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Master Your Original Material Online

Online mixing and mastering gives both amateur and indie musicians the chance to enhance their music tothe fullest. The first step toward getting your final compositions is the same: find the best recording studiothat you can. The quality of the final product will depend mainly on the quality of the captured audio.

However, the best recording studio that you can afford may not be the most expensive location available.You can still obtain an excellent finished product with a reasonable level of recording studio. Some ambitiousmusicians even create the studio in their garages or basements. They use acoustic material to provide theright environment, and then rent the otherwise expensive equipment to use during the weeks of theirrecording sessions.

During recording, be sure to use tracks effectively. Many garage bands for instance, like the raw sound andthe interaction that can only come from performing together. This strategy only calls for a single track.However, other musicians find they can generate improved control and quality by recording with multipletracks. One strategy is to begin with the drums or percussive instruments and record the first track. Then theremaining instruments are recorded to a second track. The musicians playing instruments listen to theoriginal drum track on high quality headphones. Finally, the vocals are recorded to a third track. The vocalistwill be listening to a mix of the first two tracks as she performs. If there is harmony, some musicians preferto record each voice to its own track.

Using tracks effectively is an excellent way to optimize the final product. For instance, if there is a mistake inthe performance and recording of any track, it does not require the entire group to start from scratch. As anexample, let us say that the artist for each track makes three mistakes, requiring three retakes. Then eachartist does not need to perform more than those three retakes. However, if there are not four different tracksfor the artists, each artist will have to perform 12 retakes. The increased stress of the retakes often reducesthe overall quality of the later performances. It is also extremely difficult for an artist to nail their track, andthen have to discard the work because of a mistake from another performer. Judiciously choosing a matchbetween performers and tracks alleviates many of these types of problems.

Once the tracks are recorded, they are ready to be mastered. Many people do not completely understand theconcept of mastering. They will go to their music stores and buy their favorite albums that have been digitallyremastered in expectation of some elevation in quality. However, a recording artist needs to have a betterunderstanding of how it works. From one perspective, remastering selectively raises the amplitude of arecording in a segment-by-segment fashion. This is done to take advantage of the full dynamic range of therecording medium, without exceeding that range. The result of this process is tracks that are more pleasingto the ear than the originals. It is difficult to describe in words exactly the difference between the remasteredmaterial and the original. However, it is very simple to listen to the processed and the unprocessed tracks,and the difference and the improvement is obvious.

The benefit to the recording artist is that now they can take the recorded tracks and use to generate theirfinal product. At that point, they are ready to publish to YouTube, an independent distribution channel, or ademo CD for professional distribution agency.

Document Tags: best audio mastering, best audio mixing, online mastering studio, recordingstudio, online recording studio