Every great master starts with a great recording and a great mix! If you are planning on having your project professionally mastered, here are a few helpful guidelines to follow when recording and mixing your songs.
Basic Recording Tips:
1. Check your input gains and make sure you're not distorting your signal on the way in.
2. When using multiple microphones on one instrument, be sure that you don't have any phasing issues between them.
3. Avoid using too much EQ while recording. Try to get your instruments to sound as good as they can on their own and wait to EQ everything in the mixing session. Nice mics and preamps are a great way to record an already solid tone.
4. Don't over compress your signals while recording. While compression can be a great tool during the recording process, if used wrong it can do way more harm than good.
Mixing Tips:
1. Try not to over EQ your mix. If you attempt to make it sound like a store bought CD right out of the mixing room, it makes the mastering session that much harder. It's part of the mastering engineer's job to make sure that the overall EQ is fat, punchy and brilliant. Just concentrate on delivering a good clean mix, even if it sounds a little dull to you.
2. Never put compression or EQ on the master fader. Once again, this is part of the mastering engineer's job. When your songs go to mastering, you want the full dynamic and tone of your mix to be available to the mastering engineer.
3. Don't try to make your final mix as loud as you can possibly get it. Never go into the red or clip the master fader. This will usually cause your mix to distort. Make your final mix output peak between -3 and -6 dbfs. This will allow plenty of headroom during the mastering process. Don't worry, it will be nice and loud once it's mastered.
4. After your mix is done, take some time away from it to let your ears rest. You'll probably find some subtle little things that you want to tweak that may have been overlooked due to ear burn.
5. Play your mixes on several different stereo systems to determine how consistent they are. This will usually expose some undesirable frequencies that aren't as noticeable in your main mixing room.
6. Don't put fades on the beginnings and endings of your songs in an attempt to clean them up. That should all be done in mastering. However, sometimes you get "pops" and "noises" on an individual track due to punch-ins or edits so we do recommend that you clean those up.
7. Make your final mixes 16-24 bit / 44.1-192khz WAV or AIFF files. Preferably 24 bit / 48khz or higher.
See our rates/info page for more information on how you should submit your project
