By Dwight Brown
Mastering enhances the OVERALL sound of your music. Professional mastering can give your tunes the same high-quality sound that big labels get for their recordings, priming them for downloads, streaming, radio play…
According to Jeff Strong’s guide Home Recording For Musicians For Dummies, which has a chapter called Hiring a Professional Mastering Engineer, there are some key tips to making the experience of hiring a professional mastering studio/engineer a successful venture.
1. Ask around for referrals.
If you know local bands or musicians whose music you like and whose CD sounds great, ask them who mastered their music. Call local studios and find out who they recommend for mastering in your area.
2. Listen to other recordings that the mastering house has done in a style of music similar to yours.
If you like what the prospective mastering engineer has done on other people’s music, you’ll probably like what he/she does with yours.
3. Clarify the fee for your project before you start working together.
Most mastering engineers charge by the hour and can give you a pretty good estimate of how many hours they will need to do the job.
4. If you don’t like the way the engineer mastered your music, you’ll probably be charged an hourly rate to redo it.
Be sure to discuss this possibility before you start the project so there are no surprises.
5. Many mastering engineers can do a demo of one or two of your songs.
This way you can hear what kind of job they can do to your music before you hire them. Ask whether the mastering engineer you’re interested in offers this service.
This can save both you and the engineer a lot of time and energy if he or she isn’t right for the job. It can also help you determine whether your mixed music is ready for mastering.
There are seasoned professionals who can take the sound of your stereo mixes to another level. They do it for Grammy-winning, multi-platinum artists. Why shouldn’t you and your music get the same high-quality service? Go for it.
Read the full Hiring a Professional Mastering Engineer article.
Check out AfterMaster Audio Labs.
TuneCore is proud to work with AfterMaster Audio Labs to connect independent artists with top engineers in order to master their new music! AfterMaster helps artists to mix and master their music quickly and confidentially. Learn more about this service!
Tags: engineer featuring mastering mixing recording universal mastering studios