Part 16 - Finishing or Mastering-for-cheapskates
Hang in there buddy, we're nearly at the end, but I have had to split this into two parts. We'll get to copyright and distribution next time. Mastering On the wider internet there is a fair bit of nonsense spoken about what mastering is and why it is, or isn't, important. Let's unpack some of that now (in a somewhat simplified way) so we can get to our goal of finishing and releasing our song. In the Good* Old Days (TM) a mastering engineer's primary job was to take a recording and make sure it was in good shape to be transferred to the physical medium it was going to be distributed on. With vinyl this meant understanding a great deal about the physical limitations of the medium and how that affected things like low frequency extension, loudness and even where on the record certain songs needed to go because of the difference between the edge and centre of the record. They would also, therefore, need to understand how to work within these limitations without ruinin...