Mastering Session: Grime, Closer and Industry Standards

Hello! Welcome to my first blog dedicated to Mastering! I will be going over the two tracks that both Callum and Myself Mastered, one of the tracks in which I was acting as Lead Engineer. I will be covering the techniques that we used to Master these tracks as well as the Aesthetic choices being the process and finally comparing the master we did for Mufaro's Closer to that of our reference track. Firstly, the Lo-Fi banger by Sean Gannon!

Sean Gannon - Grime Master

The first track that we tackled in this session was by a good friend of mine, Sean Gannon. Sean has been making Lo-Fi grime and electronica for years now and as I started to learn about mastering, I opened my doors to help him out with a project. That resulted in me receiving a random Facebook message with a Google Drive link to the track titled "15 Jun 1027 Mix 2 SG.wav". The track was a set with a bit depth of 24 and a sample rate of 44.1kHz.

First thing Callum and Myself noticed while critically listening to the track, was the shrill on the high end and lack of warmth to the stereo field. We realised that most of the shrill was coming from the stereo shaker / Hihat, so to combat both of these issues, we used the Mid Side technique to fix up those issues we were hearing in the sides. Mid Side is a process of separating the Mono information from the Stereo, this allows you to manipulate and effect the side information of a track without effecting the center information (Which is usually Vocals / Bass / Kick Drum).

(How To) Mid Side?

To set up Mid Side routing within pro-tools, you need to create 4 Stereo Aux Tracks. These tracks will be named the following; Mid, Left, Right, Sides.

First step is to send the track through a Stereo Bus, rename it "MidSide". This Bus will become the input on three of the following AUX tracks; Mid, Left, Right. This process will then have the main track sent to the AUX channels for us to then manipulate to create Mid Side

Second Step is Panning each track. The Mid track needs to be panned to center on both channels. Following by "Left" to be panned completely to the left, and "Right" to right. This will then send each track to the relative space in he stereo field.

Third and Final Step, Phase Relationship. To allow Mid Side to work, each side channel needs to be at 180 degree phase to each other to allow only that specific sides information to come through. To do so, you will need to apply a Multi-Mono insert to both Left and Right AUX tracks. It is important that you use a Multi Mono insert as you will need to unlink the separate stereo channels channel. Use a Insert such as Trim due to how light weight the plugin is and that it also has a Phase invert button. You will need to unlink each track and set the oposite channel to phase (Left, set right channel to phase invert, etc). This will put each AUX at 180 Degree phase, to check this, mute the mono track and monitor both Stereo Aux Tracks in Mono.

Last Step, Summing. You will want to send both the Left and Right AUX tracks into the Sides AUX via a BUS. Then both the Mid and Sides track's need to be routed to a final Audio Track to be printed, this track will need to be set to input monitoring.

Processing, What Did We Do?

First thing, we found the frequency where the shrill sat in the Sides AUX and dropped the dB level by 3. We then proceeded to cut all information below 150Hz to allow a cleaner sound through bass heavy systems (or a 2.1 with a Subwoofer). We found that we also needed to boost the mid range of the sides a little, so at around 300Hz we boosted by 1dB.

We also wanted the track to be a bit more warmer then the EQ we just ran through, so we used the UAD 1073 Neve EQ Emulator to give it some warmth and saturation. Boosting at around 600Hz we found it came through the mix a lot warmer and with more presence. The Side information had enough to it that the Stereo field sounded full and rich. The only thing left was treating the Mid with EQ, which was needing minimal, a boost at 700Hz and cut at 500Hz really brought out the guitar and gave it the space it was needing in the mix.

We then felt as though the track needed to be sent through a compressor and final EQ to clean it up and give it the level boost we wanted, also because the track was already heavily compressed and really well balanced, we felt like the final compression and Limiting was all it needed. We ran the Sum through the Dangerous Bax Mastering EQ then the FC Mastering Compressor. We cut below 36Hz on the Bax and above 18Khz, boosting the Lows by 1dB at 300 and cutting the Highs by .5dB at 7kHz. This was done to give the track that booming bass we wanted with the Grime track and cut a bit more of that shrill Lo-Fi sound in the mix. The compressor was set to an average attack time with the same release with little ratio and mostly using the gain out to boost the signal. We received a steady .5 Db reduction on the Kick Drum.

To give the track the final boost, Callum said we should use the Avid Interface as a Limiter through internal routing, I went along for the ride. Callum had showed me that by sending the sum into an Audio track (was important to be an audio track so that the signal was being sent through the channel) you were able to boost that single till it was clipping and send that into a final Aux with a limiter. When doing so you rely on your ears, you boost the signal till it sounds good, ignoring the clipping, you want the signal to still be clear and crisp. Though I am not too certain to the exact science behind the process, The digital clipping only because audible after a certain point, so by pushing the signal until just before that distortion, you are able to re-route it into a limiter and have the audio still clear and present without killing the dynamic range of the track.

