Magical Creature Part 3: The Master

Hi folks, welcome back to this series of blog posts, where I talk about how I wrote, mixed, and mastered my latest release, Magical Creature.

To recap on the previous two blog posts, linked below, we’ve looked at how I wrote this track and how I mixed it. What instruments did I use?  What mood did I intend to create? All that interesting stuff. I then talked all about how I mixed the track, from corrective EQ to bus compression.

This is where we left off last time, talking about the mix. With a full arrangement, all the unused tracks removed from the templates and everything ready to be listened to, and mastering plugins applied.

Let us begin!

Now I always start with the SPAN plugin. SPectrum ANalyzer for short. This helps me look at the track that it’s applied to and look at the frequency content. Technically, it’s a bad habit to be in, relying on visual aids when I should be relying on my ear, but the way I see it, I am training my ear to know the frequencies I see now, by ear eventually.

Equalization

The first actual mastering step is to apply EQ. This isn’t like when I apply EQ to a single track or even when I apply EQ to a bus or group of instruments but rather more specific.

I used the EQ here, to add a little shine to the very high-top end. This boost to the frequencies above 15khz is about making the air of the room and the space shine through.

There is a very gentle cut, with a sloping EQ in the mid-range, to reduce some of the muddier frequencies.

And then a gentle 2db boost to everything below 100hz. This is more about the frequencies you feel rather than hear. This kind of treatment also has the benefit of making the mix warmer and sounding fuller.

But a trick I learned a while ago, was to add another EQ in the signal chain, so I can apply a finer boost or cut, without affecting the decisions in the previous plugin too drastically. So, I applied an EQ that I know to be good at handling presence and high end (presence being when an instrument is supposed to be upfront and personal).

I used this EQ to boost the frequencies around 8khz to add some presence to the attack of the strings and some of the plucked instruments in the mix.

Compression

I then used a Multi Band Compressor

I went into more detail about Multi Band Compression in a previous blog post, linked below but essentially, I can apply different amounts of compression to different sections of the frequency spectrum simultaneously. I used this to add some weight and punch to the lower end of the track and bring out the attack of the arrangement.

The Limiter (Adaptive)

I tried two different Limiters in this track. The Logic Pro X stock plugin called Limiter (clever, right?) is a limiter I use a lot but, in this track, for whatever reason, it seemed to be absolutely crushing the cymbals. So, I experimented a lot with different plugins and settings and eventually settled on the Adaptive Limiter. This plugin did the trick, by boosting the overall volume of the track, while compressing some of the dynamics. It did all of that without crushing the cymbals like the Limiter did.

Checking your work.

Remember in school when Math teachers used to bombard you with the comment ‘show your work, check your work’. Well the same is true of working professionally. I used a Multi Meter plugin to check what I had done to my track basically.

The Multi Meter essentially shows me different information, for different aspects of the track, like volume of frequency content in specific bands, Relative volume in the panorama (left & right) and so on.

This is a great plugin if you just want to look at what you’ve got going on and check that nothing is happening unexpected that shouldn’t be, like a random peak in volume in the left channel for example.

And there we have it. As always, if you have any further questions, fire them my way and I’ll get back to you. You can do that by dropping a comment here or wherever you found this content, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Thank you for reading my blog posts and listening to my material, it’s always great to know people are listening and reading so like and share, follow and all that jazz.  

Check out the links below for more of my content.

Magical Creature Part Two: The Mix

Magical Creature Part One: The Composition

The Big Day Part Three: The Master