Mastering A Song: Step By Step THE EASY WAY!

yo yo what's going on you guys your body parts were out the living weirdo and today in this tutorial I'm going to be showing you mastering now unlike other master tutorials I'm going to show you some simple steps where if you have stock plugins or just not much plugins you can follow along with me and learn the skills in order to master your song so let's get right to it alright so this song that we're going to be mastering is a song called no hype featuring my guide axe it's one of my own songs and I'm gonna play you the unmastered record then I'm gonna play you the mastered record alright so let's go for it so first let's play it unmastered it's gonna be very quiet obviously because this is a nut master record did not hurt you the master so listen closely now I'm going to show you the record mastered listen closely [Music] [Music] I'm going to show you how to get the record there okay so quickly right underneath this record you see something that says ref mix now what this ref mix is is everybody mad by ot Genesis which is a commercial record that's played on radio etc this record is already mastered but I use it as a guide to let me know where my record is sitting up to a commercial record whether it's too quiet rather is too loud whether the kick isn't hitting enough everything so this is literally my guide the thing that you see right here says rep mix everybody mad ot Genesis this is just my reference makes this record sound similar to my record sonically so this is why I used it so I'm gonna play a little bit of the record so you can get an idea for it so this is ot Genesis everybody I've done money [Music] so much money cool now I'll play you a little bit of mine again - now do they sound exactly the same absolutely not does it sound closed yes in level and loudness did it feel like my record was just sitting up there with the record yes it did obviously these records are completely different I hear some widening techniques and stuff like that on everybody mad but that's not what I wanted for mine so that's why I have it but level wise we are sitting in a place that competes and that's what we're trying to accomplish so let's get right to it I'm gonna show you how I got to that level all right so let's move right on over so I want to make it very clear to you guys that in mastering and you need to know this listen closely you need to make subtle changes this is not mixing and mixing you may make drastic changes to the audio but when it comes to mastering it's about simple changes not big drastic moves guys these are very subtle changes that you're trying to make to improve the mix these are the the finishing touches the polishing so you don't want to do anything crazy and drastic and I'm gonna show you what I mean when we get into it let's get right here to it okay so first thing I like to do to my master is I like to add my NLS bus in LS bus which I've showed you guys a bunch of times it's basically just an analog saturation plug-in and this particular one is modeled off an SSL board the big one of the big boards that you see in all the studios all the time it's given me that sound quote-unquote it has three different settings like I've shown you before spike is an SSL board mike is an EMI board and nivo is an eboard all three of these boards have three different characteristics but for this particular song I like the spike SSL sound on this and that's what I went with so I'll just go bypassing and enabling it and letting you hear what it's actually doing okay so bypass verse so to me with the nls busted was it gave it a little bit of life it wasn't a big change but it gave it a little bit of life I felt like the vocals got a little bit more clear the bottom and kicked a little more very subtle very simple that's mastering okay it's about making small changes let's move on so the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go over to our EQ now for this EQ on this record I did something very simple once again I usually don't like to EQ or boost anywhere in the frequency range over a DB yes like I don't like to add too much things to this record as far as mastering you don't want to make big moves I can't stress that enough I just want to do subtle things if you have problems like that you need to go back to your mix and fix that so very very subtle moves you're gonna see so at about the 8,000 Hertz range I did about a DB of I did about a DB boost at the 8,000 Hertz range which gave my mix a lot more air and clarity then in the 1800 Hertz range I gave about 0.7 of a DB of a boost and that gave my vocal a little bit more clarity and open it up these two spots in particular I usually like to attack because let's be honest you could never have enough vocal right I like to just boost there just to get a little bit more clarity these two frequency ranges usually in most mixes I will boost around and let's say the 60 to about a hundred Hertz range just a DB just to get a little bit more kick but my kick sounded fine so I didn't do it once again subtle changes do not do it just to do it listen to your record compare it and see so before and after I'll keep punching it out so you can see what the EQ did [Music] once again a little bit more life the volkl got a little bit more bright everything just kind of stood out a little bit more love that very subtle change