HOW I MASTER MY MUSIC: 10 STEPS

hey xolemates. i have no clue what i'm doing when it comes to music, let alone most things in my life. but since a lot of y'all have asked how i master my tracks, here is my process. take what you want from it. you can also watch my new tutorial dedicated to my entire mastering workflow.

1. CONSOLIDATE THE LAYERS
bounce everything into respective group stems (bass, guitar, kick, main vocals, etc.). this helps me visualize the layers better and reduces my CPU. it’s easy to get hung up in the mixing stage for too long; consolidating forces you to commit to what you have and stops you from making thousands of small mix adjustments.

2. LIMITING + SOFT CLIPPING TRANSIENTS
this creates more headroom for your final master. by limiting the sharp transients and peaks on individual layers, you reduce the overall mix volume, allowing you to push the master's maximizer harder later on. be careful not to overdo it though, or you'll kill the song's punchiness. Ableton has a great soft clipper built into the Glue Compressor, but i mainly use SIR Audio Tools' StandardClip.

3. REMOVING VOCAL FREQUENCIES IN THE INSTRUMENTAL
i usually use Soothe to carve out vocal frequencies from the beat, but a side-chain compressor works too. if your song has vocals, they should be treated as the most important layer in the project. don't let the instrumental drown them out. i throw Soothe onto the instrumental group and side-chain it to the main vocal track.

4. SIDE-CHAINING INSTRUMENTS TO THE KICK
help the kick cut through the mix by side-chaining everything else to it. the kick usually hits during the heaviest parts of your song (on the downbeat or when your song "drops"). if every instrument is loud at those same moments, your master compressor will have a lot of work to do and it will squash everything. by ducking everything under the kick, your low end hits harder and your drops sound way cleaner. i use a simple compressor or Devious Machines' Duck.

5. CREATING A REAR BUS
Andrew Scheps developed the "rear bus technique," which is a parallel compression method used to glue instruments and vocals together without crushing their dynamics. send every layer except the drums (and sometimes the bass) to a separate bus with an 1176-style compressor. i use a slow attack and fast release to preserve dynamics, but some people like fast attacks/slow releases for warmth and glue, or fast/fast for consistency. a great trick is to have mainly the vocals trigger the compression; when they hit, the instruments duck, and when they stop, the instruments come back. play around with the settings, there are no rules! i like to use Waves' CLA-76 Compressor for this.

6. PARALLEL COMPRESSION
now we start adding effects to the master chain. first, i throw on a soft clipper for some light clipping, followed by a master compressor shaving off just 2–4 dB. next up is parallel compression. in a mastering sense, this increases the perceived loudness of the entire mix while keeping the dynamics of the dry signal. i usually use a fast attack and medium release on the compressor for more of a balanced sound, but a slower attack can add some nice extra snap. i like Waves' CLA-76 Compressor for this.

7. COMPARE MASTER FREQUENCIES WITH OTHER SONGS
remember, we are just little DIY independent artists. mixing and mastering engineers have studied and mastered their craft, so go download some of your favorite popular songs and study those masters closely. references go a long way. check their frequency balance, study the LUFs, and listen to the dynamics. go back and forth between your song and some popular songs in your genre. you don't need to match them perfectly, but imagine a listener on Spotify. will your track sound thin, muddy, or weak when it plays right after a popular song? you can use any EQ but i like to use either FabFilter's ProQ or iZotope's Tonal Balance Control.

8. MULTI-BAND COMPRESSION
multi-band compression splits your audio signal into separate frequency bands, allowing independent control of the dynamics in each range instead of squashing the whole mix. it's especially useful for mastering. sometimes in your song, the low end might be too loud, then not loud enough. multi-band compression will create a more consistent presence across your frequencies. there are some great free multi-band compressors online, but i love and have always used iZotope's Ozone multi-band compressor.

9. BOOST STEREO FIELD
next up, within Ozone, i like to add the Imager to widen my master. i especially like this imager becuase you can target specific frequencies. i don't touch any frequencies below 150Hz, we need to keep those mono. above 150Hz, i add a slight boost to the width, and then i boost the width a bit more aggressively above 3kHz.

10. FINAL MAXIMIZATION TO AROUND -10LUFs
using Ozone, i then add the last step to my master: maximization! maximizers are basically just limiters on steroids. so you can either use a limiter or a maximizer in this step. i try to get the master as loud as i can without completely destroying the mix. gone are the days where we shoot around -14LUFs. download your favorite song, it most likely has a master around -6LUFs. i myself am not skilled enough to get a song this loud without having it sound like a car engine. my masters are usually around -10LUFs. with a True Peak level of -1LUF. but sometimes if i'm feeling spicy, i'll raise the True Peak to about-.5LUF.

again, xolemates, don't just blindly follow my steps. there are no rules to music. everyone has their own process. you can get the same result with various methods.

whatever you do, always remember to keep making music.