Making rhythms, melodies and recordings goes well, but when it comes time to publish my songs I am bit lost with mastering.
How can I make these songs louder and still hear singing and other instruments nicely ? And what to do to bassline to make it strong ?
What is Your tricks to manage mastering and what You can suggest for my tunes ??
I ask this because I know that it is wise to listen your tune in many places and from many speakers. But I currently only have AKG K240 MKII headphones. So I thought why not ask at the forums to get all of yours speakers opinions
So feel free to edit these files and share them back here if U have any ideas to help me out. You can also send files straight to me (raegae(at)raegae.org) so I can upload them on raegae.org, to guarantee that they stay in this topic.
If u are on linux you can reveal original pitchshift-animations by unmuting ‘HiBongo’-track and muting ‘HiBongoRendered’-track.
just had a quick listen, only to the Siela track. in general, i think it already sounds pretty good. I would say a couple things:
The Bass2 compressor is blown out and clipping. I brought down the makeup gain on that just as a quick fix to listen further…
I don’t think the stereo expansion is helping the basses at all (the low end really comes through better with them off, maybe could be phase corrected if you really want stereo on the bass)
I like the Bass2 part, but it’s really competing for frequency when it’s playing at the same time as Bass1. I would play them at different times, or put a signal follower on Bass2 and have it drop the gain on bass1 when it’s playing. Bass2 just doesn’t come through well, and it needs some space somehow…
You should group your tracks to some main groups(drums, bass, synths, vocals,…) and remove or reduce bass frequency on groups, where the bass is not needed. Your bass is mainly playing around 70hz, there should be enough space for it. I really recommend the spectrum analyzer in renoise, btw. one of my favorite features. You can see the frequencies and can do better cleanup with HP / LP filters.
The stereo expander reduce the impact of the bass. You can clearly hear this with good headphones. You should only increase the stereo width on higher frequencies on the bass.
played around with the raegg thing for a sec, a lot of this stuff comes down to taste imo (levelling/eq/fx/spatial placement), but I noticed a few things that could help clarity. Like using the kick track to duck the volume of the bass track, eq’ing of samples using the ‘fx button’ in the sample editor and or eq device -> for example removing the low freqs in the percussion/snare samples. Put the sounds in a space, panning the tracks differently and maybe adding slight reverb settings.
(As you may notice, I don’t use the mixers ‘post’ level options and have made certain sounds mono, like the vocals…and I’ve added some fx :))
edit; with my own tracks I would render such song when finished and use a wave-editor for post processing the wave file. Maybe add more effects and eventually use a multiband compressor / limiter combo to boost up the volume.
Going to soon rerelease these tunes with advices included.
… but I noticed a few things that could help clarity.
Yeah, that is the word I am after: clarity. I want to make tunes bit louder but not to take too much part into “loudness war”.
I like Renoise so much because you kind of a master things all along when creating your song. But sometimes I miss deeper understanding of how to achieve clarity in your mix.
The point when I notice that my tunes might be quieter than everyone others is during ‘Mutant Breaks’ competition.
So here is my upcoming days homeworks:
Finally listen to those Mutant Breaks #8 xrns files, because there was so many good tunes. And especially tunes that had clarity and strong basslines and things that I am after in mastering.
It also might be worth mentioning the use of reference tracks mastered by professionals could be helpful when you’re trying to achieve a certain sound/style.
investigating whats going on …