This process was a bit more tricky then seamed to get the desired result, due to the Lo-Fi nature of the track, Callum and Myself ended up distorting the Mid Range through multi-band compressing without realising. We ended up having to re-master the track after Sean had contacted me within the session pointing out the distortion. We had also turned Pro-Tools Heat on as our Lecturer Stephane had informed us on it, we were unaware of the effect it would have to the track overall (which was massive when mastering) but our intentions were good due to just seeking some natural saturation we felt the track needed. We found that using the 1073 was enough to give the track the saturation we needed on the second revision, though this being our first mastering session, I was quite happy encountering this problem! I feel as though this is the time for its to be making mistakes, so it is good for us to experiment and say "yeah, lets just use heat cause why not". Sean has since said that he likes the master, though he will need to sit on it for a while to give some final feedback.

In the end we reached a total of -13.7 LUFS, which we are quite happy about. Though it could have gotten louder, we didn't want to risk the prospects of distortion or ruining the dynamic range as it was already so compressed.

Mufaro - Closer

The Mastering Session for our lead single in the Mufaro EP Project was a bit weird. Callum had said that when we entered the room we wouldn't open up the session at all to adjust anything and that the mix was good so we should leave it as is and just master. But within seconds we realised, the shaker was so loud in the mix and that there was nothing we could do about it. We started to notice more and more problems with the Mix while listening which started to stray us away from the goal at mind, but Callum insisted that we wouldn't do anything to the mix. We began discussing the idea of opening up the folder to just give it a quick adjustment to the shaker level, he would not budge. Callum insisted that if we opened up the file, we would continually mess with the levels, I insisted that it wasn't the case, that the only issue we should focus on was the shaker. In the end, Callum trusted me and I proceeded to adjust the level of the shaker, dropping the level down by 5dB.

After we solved that, we found that there wasn't too much in the way of EQ we needed to do to clean up the mix. Putting a simple boost at 11kHz we gave the vocals a bit more presence in the mix. Then, we opted to run the track through the Bax, into the FC and through the Manley set as a limiter to get the level we wanted. We cut at 56dB on the Bax and at 18kHz to clean up the signal, cutting the Lows by 1 dB and Boosting the Highs by 1dB gave us the tight low end we wanted and clean open high end. The FC Compressor was again barely touching the track but with a sharper attack, this brought forward a lot of the percussion and gave it a bit more "bounce" and "groove". We ended up setting the Manley to a very subtle Limit but boosted both the FC and Manley to give the track more level. Finally we sent it through the Interface Limiting as we did for the track before, we reached a LUFS level of - 10.7.

As the final Mix and Master to Closer, I feel incredibly happy with the result. Callum and Myself really made something of a high quality standard, something that I hadn't done before this trimester with working with an artist. The Team Work myself and Callum have is really positive, just being able to trust each others judgement like we have in this past session has been a real plus. Though there is a bit of hesitation as we are very confident in our own capability and knowledge, we are open to looking past that, which I think is a very integral part to team work and something that we are doing very well. To talk more about the master, I will be comparing it to the Industry Standard that Mufaro has set through his reference track, "Jika" by Mi Casa

Comparison to Industry Standards:

When comparing out final Master of Closer to "Jika", I feel like we have come close to the industry equivalent. First thing I can hear between both tracks is the composition and clarity, Closer is a dense track with a lot of instrumentation playing throughout the track, constant busy percussion lines, deep bass and melodic keys play throughout the track, Unlike "Jika" which is clean, clear, and electronic. In further inspection, we seem to ahve fit the balance nearly perfectly, in both tracks we can hear the vocal's down the centre for the verse and stereo for the chorus, with wide piano and percussion parts that sit seemingly level to the vocals without getting in their way. The Bass Drum is booming and the chords are lush, I think the main different could be the composition and stylistic choices behind both tracks. Jika is clearly a produced track with electronic instruments playing in a very dynamic composition with clarity and crisp audio. Closer is nearly the opposite, its a full band, playing natural tempo without a click track in a very dynamic and busy manner. I think Callum and myself managed to give the track a lot of clarity through the Mix and Master, but I don't think it holds up to the clean pop sound that the reference holds. On one hand, Callum and Myself are wanting to preserve the Live and Natural sound of the band due to how infatuated we are with the group, on the other it doesn't match the clean pop styles that the reference has.

I think that where we can improve is spending more time in the recording process to get the right sound we want, as clean as possible. Most of the issues I can see between the Industry standard and our Master is the clarity and tightness to the tracks. Something that we should be more focused on achieving, though we don't want to go for a pop sound, having a track like Jika which is clean and tight broadens the horizons of the production and gives off a more professional feeling to the track. I feel as though Coming into the final mixes of the EP we will find that our other tracks sound better then closer just because of the learning experience we have had. But in the end, to my ears Closer sounds good, it isn't a perfect industry product but it is something to be proud of, a stepping stone to an industry ready product.

#Mastering #Session #ProTools #S6