NYMMEP Explore the Beat Wrap-up: The Mystery of Mixing & Mastering
Explore the Beat is part of New York Music Month Extended Play, an initiative of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
For our latest workshop, we had Jess Dilday, aka PlayPlay, shed light on some of the mysteries of mixing and mastering music. Here’s our recap, as well as some resources!
A Recap
In this workshop, PlayPlay outlined the main considerations when mixing and mastering your music.
-The difference between Mixing and Mastering, and why getting the mix right is super important
-Gain Staging
-EQ’ing and The Frequency Spectrum
-Compression
-Panning and Stereo Field
-Mastering and why you should have someone else do it
-Free and cheap plugins for mixing
-Plugin options for Mastering
Additional Resources for Mixing
Voxengo SPAN Free frequency spectrum analyzer
TAL-Chorus LX - Free chorus plugin
TAL - Reverb - Free reverb plugin
FLUX Stereotool v3 - Free Stereo Imaging And Analysis Tool
CLA-2A Stereo - Compressor around $25 - PlayPlay’s favorite for bringing vocals into the front of a mix.
Additional Resources for Mastering
Izotope’s Ozone 9 (Rent-to-own through Splice) - This is what PlayPlay uses for mastering other people’s music, in combination with other plugins. Splice has a rent-to-own program so you don’t have to pay the full cost up front and you can try it out.
Youlean Meter - If you master other people’s music (or your own), you will want to measure perceived loudness and get it up to industry standards. This app has a free and paid version that also measures dynamics.
If you don’t want to pay someone to master your music, here are some other options:
LANDR Mastering - Lots of different options here; great mastering for people on a budget
Soundcloud Mastering - New
Also if you use Soundtrap, their export includes mixing and mastering by default - the downside is that you can’t control any of the settings, but the upside is free mixing and mastering!