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On Jan 7, 2008 4:26 PM, Krispen Hartung <khartung@cableone.net> wrote: > ...mastering and mixing ... All aspects of mastering and mixing that you bring up are true. Learning to do it well is very much a question about making the mistakes, going back to learn about it and remaking it in the correct way. What makes this learning process difficult, when working all by yourself, is that it may be almost impossible to single out "THE mistake you did when mixing/mastering" because so many parameters interact all the time in a dynamical way. If applying a scientific approach, by measuring frequencies etc, you will soon get too much data at hand. So therefore, I recommend a Trial And Error method for learning mixing and mastering. Also, no media for recorded sound can compete with the human hearing. We can hear and pick out a soft sound even against a background of loud noise. That's because hearing is stereophonic and the brain analyses phase correlation in micro seconds - and DIRECTION appears almost 3D to us when hearing live. That simply doesn't make it onto a left/right recording. So the whole process of making a recording sound natural and musically compelling is not about recording the true sound but rather about cheating the listening ear to interpret the recording in an emotional way similar to the real hearing experience. So to start with the bass frequencies; you are correct that it is a good thing to roll them off. But if you do this at the mastering stage you can not correct mistakes in keeping too prominent bass frequencies on the single original tracks. Over the years, as I have been focusing more on my own music instead of mixing other people's recordings, I have gravitated towards cutting out bass etc as early as possible. This is because then it won't interfere with how frequencies mix and get squashed by each other. The problem with bass is that it brings energy that affects the sounding music even if you don't hear that bass particularly well. So what you have to do is listening to a bass track, mix it with a less bassy track and then perform a "test mastering" of the resulting mix. Work on the mastering file with multiband compression and some graphical Frequncy Analizer to learn what frequencies are more or less prominent and how changes i one frequency affects what happens, dynamically, in a different band. Then go back to the source material/tracks and EQ them before performing a new "test mastering" and vice versa. Repeat and learn, repeat and learn.... "Appeared Loudness" is the term for describing a recording mixed and mastered in a way that makes it possible to maximize and achieve a clear definition of most frequency bands. It's then important that no specific band brings too much energy, because that will set the upper ceiling for how much you can blow it up. To find the golden balance when blowing it up balances original musical dynamics is dependent on musical style, fashion and personal taste. Since you are interested in an electric orchestra guitar jazz sound you should know that such a sound is very difficult to make stand out, as in "appeared loudness", just because it brings many frequencies with much "not easily heard" frequencies. Here comes the art of orchestration into the picture. When working with that powerfully sounding instruments, not everything you are able to play is possible to record - unless cutting a bit out. So one might as well think about arranging the music in a way that it may sound loud when finally mixed and fixed on a medium. But, on the other hand, "the art of recording" is very much about cheating the human ear by presenting colors that stand out against each other. Try thinking about mixing and sound design as you relate to tuning up your guitar! The cleanest and crispiest sound is achieved when the strings are perfectly tuned. But a guitar may sound more interesting if the strings are just a little bit out of tune. This happens because "infra tones" and "overtones" then appear more. The same inter dependency is to be found, and manipulated, between different channels of sound that are to be merged into a mix. What I'm getting at is that you may leave certain frequencies on different sounding material to "compete" and create "diabolic infra tones" just as a "spice" in the emotional side of the music/sound. The more frequency clashing is going on in a mix the more "interesting" it sounds - on a good system. But when played back on a bad system it all becomes elephant pooh. So you may use some trial and error to learn the proper way of feeding the elephant. -- Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.boysen.se (Swedish) www.looproom.com (international)