A question came up about mixing and mastering and it was a very simple question and I haven’t thought about it in so long that I couldn’t answer it very well and it’s very because it seems obvious but it it really isn’t and it’s what is the difference between mixing and mastering and So I for the first time in a long time gave it some, you know, really serious thought. How would you best define it? And uh I’ve seen people throw around definitions like mixing is fix adjusting levels on the tracks and mastering is gluing everything together.
And both of those are true, but they’re extremely incomplete. And while a complete definition is probably beyond my knowledge, I’ll try to dig in a little bit further and do a better job than you know it’s it makes it louder and go. I’ll try to do better than that. As an overview to better understand it in stages, you record music.
So your band or your as an as a band or an individual, you go in and you record uh many many tracks or however you want to do it. preferably doing it live and catching everything quickly and easily. That that’s not going to happen, but give it a try. Um, then a mixing engineer is going to go in and adjust the levels and they’re going to try to get things close to a decent mix. And then what I used to consider a artsy fartsy term started floating around called sitting well in the mix. And I thought, what do you mean volume? You turn something up, that’s art. You think it’s art turning things up? And I was way off and way wrong.
And the term sitting in the mix is actually very well said. And so a mixing engineer is going to go and take your music, adjust first, of course, trying to get the volumes in the neighborhood, but then they’re going to use many other tools, effects, uh, a lot of EQ, a lot of compressors, a lot of limiters, a lot of various different tools to get things to sit in the mix properly. So, what is mixing? It’s dealing with individual tracks and making them a part of an overall piece.
And it’s not only levels, it is also frequencies, how things work together, how things fit together. And the better the mixing engineer is, obviously, the better this is going to work. And I’m going to do some mixing here today. And I am not a mixing engineer, so I really am going to just hamfistedly move put jam buttons and move levers, but it’ll give you an idea of what we’re talking about and be able to actually see it. Uh, so what is mixing?
Dealing with individual tracks and making adjustments to make sure those tracks fit together as a complete hole. And if that’s the case, then what is mastering? Mastering is even more mysterious to me than mixing. However, essentially, if you are a mastering engineer, you will be handed a stereo track. So, you’ve got two channels, left and right. It’s the entire song, and the mix sounds good. Maybe the mix sounds great. As a mastering engineer, you’re going to take that stereo track and you are going to do many things, including increasing the levels of it.
They’re going to increase the level so it’ll be similar to other songs that you might hear on whatever uh platform you’re using, radio, uh CD, streaming platform, whatever. Can’t believe I went to radio first. I’m old. So mixing individual tracks, mastering affecting the entire song all at once. And once again, there’s a lot of EQ, there’s a lot of compression. They do a lot of very similar things, but they’re doing it in a very different way because everything they do tends to affect the piece as a whole.
That’s not always true. And they can also get in there and surgically affect uh frequencies very precisely. So, it’s not like they’re just running around a muck turning up the volume and jamming things in and throwing in a big fat EQ. It’s not just that. There’s a lot going on. So much that I don’t understand most of it. But, uh, that definition of mastering is when you are affecting the entire song all at once with various tools, effects, processes.
So to recap, mixing individual tracks, affecting them in a way that lets them fit together as cohesively as possible. mastering, taking the stereo track and gluing it together in a meaningful way with the proper volume, the proper EQ so that it can be presented on whatever format you’re presenting it on and it will fit in well with others others on that platform. Uh let’s take a look at what that is and uh maybe it’ll mean a little bit more if we can really look at it. All right, we’re going to take a look at mixing.
So, what we’re going to do is affect individual tracks. This is a song called All That Remains that I wrote and recorded. And now I’m going to mix it. Now, what I just said should terrify everyone because being a musician is very specialized, being a mixing uh engineer is very specialized, and being a mastering engineer is very specialized. And rarely will you see all of those three being the same person. Uh only a fool is their own lawyer. And I’m about to be my own lawyer. What I’m doing is for demonstration purposes.
Please understand if you’re a musician and you have recorded something that’s important to you, you would do well to hire a professional mixing engineer. They cost money because they’re professionals. And uh I know there’s not a lot of money to go around, especially if you’re a musician. So with all that in mind, if you plan on selling the product, having a professional engineer would be the best way to go. Actually, we’re going to mix one chorus of a song that I wrote called All That Remains.
And uh it’s a very simple instrumentation. Left, right guitar, bass, drums, and then the chorus is the same vocal line stacked four times to make it fat and full. And uh we have Superior Drummer for the drum kit. The guitars are a Helix native plugin and the bass plugin is called Element Bass from Spectre Media Group. Uh, and it is awesome. I mean, I’ve got a lot of sims. I got a lot of options when it comes to the bass guitar.
And essentially, I just plugged it directly in, recorded the baseline, and then dropped Element Bass onto the track. And there is a uh there’s a setting on element bass and it’s called fix your bass and I put it on that and it sounded great. I may have turned a couple of knobs after that but very very little. Uh I love this thing. So let’s listen to it. And this is going to be a scuffed mix just to give us an idea what we’re listening to.
And then we’re going to take everything down and start over and uh see what we can do. Here we go. is not your own. I lost more than I could know.