but I notice it okay next thing we're gonna move on to is this beauty right here and just let you guys know from a mastering once again I like to use a lot of analog saturation so this is one of my favorite analog saturation plugins it's called the fabfilter saturn and basically what this thing does is it just gives you an analogue sound there's a bunch of presets in it that's a clean tube warm too broken to clean tape warm tape etc it gives you all of these different types of characteristics that you can put right on your your master and just gives you an overall sound of the analog in different characteristics depending on what presets you use so for this particular song I used a preset called clean tube which you can see right here and I'll bypass it back and forth so you can get an idea of what it's doing [Music] once again small change but I just got a little bit more clarity I got a little bit more Oath out of the bottom end and the dynamics of the record seemed to bounce just a little bit more it feels like there's more movement in the record as far as where everything is hidden once again guys a very simple change subtle and these all of these things are adding up mastering okay next thing I'd like to do is I like to add a multiband compressor now usually if I find problems usually what I use my c4 multiband compressor is for problems in my mix you typically what I'll do is I'll throw this on there if I have too much vocal I'll use the c4 multiband to attack that vocal range and hit that down just bring that down and compress that down a little bit without affecting the uh the rest of the instruments or just the entire Sonics of the record but for this particular record I just did a slight boost so I used my multi band like an EQ and just added a little bit more of a boost at the forty five hundred to eleven thousand Hertz range so I'll let you hear the before and after this is gonna sound so cool because you're gonna hear the vocal in the whole song pretty much just kind of open up a little bit so listen for that closely so without and I'll keep popping it back for very subtle but you hit here and you can run it back you can go back and listen to this you can hear the vocal just open up just a little bit and it just feels so much better it feels like the vocal has more life now realize we are just doing this step by step by step adding subtle changes and we're getting big results as we're adding one by one piece cool so that was that piece now the secret the one thing that's all you guys are waiting for how do you set your limiter right for your mats for your master and basically this limiter is what you're gonna use to get your level okay now for me personally I like to use two limiters I'm going to show you this trick but first let's show you the first limiter the most important limiter so what I like to do to get my master is I like to see how far I can push it first okay so what I'm gonna do is you can obviously see that this limit is at fourteen point three is where I found my sweets by that so what I like to do is to find the level is I like to go to the loudest part of the song right and then I have my limiter all the way down right so I don't destroy my ears I go to the loudest part of the song which I can clearly see is right about here and then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to raise my limiter until I start to hear distortion does that sound crazy yes I know but this is exactly what I do to find out where I can't go so I know how far low I want to go so listen to this closely so I'm gonna raise this limiter until I start to hear Distortion so beware of this if you have headphones on night and day a weight limiter so you see what the limiter did I raised it and I hid that's plus 17 DB of of gain and you can see that obviously it just got squashed it was distortion everywhere started to back off and to a point where that distortion kind of backed off and it wasn't killing all of my dynamics and I found it at fourteen point three you heard it yourself I know you did as I started to pull it down you felt like right there all of the noise and the distortion kind of stopped so that's what I like to set my limiter I like to push it to the max see where it goes and then back off slowly and find that sweet spot okay now granted I want to play back my reference mix to basically check hey did I catch it am I pretty much at that same level so that's what I'm gonna do right now so I'm gonna play some of the OT Genesis just to make sure I'd still thumping Nick tell me what it is you know feel pain but cool and now listen to mine we're close we're pretty much there it's pretty much the same level it doesn't sound like it's too soft it doesn't sound like it's too loud it sound like it's sitting at a nice place that can compete with the commercial record Holte Genesis everybody man ok so I'm gonna break down to you my limiter settings if you're confused so that you can set your limiter if you don't have this fabfilter pro-mb door which I love in the door such a dynamic learner it really really really gives me a nice natural sound ok so unorthodox realm I like to set my attack on my limiter to the slowest possible setting and I like to set the release to the fastest possible setting reason why I like to do this is because it gives me the most dynamics and the loudest possible track um this