Mastering puts the polish on your album. It's kind of like shining your shoes. Or as I like to think of it - a sheer coat of nail polish. It just smooths everything out - so that each of the songs are comparable in volume & the bass isn't blaring in one song and inaudible in another. They help hide any clicks, pops or "s" sounds, and just balance everything so it feels like one cohesive piece of art. Sounds nice right?
For the more technical reader - mastering is using equalization and compression to prepare media to be played on a variety of playback devices. Beyond that, mastering engineers use limiting, noise reduction, leveling and more to hide imperfections in the audio mixes. If the album was digitally recorded (as mine was), some mastering engineers run the record through analog, to add warmth to the music. Song sequencing, gaps and fading can be used to create the ultimate "Master Copy" from which all of the subsequent records will be made. Exciting, huh?
It took Justin Weis (Trakworx) just over six hours to master my entire album. Adam, Niall & I sat quietly in the back of the room, while he bounced around between 2-second clips of each song. It was like watching someone with an extremely short attention span listen to an entire album in disorganized tiny bits. But there was much, much more going on inside Justin's head. This guy has mastered albums for all kinds of amazing artists, including one of my & Niall's favorites - Matt Nathanson. We sounded like groupies asking Justin "what's Matt like... like to work with?" *insert giggle. So I had ultimate faith in his abilities. Despite the fact that I had no idea what he was doing 90 percent of the time, the final product sounds AWESOME! Friggin' awesome. I can't wait for you to hear it. Coated in nail polish & ready to go....
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