You think you feel this pain that’s all that remains. >> All right. So, there you go. Now, we’re going to take all the levels all the way down. All right, we got everything all the way down. And so we’re going to start with the drums as well we should and we’ll just stick them at zero dB and see what we got. Given that it’s Superior Drummer 3 and processed to the be Jesus before we even plugged it in, uh, it sounds fine. We’re going to bring the bass in.
All right, spraying the guitars in at zero out. Whoops. Since it’s metal, we got to turn those guitars off. Nice. All right. Now, since all four of these vocal lines are the same, we’re going to do the main vocals, and then we’re going to bring everything up underneath that. It’s not your road. I lost more than I could know. You think what you feel is pain. >> Not bad. Sits. Okay. >> Let’s bring these others in, but keep it a little lower. is not your own. I lost more than I could know.
You think what you feel is pain. >> That does not sound bad. Everything sits okay. >> I think the vocals are a little low, but I like the vocals, the way they’re sitting with each other. So, I’m going to increase the volume of all of them very, very slightly. I lost more than I could. >> I think that’s it. I like it. I lost. You think what you feel? >> All right. So, what we just did is mixing, albeit very, very, very basic.
And since everything was processed before we even got here, meaning the guitar sounded great out of Helix, the drums always sound great out of Superior Drummer and the bass sounds great because of Element Bass, then we didn’t have to do a whole lot of individual tweaking other than the levels. Understand that there has been a tremendous amount of tweaking going in. In fact, let’s take a look at this. So, Superior Drummer has its own mixer setup here and its own effects already plugged in.
There’s so much going on here that I’m not even going to talk about it because it’s superior drummer. Plug it in, it’ll sound pretty good. We got element base. And as I told you, there’s the there’s the fix my bass uh plug uh setting that I used. And of course, I made some changes and saved it myself. So, uh but it really is fix my bass with two knobs messed with. And we’ve got Helix Native. Let’s see. Helix Native with a ton of effects and all kinds of junk going on. Uh, let’s see.
The reason I’m not showing you this to show you how to do something. I’m showing that to you to let you know how much is going into these sounds and what you would need to do on the in the during the mix if all of this wasn’t already done. So, when I say you need a professional mixer, that’s a fact. And if you don’t have one, using all plugins that are set up by professional people is a better way is a not a better way, but it is it is better than going it on your own for sure.
Uh, but again, this is a lot more complicated than what we’ve done here today, but I have now defined mixing. You kind of know what it looks like. Now, let’s talk about mastering. Shockingly, I know less about mastering than I do about mixing. And let me be clear, if you’re going to put out music that you want to sell, you’re proud of it, you really want it to be the very, very best it can be, then hiring a mixing engineer and a mastering engineer really is the way to go.
But if you simply do not have the funds and you’ve got a mix that sounds pretty good, which is kind of where we’re at. It sounds okay. It’s not great, but it’s pretty good. Uh, and you don’t want to pay to have it mastered, which you should, but if you don’t want to, iZotopes Ozone is a valid alternative. There’s a lot of other uh platforms that you can use. Lander has a web-based platform where you can upload something and it’ll master it. It’s okay. I’ve tried that.
I’ve tried several of the other AI platforms and the one that I really liked the most was Ozone because you can hit a button and it’s AI will figure out, you know, what’s the right thing to do and it’ll be pretty good, but then you can go in there and make significant changes on your own and uh you can tune it up much better than you can several of these other platforms that I’ve dealt with. So, let’s listen to the chorus one more time without ozone. >> I lost more than I could know. You think what you feel is pain. I see. >> All right.
Uh, now we’re going to turn on ozone. Now, it’s going to crank the gain way up and it’s going to do a lot of other things, but important that it’s going to be louder than it was. So, if you’re wearing headphones or something or you’ve got this thing cranked up for some crazy reason, turn it down a little bit or take the headphones off for just a second and figure out how it’s going to sound.
Uh I have already run the AI assistant since essentially said you know figure out you you click learn it you play a section of the music that you wanted to learn and uh it figures out a way to master it and it’s pretty good. So here we go. I’m going to turn on ozone and we’re going to listen to the same thing. It’s not you think why you feel this pain. >> All right, let’s play one more time. I’m going to turn ozone off and on. understand that there the gain increase can fool you and make you think that there’s a lot more going on than it actually is. But we’re gonna let’s let’s turn it off and on here.
It’s going to start on then I’ll swap it off and back on. >> Off. You think what you feel is pain. I SEE THAT’S ALL THAT REMAINS. >> All right. So, there is the Terminator’s mastering service and works good. I think it sounds very good. It would sound better with a human being that knew what they were doing mastering it. But again, this is for folks that may not want to do that, have time to do it, or be able to afford to do it, which I am all of those.
So, it really fits very, very well for what I’m trying to So, mixing individual tracks, levels, EQs, how they fit together in a mix, mastering, gluing everything together, and getting it ready for release. Those your two steps. We did a little bit of both today, and we did it very simplistically. If you have any questions, please let me know. Uh, I’ll put links to the stuff that I used in the description so you can go check it out for yourself. Again, no one sponsored this nonsense and so, uh, I’m not selling you anything. I’m just showing you what I’m using.
So, until next time, have a great day.