It seems that I haven’t written a post since January 6th, which is like a century in the internet! Well, this happens when you don’t really have any free time in your life.

Anyway, today I want to talk about mixing a mastering. Actually, I don’t want to talk about mixing and mastering techniques per se, but I want to discuss the issue of whether you should go for it on your own or pay a professional.

To many people, this might seem like a funny question. However, what is also true, is that many musicians are divided on this issue, but they take their position as granted.

To be more specific, on the one hand, we have the DIY (Do It Yourself) enthusiasts, the people who want to do everything for themselves. These can be amateurs or semi-professionals, with a great willingness to learn. This is of course a good thing. A DIY enthusiast can delve into greater depths than any one who will simply have someone else do this job for him/her.

DIY can sometimes have impressive results

Now, how great will the benefits be, depend on the circumstances. Each person has distinct capabilites. Not only that, but each musician plays a different kind of music. Musicians who deal mainly with electronic music will benefit the most from this DIY way of thinking. Electronic music contains a lot of sound design and processing. Indeed, many of the tools used in the mixing/mastering stage are used by electronic musicians for sound design, such as compressors and equalizers. For musicians which deal with acoustic instruments, this knowledge will be less relevant. Musicians who play electric instruments (such as electric guitar or bass), usually fall somewhere in between these two groups. They might use various effect pedals and cabinets, but (most of the time at least) they don’t have to know as many things on audio and sound design as an electronic musician.

By trying to mix/master your music yourself, not only will you acquire useful knowledge on sound design, but you will also acquire very useful technical knowledge. In order to do a proper work in mixing and mastering you have to know a great deal about technical issues from how audio is coded in digital form, to how speakers work. This is knowledge that will help you make better decisions when it comes to purchasing equipment. Finally, you will also have to learn about acoustics, a huge issue, to which many musicians are completely oblivious.

Room acoustics

All this knowledge acquired can give you a totally new perspective on the way you write and perceive music. However, it has its price. Going DIY requires a great deal of time, it needs money and it is limited by your wilingness to learn and your skills. Some people, for example, might love and be very capable in technical and mathematical issues, which make acoustics and digital audio theory very easy for them, but others might find this issues difficult.

Additionaly, mixing and mastering music is not an easy job. It is usually done by professionals which have many years experience, multi-thousand dollars worth of equipment and special rooms with treated acoustics. What this means is that no matter how hard you try, you will probably reach a result that will be way inferior to that of a trained professional. When you hire a professional, you know that your job will be done in a fraction of the time you would have to devote for it (casting aside the months it would take you to learn how to mix and master properly and purchasing the right equipment), and you can be sure that it will, usually, be a good work.

What a mastering studio looks like

Then, why go DIY? First, because, as I said before, you are going to learn a lot of things. Secondly, while you will have to spend a lot of money in the beginning, if you choose to mix and master all the tracks by yourself, you could end up saving a great deal of money in the end. Mixing and mastering services can be very expensive, ranging from 360 euros (the cheapest I’ve found on the internet) to well over a 1000 euros.

I personally, decided to take the DIY route at first. In the course of more than a year I learned a great deal of things I never thought I could learn, that gave me a whole new perspective on music. I mixed and mastered my two albums (Raskolnikov’s Dream "Uriel" and "Urban Legend") by myself. However, I decided that for my third album I want professional mixing and mastering services. Why is that?

When I published "Uriel", I thought that I wanted to approach the music business as an amateur. However, later I changed my mind, and I thought that I would be more happy if I could do this semi-professionaly, maybe by signing to an independent music label. Nevertheless, I decided to mix/master "Urban Legend" by myself as well. I sent out a bunch of demo copies to about 40 music companies, and got little responses which were negative.

The covers of Raskolnikov’s Dream two albums

I was discussing with a friend a few weeks ago and he told me that he felt that my production was not up to par with the standards of current electronic music. I agreet with him, and now I believe that going DIY all the way really hurt my chances at promoting my music. The truth is that while going DIY can help you learn many things, going professional is what is going to bring you listeners. Most people out there who listen to music are not audio professionals. They listen to the final result, and not the idea behind your music. When I am writing a track, I have a certain way I want it to sound. With my mixing/mastering I could not always achieve that sound. Moreover, it is very difficult to listen objectively to your own music. The mastering stage should usually be done by someone who didn’t have anything to do with writing the track.

For example, some of my tracks suffer from a weak bass sound. Due to my technical limitations and knowledge, I couldn’t see that. Because I know how I want my tracks to sound when I had finished mastering I didn’t see that as a problem, because when I was listening to my music, I was also listening to the idea of my music that I had inside my head. However, when someone else listens to my music, someone who has no special knowledge on audio engineering or music, he/she will feel that something is not right with the track. He/she will feel that other songs he has heard from similar artists sound way better. So, it is very likely that he will abandon my music because he didn’t like it. But, if the production was better, he would have liked it.

A sad fact of life

So, in order to close this post, my advice is this. If you want to become a better musician, by increasing your wealth of knowledge on audio, then go DIY if you can, at least for a short time. If you are an amateur, go DIY to save money. However, even if you go DIY, if you ever decide to make the next step and go professional, then you should pay for professional mixing and mastering services. Use the DIY approach for learning and saving money, use a pro if you want to succeed. This is what I have learned

When you are mixing you are going to need to use some EQ to make the instruments sit together. When you are boosting a frequency, try to use a wide curve. In that way, the boosting seems more natural and musical. On the other hand, when you are cutting frequencies, try to use a very steep curve.

When you are first using an EQ on an instrument use a band filter with a very high volume setting and a somewhat low Q setting, so that you can hear the various frequencies more clearly. Then boost or cut the frequencies you want.

High boost setting, low Q

A very nice way to make the instruments sit better in the mix, is to make a cut to a cerain frequency to all the instruments, when you make a boost in one of them. So for example, if you boost the 2000hz range in the guitar, then make a cut in this range to all the other instruments. Of course, this applies mainly to instruments who are on the same side of the stereo field. If you have panned two instruments hard left and right, you’ll probably not need this, as they’ll sit together anyway.

A wide boost

A steep cut