SkillShare Audio Mastering 101 A Beginners Guide to Modern Music Mastering

In this class, I will teach you the basic concepts of Modern Audio Mastering and show you how you can create a great-sounding ‘Release Ready’ Master.

Mastering is the final step in the Music Production process and is crucial to ensure your song is sounding its best and ‘optimized’ before being released to the world.

Mastering is often seen as a ‘Dark Art’ and in this class, I will be dispelling some of the ‘Myths’ surrounding Mastering whilst teaching you the fundamental techniques that I use as a Professional Mastering Engineer.

In this class, you will learn the basic Mastering techniques as well as background knowledge needed to ensure you create a Mastered Song that will translate well on all platforms.

The class is divided into easy-to-digest sections that include the following:

What is Mastering?
Common Mastering Terms
Loudness Normalization - The Basics
How to setup a Mastering Session
Quality Control
Limiting 101
Compression - 'Do I need a Compressor for Mastering?'
Equalization
Final Export & Rendering

Mastering is often seen as either a ‘Dark Art’ or as an ‘extension of mixing’ and neither is true. If you embrace the power of Mastering then you can really create a song that will be enjoyed by many.

Mastering allows you to not only enhance your song, and make it sound AMAZING, but it also allows you to take a step back and listen to the song from a fresh perspective.

Listening to a song with a ‘Mastering Mindset’ will allow you to:
Highlight any potential defects including clicks and pops or clipping (Quality Control is an important step).
Take a more subjective view of the song by allowing you to listen critically at the overall song balance.
Approach the song with a rested and fresh ‘set of ears’.
Break away from the ‘Mixing Mindset’ and focus on the final presentation and emotion of the song.
Consider the overall flow and ensure your song captures the imagination of the listener.

These skills are paramount to creating great-sounding songs that will translate well on all platforms and mediums. With more and more music being listened to through Streaming Platforms these skills will give you the foundations you need to ensure your songs sound impactful, and at a competitive loudness, with other commercially released songs.

This class will also give you the necessary skills to allow you to make creative decisions with your Masters to ensure you achieve a balance between loudness and dynamics whilst also achieving overall balance to your song.

This class is designed to be hands on so not only will you be able to see how I Master a song but you will be able to transfer the skills to your own songs and experiment with these core techniques to suit your own style. There is no one size fits all or ‘preset’ approach to Mastering and this class will guide you through the core concepts and knowledge to allow you to express yourself creatively.

The skills and techniques shared in this class are the core concepts that I use in a Professional Mastering capacity. I have Mastered commercially for many artists and have worked on releasing music that is widely available. But not only is Mastering my passion but I also love to share my knowledge and have released over 90 educational videos under my brand Mastering In The Box.

This class is very much a beginners guide to Mastering so is perfect for:
Anyone who wants to understand the basic concepts and knowledge required for modern music releases.
An Independent Musician or Band who wants to learn how to release your own music.
A Mixing Engineer who wants to offer a Mastering Service to your clients.
Someone who is looking to get into the field of Mastering as a bespoke service.

If you fall into one of the above categories then this class will be perfect for you.

To follow this course you will need a few basic items which are:
A Computer/Laptop that is capable of running a Digital Audio Workstation (it doesn’t need to be the most powerful on the market).
An Audio Interface/Headphone Amplifier for Monitoring purposes.
A pair of Headphones suitable for Music Production or Studio Monitors (Headphones are preferable if you don’t have a dedicated listening environment).
A Digital Audio Workstation that has a Limiter, Compressor, Equalizer and a Level Meter - I will be using Presonus Studio One 6 Professional but it’s not necessary to use Studio One to follow this course. Cockos Reaper has a 60 day Evaluation Period and the necessary plugins required but any DAW and Third Party Plugins will suffice.

I hope you enjoy this class as it's been an absolute pleasure to make and I can't wait to hear your Class Project in the Project Gallery.