Recording Matters: Part 10, Mastering

Hi! My name is Jeff Berkley. I’m from San Diego California. I am a musician, songwriter, engineer, and producer. I spend four or five days a week at Satellite studio in San Diego, producing records. I’ve made lots and lots of them. I’m very lucky to be able to find magic in all sorts of different types of musical situations, levels, styles, and vibes. Somehow, I can focus on what’s authentic and draw it out. I have no idea how I got here, but I sure did luck out!

The legendary Mike Keneally in the studio. Photo by Jeff Berkley.

This is part 10 out of 10 of my attempt to articulate my own recording method to you. As I’ve said before, it’s just my method. It works for me. It seems to work for others as well.

So far, we’ve chosen, written or co-written, edited, and “memo demo’d” the songs. We’ve chosen a producer and studio. We’ve talked about choosing and preparing the musicians, recording basic tracks, and editing them. We covered the instrument overdub process, recording, and editing lead vocals, backing vocals, horns and strings, and we created the final mix! Now it’s time to talk about mastering!

If you’re like most humans on earth, you have no idea what mastering is. Those of us who have made recordings have at least heard of it and understand it’s part of the process. Still, there are so many folks who are unclear of the difference between mixing and mastering.

I touched on it a bit in the last column, but we’re gonna go a little more in-depth here. I am purposefully not a mastering engineer. I produce, record, and mix records. There are a lot of us, even most of us that do their own mastering once they’ve mixed. In fact, lots of folks mix and master at the same time. For me, I get so emotionally and technically caught up in the final mix that I lose perspective by the end. I am so thankful to have an extra set of fresh ears that can listen from a new perspective and then master the record from there. I’m definitely part of the process and listen to what the mastering engineer does. Sometimes there are tweaks I want and sometimes there aren’t. Sometimes the artist wants tweaks.

Choose someone who is willing to make those tweaks for you. Most pros are.

What I am trying to say is that an extra set of trusted ears is vital for me. I think a lot of folks could benefit from this.

Mostly, I’ve worked with a few amazing, artistic, magical, and technical wizards of mastering, including Doug Sax, Gavin Lurssen, and Robb Robinson.

Doug is the OG of mastering. He pretty much invented the craft at Capitol Records. Originally, the main goal of mastering was to use compressors, limiters, and some make up EQ to level the recordings of mixes. Mastering engineers do this so that when the record lathe cuts the groove in the vinyl, there aren’t divots where there was too much bass or some sort of transient spike. Obviously, they didn’t want to ruin the recordings by “over cooking” them, so there is an art to it. If you cut the groove too deep in the vinyl, the needle will jump around when you play the record. Too shallow and there are other issues.

Over the years, mastering has changed. There are terms like remastering where they take old vinyl masters and turn them into digital masters for CDs or streaming. The volume level has changed from vinyl through the CD and all the way up to the present. Nowadays, recordings are mostly played back on phones and computers. The mastering technicians’ job has become about preparing the masters for whatever medium they will be released on.

If someone is releasing an old-school style “record,” the mastering technician will prepare the songs to go together from one to the other with spaces in between and make sure they all lineup, color and feel wise. Then a vinyl or CD or cassette master will be created.

If it’s just a single or if the songs are gonna be released separately, they don’t need to flow from one to the next so they can exist as standalone singles and be mastered to whatever the individual song needs.

If the music is being released, digitally only, the mastering engineer will make sure that the masters work well in those settings. Nowadays, the mastering engineer will sometimes embed the ISRC codes that let computers know who to pay for when using the song.

So, to recap, mastering engineers use compression, EQ, and limiting to bring the volume of the song up to industry standards. In other words, making it loud enough to stand up to shuffle without ruining the dynamics of the music.

The final mix process leaves each song at a different overall volume by necessity. It’s better to let the mastering compressors and limiters gain things up because that’s what they’re designed to do. Adding too much volume in your DAW will thin things out and make it gross sounding.

Gavin Lurssen and Robb Robinson are direct descendants of Doug Sax. They both essentially use the same methods that Doug invented but with their own beautiful twists.

