Mastering Music at Home | 
|  | | | Title: | Mastering Music at Home | | Author: | Mitch Gallagher | | Publisher: | Artistpro | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 12 October, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1598633929 / 9781598633924 | | List Price: | $34.99 | | You Save: | $11.90 | | Amazon Price: | $23.09 | |
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Product Description
It wasn’t all that many years ago that almost every serious audio recording session took place in a commercial studio and was performed by professional engineers and producers using highly specialized, extremely expensive equipment. But those days are long gone. Today, artists of all levels–from amateur to mega-star–are working in their home and project studios, sometimes with an engineer and/or a producer to help them and sometimes without, doing the producing and recording themselves. Using a personal computer and today’s affordable software and hardware tools, it’s possible to capture professional level tracks and create perfectly balanced mixes right from the comfort of your own home without spending a fortune. But, there’s one part of the process of creating music at home that has eluded many home recordists. The final stage that puts the polished sheen on the mix. The step that allows homemade productions to better compete with those coming out of multimillion-dollar commercial recording facilities. The final preparation that will ready the music for release on CD or over the Internet. This step is called mastering. Mastering Music at Home is for any home or project studio owner or operator. It's for musicians and engineers who can't afford to pay a professional mastering engineer thousands of dollars to master their music, but who still want to get professional-level results when releasing their songs to the web or on CD. After an overview of mastering and the gear required, the book goes on to cover acoustic considerations, problem solving, distribution, and much, much more. Throughout the book, audio professionals provide additional “in the trenches” case studies on how they approach the art of mastering. The book's companion CD-ROM includes numerous real-world music examples to help you work through the book's tutorials. This is the only guide you’ll ever need to take your home recordings to the next level.
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Customer Reviews:
• A Must-have For All Home Studios! 20 April, 2008
Whether you want to learn to master your home recordings or not, this book is a must-have for any home studio. The information in this book will give you a good understanding of just what mastering entails which can translate into you making better recordings in the first place, so you would benefit even if you ultimately have your recordings professionally mastered. However, the focus of the book is to help you to learn to master recordings yourself!
Author Mitch Gallagher manages to demystify much of the art of mastering. He has a knack for presenting technical information into laymen's terms in a way that does not water it down. His writing style keeps it interesting too, which is a neat trick for so technical a subject.
There are interviews with pro mastering folks loaded with insight and tips. But not only do you get to read about these tips and techniques, but you get to hear them to! The included CD contains samples of music these folks have mastered. Even more cool, the pre-mastered songs are also included, so you can hear the difference. Plus, you can try to master these tracks yourself and see how close to the pro masters you can get them to sound!
There's even a section on Separations Mastering, where groups of tracks (e.g. guitars, bass, drums, vocals) are mastered individually before summing. It's a very flexible technique, and Mitch interviews the premier pioneer of it, John Vestman. The CD contains a sample of a track done with Separations Mastering along with the raw separation tracks for you to practice on.
Regardless if you want to master tracks at home or just improve your home recordings, this book will give you a great understanding of what mastering is, and what can and can't be done with it. And it manages to do this in an easy-to-read style that is both informative and enjoyable.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2M2VE58INLUGR
• A Good Book For A General Overview 14 July, 2008
this book clearly defines basic mastering techniques such as compression, equalization, etc, along with some general methodology for each. the interviews with well-known mastering engineers are also helpful.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3EBJ493KWLMZR
• An Easy And Comprehensible Guide To What Mastering Music Is All About 06 September, 2008
This book is clearly for the practicing musician and home studio owner who wishes to take to make their mixes sound more like a record.
Mitch Gallager explains mastering in a really easy way using understable terms. He actually lists the process in the first chapters - unlike many other mastering books which scatter them around in the text: Editing song head and tails, Correcting and enhancing the frequency balance, Applying compression, placing the album's songs in the best order, Adjusting relative volume levels between songs, Maximizing the overall volume levels, etc.
He then goes explaining the basics of sound - just enough to understand the principles and what gear to use; both hardware and software. What I really liked was the list of both audio editors and DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations - like Pro Tools or Cubase) to choose from and the way he so easily describes the advantages of each of these in just a few paragraphs. He also lists different types of plug-ins to be used when doing mastering, albeit the list is by no means exhaustive.
There is a couple of very interesting chapters on separation mastering which might be worth the book price alone. In separation mastering you are creating 4 stereo tracks: Drums, Bass, Vocal and the rest of the instruments. Hence it is easier to avoid the compromises you need when just using a stereo track - like when de-essing the vocals which also will affect the cymbals. When using separation mastering you can simply apply the de-essing on just the vocal stereo track. The author interviews the two people who defined this idea. I'm absolutely going to try this one out! Separation mastering is best handled inside the DAW - which means a working in a already comfortable workspace.
There are a total of 5 interviews of mastering engineers in the book. I found these quite valuable as they had a lot tips, tricks and secrets to reveal - mostly on the process. The final master is also explained along with using the ISRC code to identify your music digitally.
Now, there is only one chapter (chapter 10) which explains the nitty gritty of mastering. And it is only 18 pages long. Granted, mastering is an art and it is hard to give a precise list of what to do, where to apply EQ, compression and soforth, but a few more examples wouldn't go amiss.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent buy if you want to learn more about mastering music and to improve your mixes. You won't become a pro mastering engineer after reading this (obviously you need to practice!), but you will probably cover the ground inbetween professionally mastered records and no mastering at all. And that's a start.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AHCI2PFXMEU4A
• This Book Is A Waste Of Money 07 September, 2008
Unless you have ZERO background in sound reenforcement, live sound, or home/studio recording, this book will provide no information of value to you. It's also poorly organized and indexed and doesn't provide the reader with easily navigable and usable content.
It's like being in the room with someone who knows a little more than you, theoretically, but has no practical wisdom to impart that can specifically help you in any given situation... and who won't shut up.
You have to read every word of the guy's book to get even the smallest bit of information.
I recommend the Hirsch and Heithecker book.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1MYME7DUDWHYD
• Useful 26 November, 2008
A lot of specific coverage for those who want to have the mastering job done at home, useful hints and good audio examples and tutorials.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2LT6IU3S59BKW
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