Why should I hire you to mix my song and not just have my “engineer” do it after we record?

A lot of people choose to let their engineer do a “rough mix” at the end of their recording session–and depending on how experienced your recording engineer is, it could be great! It more likely will have plenty of room for improvement. There are often too many decisions to make to fit into the last 20 minutes of a recording session. Also, if your engineer has been listening to loud music all day or even just during your session, their ears will be fatigued and their decisions will not be ideal. When I’m mixing, I always work at a level that won’t fatigue my ears throughout the day. In doing so, I can be sure to make appropriate decisions for each song.

Beyond this, I’ve been a musician my whole life, and a music producer for half of it. I have a deep bag of tricks, aesthetic preferences, and musical references to pull from when attacking any specific project or song. I am not specifically a technician, I mix from a creative place.

What is Mastering?

Firstly, Mastering is the preparation of audio for any given distribution format–originally, vinyl. Now, the focus is streaming, and masters are delivered digitally. Of course, that is not all we do–ideally, we are sonically enhancing the music as well. To describe this function I like to use the following example: you know when you set up your car stereo and you get to pick how much “bass” “mids” and “treble” you have? That’s essentially what mastering is, but it’s a process done to the actual audio file of the song in order to make it sound the best it can on any playback system. A mastering engineer will also manipulate the dynamics of a song to ensure it is appropriately loud, punchy, exciting, smooth, or whatever that track calls for. Along with that, a mastering engineer is responsible for smooth transitions song to song on an album or EP. Finally the mastering engineer has a robust knowledge of streaming services preferred file types and will make sure you are delivering to them what they want and what will sound the best after being converted for streaming. In the present, this would be a 24bit 96khz wav file.

Why should I use you over my friend who says they’ll master my song for free?

I’ve spent more than a third of my life learning the art and history of the mastering process. I’ve invested in audio processors and a listening system designed specifically for the task. I’ve worked alongside professionals much more experienced than myself, and I constantly study and admire the work of other mastering engineers. Plus, I just love mastering music.

Why shouldn’t I just use my AI mastering software? It sounds pretty good!

While the newest AI mastering helper-tools can be decently good, they do not have the experience and nuanced understanding of musical history that professional mastering engineers leverage when deciding what the most appropriate choices will be for your specific song or project. For example, some albums in history (loveless by my bloody valentine, for example) were mastered wrong purposefully. If you want your album to sound unique and have artistic flair, that is something only achievable by a human.

What about AI mixing

Don’t get me started! It won’t beat a good professional engineer.

What kind of files do you accept for mixing and/or mastering?

For mixing, the best situation is to have uncompressed (wav or aif) files for every track from your session. Keep them at the same sample rate they were recorded at. Sometimes processing should be left on if it brings a certain vibe, and sometimes processing should be taken off so that I can compress and EQ things correctly. This can all be worked out in correspondence.

For mastering, a single stereo wav or aif file will work. Keep it at whatever sample rate it was recorded at. If you only have an .mp3, reach out to your engineer for a wav version. Make sure any limiters are removed from the signal chain, and that the level of the wav never exceeds 0db.