is very unorthodox a lot of people probably don't do this had a lot of people don't do this but I like to do this in my in my met and my masters as a start now it doesn't work all the time but for my start I like to crank it to the slowest setting with the attack and the fastest setting with my release so basically what's happening is those transients aren't getting caught as quickly as it as opposed to if it was on the fastest setting and with the release going fast the the compression or diffuse me the limiting that's supposed to be happening is letting go so fast so it's literally hitting those transients slow and letting go hitting those transients slow letting go that's basically what I had the limiter doing so the transients are cutting through and it's also letting go so that's why my kickin everything sound like it's just snapping really hard and this work for this particular track this does not work for every single track so that's why I have my attack super slow and my release super fast you got it you know it now another secret that you guys probably don't even notice is right over here so on this particular limiter which most limiters have is an output ceiling and what the ceiling is is it's basically you telling the limiter do not let my track go past this level so for this one I have it at not letting it go past neg 6db so literally my Peaks are hitting at negative 6 DB that's why I have that but the reason why I do this and now we can go on over to my second limiter which you see right here no limiter is perfect usually when you convert these tracks to mp3s a little bit of that signal goes over the peaks that you assigned it to so that's why you'll sometimes get clipping when you create the mp3 so that's the reason why I have it turned down to negative 6 just to compensate for the mp3 to not cross over that that zero and basically just store and show me red Clips the secret way that I really combat it and really make sure that it's this does not happen is I go right over here and I put on another limiter now you see this limiter I literally don't do anything to this limiter I'm not I'm not up in the gain I'm not doing anything like that I keep the attack at about a medium to fast and I keep the release at the same thing about a medium to fast okay and basically it's catching those transients that are crossing over so anything that even crosses over that negative six this limiter is going to stop it in his tracks and it's going to make sure it's just an extra step to make sure and reassure that I am NOT going to get any distortion and things like that when I hit when I convert it to an mp3 which isn't perfect the mp3's aren't perfect when you convert it it's going to be some of the stuff is going to be over that over that threshold that you actually decided to excuse me over that ceiling that you assigned it to so that's why I like to have this extra step so that's what I like to do so I'll play it for you one more time and let you hear it fully master [Music] and that's how I mastered the record one last thing I'll show you just for people that just want the knowledge you'll see right below here I have to did they're set to 16-bits this is extremely important for a lot of reasons I'll explain that more in another tutorial but always make sure that when you're bouncing your records down to CD quality 4 which is 44 kilohertz 16-bit you throw on this dither and it's very very important it's this little bit of noise that gets added to your signal when the bit depth is is dumbed down this down scaled down long story just make sure you got it on I'm not going to go into detail about that but just know that you have to do that it's very important that you do that um so guys that's basically my easy way to master record as you can see it wasn't much I didn't do a lot of drastic moves I didn't even do any stereo widening or anything like that just very simple simple directions on how to master your track because I know a lot of you guys are just trying to get it to that level where it just sounds like it competes with the commercial records so that I want to DJ plays your song in the club it doesn't sound like your song goes here and then a commercial record future jay-z whatever just goes way up here so that's the simple way to do it you could take these skills and apply to anything make sure you follow us on the Instagram I'm gonna do way more in-depth tutorials on this so make sure you subscribe like comment below let me know what you think let me know if you have any more questions as far as what you heard and what you saw and I'll see you guys in the next tutorial make sure you follow us on Instagram at help me Devon subscribe hit the little bell so you don't miss a video and I see you guys next time

Channel: Help Me Devvon

Views: 264,149

Keywords: mastering, mastering tutorial, how to master a song, master, tutorial, how to master, music production, recording, how to, audio engineering, easy, fl studio, how to master music, plugins, mastering music, home studio, logic pro x, home mastering, mastering plugins, mastering in fl studio, mixing tutorial, how to master in fl studio, audio mastering, mastering plugin, learn mixing, devvon terrell temperature, devvon terrell work, devvon terrell futuristic, dax she cheated again

Id: 9_MDBCw9Tjc

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 10 2018