8 WAYS TO MASTER A TRACK

Part 5

01 Zoom out

In the mixing process, you will be considering the detail: the levels, the effects, the EQ, plus perhaps some automation, including fades and other parameters. With mixing, then, you are very much looking ‘inside’ at every aspect you can. With mastering, you need to forget that and step back, zoom out, rise above it, look down and consider everything as a large picture with everything you were working on in the mix all joined up as one whole. You need to consider the track – a stereo mix (usually!) – as a single entity and now start to think about it in the context of other tracks on an album or reference material you are trying to put it against and to perhaps sound like (in terms of its sonic character, anyway). If, during this process, you notice