For the last several months I have been recording my Postal Service-esque project Random Battles’ first EP, entitled ‘Masters’. This project was meant to be not only a continuation of my work in the Video Game Music community, but also a crash course in recording rock/metal music, mixing and, over the last week, mastering. Essentially I set out to not only learn the ropes of being an engineer, but also to have a product at the end of my first big, all-encompassing lesson. ‘Masters’ is that product.
While recording and mixing go somewhat hand in hand as the image of what a project should be begins, takes shape, and is put into place, mastering is a completely different animal. I’ve found myself frustrated by how mastering is usually portrayed as an arcane, mystical art that must never be attempted by mortal men. I rejected this view and attempted to master my own project. This is when I learned the crucial difference between fantastic Genelec monitors and every other speaker one would potentially hear music played through, particularly crummy Volkswagon speakers.
The infamous ‘car test’ would, without fail, take my hours of hard work, ingenuity and hope and dash against the rocks of bassless, harshly-intonated paper cones. This is where, I’ve learned, mastering becomes the difficult beast it is: how do you make a recording sound as good as it can sound in a galaxy of different setups? The short, simple answer I’ve settled on is, you can’t.
In my second to last master mix, I really felt I had it down. The cymbals are sparkling, the bass is kicking, the guitars are ripping things to shreds. Then I do the car test, no bass. Too thin. The volume level was there, but there was too much high end and not enough ‘butt’. I almost give up in frustration, but then I take my project home. The headphone mix is perfect. The home speaker test is perfect. Then I realize, maybe I just have crappy car speakers and I really shouldn’t beat my head in trying to appease the cheap VW speaker Gods. So now I am taking a chance. I am hoping my future listeners will subscribe to high fidelity and listen to Masters on a good sound system. And even if they don’t, I hope that they understand that nothing is perfect, and to just enjoy what I’ve made for them.
For additional thoughts on mastering, namely my personal approach, please
Random Battles: ‘Masters’, drops on August 14th at Bit Gen 5 in Baltimore!