You’ve probably already heard the famous quote saying that inventors are people that have been forced to change field, because they see the never solved problem with a fresh perspective. I tend to believe it, since problem solving is often a matter of paradigm shift. Even if you know me for mastering music, first you should know that my background is based on chemical process engineering. If there is something that this field taught me, it is how to define a process, understand it in order to improve it. Sometimes this improvement simply consist to simplify its operation, reduce its cost or automate its critical steps. Well, I decided to apply this method to the mastering process…
First step: Identify the key parameters (Success criteria)
Whatever problem you’re facing, if you want to solve it, you will have to identify what are the critical aspects. It’s not everything that really matters; there is a notion of priority. For Mastering, I think that Izotope have already done a good deal of the job with its all-included bundle Ozone. Let me enumerate the components they’ve proposed us for mastering:
- Equalizer
- Multiband dynamic processing (expander, compressor and limiter)
- Mulitband Exciter (tape, tube, etc.)
- Reverb
- Stereo tool
- Maximizer
Investigating a little bit about the selection of these tools brings us back to the fundamentals. Are all these tools necessary for every case ? Certainly not. Do I add reverb to every master ? No. Okay, so…What does really matters ? To find out, let’s answer the following question: How should the perfect master sound like ? Let me guess for you:
- Well balanced
- Powerful
- Focused
- Rich
Oh, we start with 6 circumstantial aspects and came down two 4 fundamental ones. Moreover, if we speak the same english, Well-balanced refers to tonal-balance, Powerful to dynamics, Focus to stereo, and rich to Harmonic content. Can we go simpler than that ? I don’t think so. Do I play with these 4 dimensions every time I master ? Yes. We just identified the fundamental parameters:
- Tone
- Dynamics
- Stereo
- Harmonic content
Wow, that simplifies a problem, doesn’t it ?
Tags: education, How to, Mastering, Quantum-music, Understanding
Okay, this is an interesting approach… but where do you intend to go with this ?
Thanks david. Don’t worry, you will know it very soon, Just stay in touch
My approach, like you said, is about focusing on the critical parameters. In fact, it’s easy to get lost with thousands of knobs. The idea here is to make sure that everybody has the same baseline and we will evolve with it.
Chris
Well, the reasoning behind makes sense to me. I’m jusss curious about the following !!