Mastering a Pop/Rock Song with Ian Shepherd - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

Today, we're moving into the final episode of our free mixing Pop/Rock series:

Mastering A Pop/Rock Song.

I hope this tutorial helps you take your mastering skills to the next level. Please leave a bunch of comments and questions below. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us Ian!

Produce Like A Pro is a website which features great tips to help the beginning recordist make incredible sounding home recordings on a budget.

[Producelikeapro]

Hi Friends, this is the final episode of our free mixing Pop/Rock series:

Mastering A Pop/Rock Song.

My good friend, mastering engineer and online mentor Ian Shepherd from productionadvice.com teaches you how to give your mix the final polish and make it sound great throughout all popular platforms: Itunes, Youtube and the Radio.
The best part? Ian shows you how to master a this song using plugins only, so you can achieve the same results in your home studio!

Topics covered in this tutorial:

Plugin choices
How to prevent Inter-Sample-Clipping to avoid distortion when converting your master to mp3.
EQ/ Mid-side EQ to shape the tone of individual instruments on a stereo file.
Compression & Multiband Compression to achieve a tight and powerful low end.
Order of mastering stages (Using EQ and Compression in conjunction to achieve the desired result)
How to achieve maximum results with minimal processing
Ideal loudness to strive for when mastering for Itunes and Youtube
Level Automation to increase the impact of your choruses.
I hope this tutorial helps you take your mastering skills to the next level. Please leave a bunch of comments and questions below. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us Ian!

Have a marvellous time recording and mixing, many thanks Warren

[bojkebojke]

I did exactly what you've done in this video, and suddenly my master sound 3 times better.Ian thank you so much!

[sansaratech]

I'm struck by how subtle the EQ application actually is when you do the loudness matched comparisons. People might debate the overall approach, or individual tactics, but the end result speaks for itself. Very conservative application of the tools yields dramatic differences between the raw mix and the finished product. It's not only ear candy you're after, it's also crucial for preventing fatigue on the part of the listener, who might be listening to an entire album, or an hour or so of pop radio. Poorly mastered or unmastered music, particularly pop/rock, can be very fatiguing to listen to after just a short while.

[Syklonus]

Ian's one of the few guys I trust, mostly becasue he doesn't seem to give a fuck about how loud he can get the master - just how good he can get it. I used to agonise over reference mixes and how I couldn't get my songs as loud, but now my masters are maybe 4-5dB quieter than commercial mixes, but they sound good and that's all that matters.

[janprzepiorkowski]

I love how you can see Graham's "Never Satisfied EP" in the waveform preview.

[wasabifox]

Ian has excellent ears and mastering technique...what an informative video! Thank you.

[YTbeber]

Thanks a lot for this video! At 20:24 this "onion-like methodology" is perfect since it is used to enhance the qualities of the song's unique character (through strings, voice, snare, volume, toms...). And it is good to remind us that a third party perspective is useful in creation (at 33:00). Really a pleasure to see your process going along. There is love respect and taste before any technology. Thanks to Ian for sharing his experience (i have seen many of his videos) and to Warren too for sharing his own and other's also. Thanks to both of you we can (might?) improve the sound quality of our music so to make people feel way better. Wish you the best to both of you!

[peteconz]

Great bit at beginning for creating context of mastering, and the rest makes entire mental process and strategy more human and accessible. Great video.

[JimijaymesProductions]

In the A/B I preferred the unmastered version because it had more clarity in the high end (less low mids) but I feel like over the course of an album that tone would be fatiguing and irritatating so the mastered version with its better balnce and more controlled high mids would work better.. Awesome video by the way great to see mastering tutorial by a professional mastering engineer who is know NOT to just try to get things loud. Thanks Ian and Warren very informative.

[xhanamusic]

currently taking Ian's home mastering masterclass and it's very insightful and interesting that he's switched up the plugins he used then and now in the video, although still keeping intact with the values and concept he really recommends for mastering. Thanks Warren! (And Ian!)

[TonjuwelenDeAgentur]

Really interesting. Great Video. Thanks for letting us being part of the progress. Thumbs up :)

[robburgess]

Wow, this is like chocolate and peanut butter together! Awesome!

[vksolanki]

You all realize that about 88% of Warren and Ian's credibility come from their English accent, right? 😉

[josephscalone]

for someone like me who has a small bed room studio, i love video's like this, thanks so much the tips and tricks and taking the time to share. \m/

[niklassilen]

About the TC multiband vs Pro-MB: Short answer, no, you can not get that kind of "spanky attack" on pro-mb. The reason is that Pro-MB is much more transparent. It's actually highly program dependent which the TC is not. Especially the attack is really "effect like" on the TC multiband whereas on Pro-MB they aimed for ultimate transparency so it's very difficult to get that kind of spank that you have going on with the TC.

[heleomopi]

great video, it show the quality of human being u are, professionalism and open to share your journey with others, specially in the mystic world of audio mastering. cheers.

[noisesoundtonevibe]

Great info here, I particularly like how we are presented the whole process in the order that it was implemented (the onion layers). Thanks Ian and Warren!

[AritraDasgupta]

Hey Warren, love your videos. Just wanted to make a request. Don't know if it will be possible to pull of for you, but, still giving it a go by asking you.


Would it be possible to put together a tutorial about album mastering? Workflow and how every track of an album is mastered to give it a cohesive sound? Would be super helpful! Thanks for your content!!!

[Catandbeats]

The two of you collaborating is brilliant!

[ambientthinker]

I'm a noob compared to this guy, but with the EQing sections, I thought it would be more efficient to just narrow the Q's more and be subtle so you're just tweaking specific elements, rather than using such wide Q's, then having to compensate for their overall effect. I felt the wide 3dB EQ on the entire low end made the mix muddier.
I guess it's all about personal preference AND really important is that every single listening situation is different from the next (eg. headphones, speakers, rooms, background ear tinnitus, ear wax.... you name it!!!) so the subjectivity on this stuff is off the charts!
Even with my own mixing I might mix it differently after a few days - what's changed? Maybe I've just listened to something prior that colours my perception or audio desires!
I might hear a tune with a cracking snare, which has me thinking mine sounds lame; or a tight kick-ass bass and now mine sounds wooly - ahhh! So many variables :o