These days I’m working with Robb Robinson at Robinson Mastering. We’ve developed a partnership. I know just how to tee up my mixes for his mastering to be successful. It really passes on a lot of experience to the customer. We work well together.

I’ve also had lots of success with Gavin Lurssen, Doug Sax, Dylan Ankney, and Paul Abbott here in San Diego. They’re all wonderful!

When I reached out to Robb for a quote here’s what he sent me. He quoted the legendary Doug Sax: “The goal of mastering is to make the music sound as good as it can on a wide variety of playback systems. You have to make sure the emotional impact translates no matter how someone listens.”

More from Doug who is the Plato of the mastering world and whose shoulders we are all standing on:

1. On mastering as an art form:
“Mastering is not about making things louder, it’s about making them better. It’s the final opportunity to make everything perfect.”

2. On working with artists:
“You have to work for the music not for the ego. The artist’s intention should always come first, and it’s our job to honor that.”

3. On the importance of dynamics in music:
“Music without dynamics is like a painting without depth. You need that contrast—that light and shade—to truly move people.”

4. On the role of technology in mastering:
“Technology is a tool not the solution. You can have the best gear in the world, but if you don’t know how to listen, it won’t mean anything.”

5. On trusting your ears:
“In the end, it’s not about the specs or the equipment. It’s about what you hear and how it makes you feel. Trust your ears—they’ll guide you.”

—Doug Sax

I’ve known Robb Robinson for a long, long time and he’s always shining the light on others. I know he takes these words to heart. Doug is really the guy who invented this whole deal. Thanks, Robb, for the beautiful input!

Anyway, that’s why I go to mastering instead of doing it myself. Mastering is a different type of listening and treating recorded music.

A couple tidbits on my personal experience with mastering.
One thing Rob and I have been pretty successful with is when we bounce the final-mix stereo files through good converters and down to half-inch tape. Robb has an old half-inch machine in his mastering lab, and it sounds beautiful. You can saturate the tape and use that as your compression Instead of a compressor. It’s just a little bit lighter handed and adds some warmth from the tape. It’s not always appropriate but for a lot of the things I do it works great. It might not be what a pop record would want so that’s why it’s important to have a great mastering engineer who knows what treatment to use.

Usually a mastering engineer can get through a whole record in one day and send you version one of the mastering. That’s when you want to listen to it on as many mediums as possible. Definitely get a feel for how it sounds and what you might want tweaked. Share it with other trusted ears if you like but remember all those trusted ears are attached to mouths and they will say stuff! Lol. At that point, it’s just like the final mix process. You go back and forth with your mastering engineer to get to whatever version it takes to be the final version. For me, it’s usually version one or version two. How do I know when it’s done? I trust my mastering engineer and my ears. You’ll know when you know.

So, that’s mastering! Find someone you trust or give it a shot yourself!

CONGRATULATIONS!! You’ve finished the 10-part series and hopefully finished your record or song or cassette or or…. The possibilities for mediums of release are limitless right now. Nothing is as it was, but the future is wide open for all sorts of beauty and magic to be released upon the human race!

There’s absolutely nothing like the feeling of finishing a work of art. It’s both exciting and a little melancholy. As artists, the joy is in the doing and the making. It’s nice to have others see it or hear it when it’s done, but that’s not really why we do it. We do it to get something from within out there. I mean, at first we do it to get sex just like everybody else. That never, never goes away. Lol.

I write and record songs to quiet my own anxiety and overactive mind. I do it to let my heart take the lead and discover something truthful about the universe, the human race, and myself in the process, if I can.

Once the music is released and out into the world, it’s not mine anymore. It belongs to all of us, and it will affect people in different ways. Those things aren’t up to us, and I don’t think art really is ours once it leaves us. That’s not to say that I won’t collect the checks if something becomes famous, but I really do believe that art can make our lives more enriched and full of love. That’s where the melancholy comes in. Sometimes it’s sad when making the art is over, but it is fun to watch it. Disperse its energy into the universe.

Now get out there and make records! I’ll help!

Recording Matters!

Jeff Berkley
619-957-3111
www.jeffberkley.com