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Over - Mastered songs between Artist & Producers.



beats for production/recording should never be mastered!

One of the biggest issues we see in the music production world. OVER-PROCESSED masters (meaning the song has been mastered more than once or too heavily).

its a very mixed discussion and hard to understand hopefully this will give you a better insight on how to make sure your records are only being mastered once to maintain the full quality of your sound!


First lets start with the basics



what is a song master? and how is it different from song mixing?

Mixing and mastering are two distinct stages in the music production process, each with its own purpose and techniques:


Mixing

  • Focus: Mixing involves adjusting and combining individual tracks (like vocals, drums, guitars) into a single stereo track.

  • Techniques: This stage includes balancing levels, panning sounds in the stereo field, applying EQ, compression, reverb, and other effects to each track.

  • Goal: The aim is to create a cohesive and balanced mix where all elements work well together and the song sounds good as a whole.


Mastering

  • Focus: Mastering takes the final stereo mix and enhances it to ensure it sounds polished and consistent across all playback systems.

  • Techniques: This stage involves subtle EQ adjustments, compression, limiting, stereo enhancement, and sometimes adding final touches like reverb or harmonic excitement.

  • Goal: The aim is to ensure the track sounds professional, is at the appropriate loudness level, and is ready for distribution.


In essence, mixing is about making individual elements sound good together, while mastering is about making the final mix sound good on any playback system and ensuring it meets industry standards



What happens when something is mastered twice?

Mastering a song more than once can lead to over-processing, which can degrade the audio quality in several ways:


  1. Loss of Dynamics: Each mastering pass typically involves compression and limiting to control the dynamic range. Repeatedly applying these processes can squash the dynamics, making the track sound flat and lifeless.

  2. Distortion: Over-processing can introduce unwanted distortion. For example, excessive use of EQ and saturation can add harshness and artifacts that weren’t present in the original mix.

  3. Phase Issues: Multiple rounds of stereo widening or other spatial effects can cause phase problems, which can make the track sound hollow or cause elements to cancel each other out.

  4. Frequency Imbalance: Each mastering session might tweak the EQ settings. Doing this multiple times can lead to an unbalanced frequency spectrum, where certain frequencies are either too pronounced or too subdued.

  5. Loss of Clarity: Over-processing can muddy the mix, reducing the clarity and separation of individual elements. This can make the track sound cluttered and less defined2.


By mastering a song only once, you preserve the integrity of the original mix and ensure that the final product is polished without being overdone.


Now that we got that out the way, How can I avoid over-processed masters on my music?



Usually THE main ISSUE - THE BEAT -

If your downloading your beats from you-tube like most of the upcoming / underground industry then there is a very big chance those beats are already mastered and should not be getting mastered again with your vocals on it. Why? Your downloading a preview only copy of the beat when ripping beats from youtube. Most of these beats are sold on sites like beatstars/tracktrain and that is where your suppose to purchase and download production - ready (un-mastered) beats.


Now here leads to the main problem,

many upcoming producers don't understand this same concept of over-mastereing and make the mistake of putting mastered beats for sell on beatstars as well.


Main reason this happens is us producers want our beats to stand-out when you hear them on youtube so we post them mastered for those to hear how the final product will sound after you create it. so the problems lies when artist either use those mastered beats to fully mix and master their record without using the paid un-mastered version or also when producers don't know to sell the mixdown version and not the same preview version from youtube.


For example - when you buy the beat to get a mixed / un-mastered beat to record to they have the same mastered (loud) version of the beat delivered to your email. in this scenario you would need to reach out to the producer you paid the beats for and let them know that you want a un-mastered (mixdown) copy of the beat and you can send them this same post to understand the reason so they learn to upload production ready tracks for their instant delivery beats.




another ISSUE - send-in features -

The same applies to doing features with other artist in separate sessions for example sending a 2track mp3/wav that already has vocals recorded then just filling in your vocals is one way to do it but not the way to keep full quality, anytime for features have your feat. send their vocals only - mixed or unmixed separate from the beat that way when you load up to mix or record your vocals you have the stems and it can be mixed down as if it was all recorded in one place keeping the same quality on both ends of the song not just one.







Scenarios / conclusions - RECORDING on YOUTUBE BEATs -
still DL your beats from youtube and create your song - if you like what you have created and want to go to mixing and mastering to be able to release - then you can buy the beat file and replace it with the youtube version that you have already, if the song has been mixed to the youtube beat you will need to remix it to the paid version of the beat since the levels will be different. Doing it this way saves you from buying a beat before recording to it and ending up not liking the song and it being a waste of money for the beat. So i would say this is your best option for using youtube beats to record but remember its on the producer to deliver the un-mastered copy so when you purhcase and see a mastered copy reach out

IF YOU MAKE YOUR OWN BEATS -
don't worry about boosting levels in beat prod. if your using 2track copy to record I would use trackout / stems of your beat in your session so you have full control of the mixdown all in one session leaving the mastering done last after all mixing has been completed from beat to vocals

IF YOU PURCHASE YOUR BEATS FIRST before rec.
make sure your getting mixdown level beats anything that sounds heavy bass 808s near radio volume or if its redlining the indicators in your daw then there is a chance your purchasing mastered beats and need to reach out to producer to inform him of this post!

DOING A FEATURE WITH SOMEONE IN DIFFER AREAS anytime for features have your feat. send their vocals only - mixed or unmixed separate from the beat that way when you load up to mix or record your vocals you have the stems and it can be mixed down as if it was all recorded in one place keeping the same quality on both ends of the song not just one.



Thanks for taking the time to read an hope this brings you better quality to your music! Be sure to sub to the blog for updates on new topics!







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