The question I basically have right now is if its completely necessary. Of course I am going to be doing my own personal mastering/mixdown on our computer, but right now my partner and I are wondering whether we should get it professionally done before we send it out. Our own personal mastering can get it sounding better, but of course if we pay someone to do it, they'll be able to do a much better job. I'm wondering if the record labels will do their own mastering/mixdown (if they accept it of course) or do they usually count on the producers to take care of that themselves.... hopefully someone who's already been signed or knows of the process can answer my question...... thanks a bunch!!


Hai Lee

no, as i know, many labels make mastering by themself, labels don't need finished quality product, they need good idea. they need talent, and then, they'll help to fill blank gaps.

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its not worth it. if they end up signing it they are going to want to do their own mastering job on it anyway, so they will tell you to send an unmastered copy.

just make sure it sounds good on your end before you send it, cuz as the saying goes... "you cant polish a turd"

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although i am new to this...from word of mouth, i think they like the fallowing

1. they want a very stable solid mixdown of all the intstuments in the mix.

2. a seperate file of your personal mastered copy to make it sound better for listening purposes (i say this considering it being a bedroom producer sending in the mix)


if they take your song, they will do their own mastering to the original mix down...but its nice to have your mastered copy (if you know what you're doing of course) to make it sound that much better for preliminary listening.

awesome.... thx for the info guys..

+1 to djbruuen

You should always present your best sounding work to a label (even if that means home mastered) but to go to vinyl a pro mastering engineer needs to get involved, so make sure you have still got an unmastered version kicking around for when the label asks for it.

And they WILL ask for it if they are worth their salt.

See other discussions on mastering for details..

IF they like you're demo and they want to cut a record etc... they'll probably have you make a track in they're studio

you don't really need someone else's label or production company anymore. You can always make your own CD's and production licenses are usually pretty cheap. I'd much rather support your talent than some session musican's.

it pretend of label

for example kätkäi records (uk hardhouse/hard nrg and nu-nrg)
signs only mastered promos becouse they have only pressingstudio

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always send them a mastered copy if possible, you always want to show your music from the best side...always always always.

If they want to sign it they'll either be satisfied with your master (but I highly doubt that they actually would unless youv'e been working as a mastering engineer for a couple of years) or they'll just ask for a mixdown that's not mastered.

but when sending demos ALWAYS send a not to fucked up mastered version of it, it helps!

[edit]
ohh and btw. if you get something signed be ready to pay for the mastering. Most labels today don't have their own masteringengineers, mainly because most labels aint that big.

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Make sure you're not confusing mixing and mastering. A well mixed track will barely need any mastering at all.

That said, it won't hurt to add some compression to the track.

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Most things have been covered already but ill reiterate them and hopefully have everything in one place. Essentially what happens is yes, you do want to present you best quality work to the recording comapnies but no, most of the time, you wont have to have mastered it. Often times, if the song sounds like shit, it wont get better through mastering. If it sound reasonable, atleast fixable, and if its a good label, they will tell the artist what might be done to make it just that tiny bit better and then a sound engineer will go over the track. The goal of the sound engineer is to get a flat frequency response from all frequencies, meaning no one frequency is on average, higher than the others. This is so it can be played on any medium, be it vinyl, cd, radio, whatever, and it will all, for the most part, sound the same.

Several things to consider when doing your mixdown.
-Don't over compress your track but do apply some compression. You'll cause the sound engineer a migrain when he/she is having to break the song down into tiny sections to achieve that flat frequency response.
-Don't try EQing the track on your tiny p.o.s. hp speakers. Get some monitors or a lot of different styles and brands of headphones/speakers. Make sure the song is going to sound good when you send it. The very first thing I find myself doing to almost every track is I turn down the 1500Hz band. The 500Hz band comes in a close second as well. Turning just these two bands down will more liekly than not, clearify your song immensely.
-Watch out for your high frequencies too. 8000Hz and up is lots of times trimmed on some brands of speakers. They can claim all they want that the speakers can spit out up to 16000Hz or whatever but they fail to mention the response curve where 16000Hz or even 10000Hz is down around the -10dB mark making it almost impossible to properly EQ a track. Get some better speakers.

Hope I helped someone.

Cheers,
Zac

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