Want to make memories? Releasing chart-topping, ground-breaking music hits isn’t as easy as pressing the record button. Tons of thought, preparation, and professional mixing and mastering services come together to produce a song that embodies the artist’s and producer’s visions. Here are mixing and mastering tips you can apply to create international-sounding hits for your latest audio project.

Mixing

Mixing is the first step of the post-production process. It combines all the recorded tracks to produce a coherent song. The mixer uses software to connect these recordings and adjust their frequencies to make the necessary sounds stand out.

Professional mixing and mastering services don’t just combine tracks and finetune songs. They also go into other sonic factors. For mixing, don’t forget to do the following:
Automating: Audio technicians use this to guarantee sound effects and features are audible each time a recording is played back.

● EQ’ing: This technique equalizes the sound of each track. During the early mixing process, the combination of separate recordings causes a muddy sound due to these tracks being layered on top of each other. EQing removes this problem by rendering instrument and vocal tracks to their correct frequencies, such as lows, highs, and mids. The result is a clearer- and more accurate-sounding song.

● Effects: EQing does produce a clear song but retains the one-dimensional aspect of the mixing process since all recordings were just layered on top of each other. This is when mixers add effects such as reverb, echo, delay, and compression to add dynamics and bring the song to life.

● Panning: Rounding up the mixing process is panning, a method where mixers place a particular recorded track that will sound off on the stereo spectrum (left or right). This is why you hear different instruments on one earphone, even when the pair are playing the same song.
Mastering

The last step of professional mixing and mastering services involves fine tuning the mixed song through mastering. If mixing combined recordings to produce a fully-fledged track, mastering scrutinizes the rough draft for the sound to come out.

When mastering, do not skip on the following:

● EQing: Audio engineers listen to a track more meticulously, noting if or when there are still unequal levels per instrument. That means every voice, strum, drum stroke, bass line, or tambourine hit is scrutinized, ensuring they are at the correct levels. If they feel even the slightest note or effect is off, they will return the song to the mixers for further editing.

EQ’ing also maintains the tonal unity of each song in an album, rendering them distinguishable just by listening.

● Multi-Platform Quality Control: Mastering doesn’t just guarantee an artist’s song sounds good; it ensures high-quality sound across various release platforms and devices: TV, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Apple Music, computers, handheld devices, computer speakers, Bluetooth speakers, etc.

● Pre-Launch Quality Control Listen: This is the last review before releasing the song or album. Once the previous mastering steps are accomplished, re-mixed, and re-drafted for the audio engineers, they give the single or album one final listen through high-quality headphones and speakers to check for unbalanced sounds or dissonant tones.

If audio engineers still spot audio imperfections, they will note them down and send the entire project back to the mixing team for further automating, EQ’ing, or panning just to balance everything out. If everything is perfect, the song or album is ready for release.

Before You Record

We live in a digital world, so be sure you have the proper mixing and mastering tools for the job. Since no digital audio workstation (DAW) solves all recording problems, we’ll leave this one up to you. Find which one works best and remember these tips to produce a hit-making, chart-topping song or album!

For professional mixing and mastering services, reach out to ADG Mastering! We’re an online mixing and mastering service that strives to help independent artists worldwide by giving them services comparable to artists under a major record label. Listen to our online samples to get a feel of our work!

Photo by Kai Mason