and easy way to satisfy those demands without the hassle of re-recording parts altogether. 

The final step is mastering, and it’s also one of the least understood. The overall sound level of each track is brought up to the common standard and each track is adjusted to match the others (so one is not louder), proper space is placed between each track, silent sections are made truly silent (no hiss or noise), some errors can still be corrected, and some additional processing is available to improve the overall quality of the sound. Song data such as track title and length are embedded and the songs are also uniquely coded so the number of commercial plays can be tracked (for royalty collection). General practice is to have different engineers using different gear in different rooms do the mixing and mastering. The idea is that another set of ears will hear new things, good or bad, and the differences in the reproduction facility ensure the music will be better tuned for a variety of listening environments instead of just one space. Again “time and budget” (the latter of which had already been broken!) intervened and I had Patrick do the mastering.

The industry has been heavily criticized by audiophiles for seeking every modern album to be as “loud” as possible. This means all the mixed tracks are brought up to about the maximum level without actually distorting. What this means most noticeably is that the dynamics (loud and soft parts) of a song disappear and with them, it is argued, goes a great deal of the character and subtlety of the music. Patrick was very specific about not wanting to “overmaster” and flatten the tonal character and overall response of the music. Since he had already invested a lot of time and energy to create the perfect blend of those two I couldn’t believe he’d immediately undo them on the mastering console:-). When he was finished I thought he’d done a fine job maximizing what his mix had to offer without ruining its “personality.”