So it’s actually been a year since I started the tracks for the Bluevibe studio presents EP and they’re finally ready to go off to get mastered. This EP has been a bit of a labour of love for me and while I actually have another 2 EP’s more or less completed I’m really excited to be finally getting these tracks out. It didn’t actually seem like a year until Lisa Preston pointed it out, I guess that’s because I’ve had a baby and started a new job since this project kicked off and the months have just flown by, that’s babies for ya!
In my previous post “Bluevibe studio presents – finishing the tracks for the EP” I outlined 7 stages in the release and I’m now up to stages 3 and 4, funding and mastering. I’m still working on funding options so I’ll run through the mastering this week and get on to funding the EP next time.
My good friend Kerry Adams from The Proof will be taking care of the mastering duties, he’s got a wicked ear and works in quite a few different genres so he seems like the perfect man for the job. The EP consists of 2 main tracks with 2 remixes of each track plus 2 bonus tracks which have previously only been available in demo form. I mix on Genelec monitors and although they are excellent my mixes sometimes don’t translate too well when played on other systems. This makes the mastering stage even more important for me and is the key reason why it’s great to have a a mastering engineer work with each track to make sure they sit together on the EP and translate across different playback systems. I would always recommend you get someone else to master your tracks but if you don’t have any budget and really want to DIY then here’s a list of some great tutorials for you to check out.
Next week funding!!! It’s the big one for me as I’m basically an unknown independent artist doing his first full EP release so I’m going to have to get creative with the cash if I’m going to make the most of it!!
- The secret of the mastering engineer – Bob Katz – mastering manual from the TC electronics finalizer written by Bob Katz, well worth a read.
- Mastering with plugins from Har-bal.com – complete in the box tutorial.
- The elements of home studio audio mastering – nice simple tutorial over at tweakheadz using some of the excellent uad plugins.
- Mastering masters – Mastering article from the excellent Sound on Sound website.