It’s ok to record music at home and not get it mastered and mixed professionally if you do not intend to release the track in the commercial market. But if you do have the intentions of releasing your track commercially, then the track requires much refining so that it sounds fuller, sweeter, and extremely dynamic. As easy as it sounds, mixing and mastering is a high-level skill that comes with years of experience. You can have a state of the art mixer, but without a passionate and experienced sound engineer, the device is just as useless as a flute without openings.
As soon as the sound is mixed, audio engineers start the process of mastering – a technique in which every single aspect of the music is balanced. The different roles and duties of a sound engineer are as follows.
- Glue the tracks together with such continuity that it feels they have originated from one same album.
- Make individual sounds of all instruments come alive while making sure that they sound harmonious on the whole.
- Tune the track to offer a high volume without the sound getting squeaky at all.
- Exploiting the different frequencies in the dynamic sound range to make the music sound richer and fuller.
Now, one might argue that any recording studio can offer such services. But that’s not true. Only a few studios like the Songmill music studio offer the time and quality that every piece of musical art deserves. The features that set such elite recording studios apart from the rest are as follows.
- First of all, they do not use cheap sound mixing panels and instruments. Their devices are the best in the market. Which is why they are able to couple the best reverbers to the track to make it sound like a melody.
- They do not use the quick fix mastering technique. They’re music lovers with accurate knowledge that every single track has its own uniqueness and that some specific frequencies can make the sound better. So, instead of using the same frequencies to enhance every track, they pay attention to using specific frequencies in the sound spectrum that complement the particular track – the one that’s being mastered – the most.
- They use some selective analog processes so that the music sounds richer and has brighter notes.
These are the exclusive mastering skills that not every sound engineer can master and apply. So, be very mindful of the kind of reputation that the recording studio has because only elite ones are able to hire qualified audio engineers with gold and platinum releases under their belts.