Song#3 Runaway - Mastering Stage

I'm trying to find motivation to write this post, as I'm already thinking of the next song...but oh well, here goes:

1. Idea Stage
2. Composing and Arranging Stage
3. Recording Stage
4. Mastering Stage
5. Final Product

As always, please visit this project's intro blog. 

Mastering

As usual, the tracks were grouped into instruments, vocals and others. For this song, I started using the 'send' function of Ableton, where I routed a portion of the track output to Reverb and/or Sidechain Compression (where the kick drum input was the trigger for the compressor)

Sends with varying degree

Sidechain compression settings

For the instrument part,  I adopted an EQ filtering technique I picked up from Wickimedia's mastering videos. Putting all tracks together to play at the same time hides the important hits from the Arp One samples (Electric Grand VST) and the softer samples (also from the same VST). To solve the problem, one might opt to pan left or pan right the tracks to give it more 'space' in a virtual recording studio or simply just increasing the volume of the track relative to the rest. However, the better technique is to EQ filter frequencies that clash/collide with the intended instrument.

Take for example the Arp One hits, which peaks at 1K Hz according to the Spectrum analyzer.

Arp One hits frequencies

From here I used a comb filter pattern on EQ eight for all instruments playing at that period of time such as below.

Arp Poly Lead comb filter on EQ eight

This method still retains the sound of the EQ'd instrument but gives space on the frequency spectrum for the target tune to occupy.

Also, this song included a Sub bass track, for reasons I do not fully comprehend, other than just following some Youtube video's suggestion. Sub Bass sounds are practically inaudible to the human ears but if you played it on a really big diaphragm speaker, you would be able to feel it in your body (kinda like the whoosh-whoosh feel). The theory is that adding it (it follows the audible bass line notes), adds the extra kick to the mix. I hope there's some effect nonetheless :)

All other tracks have the same basic devices, such as Gate, Auto Pan, EQ eight, Glue Compressor etc.. while the master group track had a comb/valley EQ filter to accommodate the vocals at 175Hz (it changes to 359Hz during the chorus)


The vocals group had the usual processing. This time I added fancy effects like Simple Delay for the repetition of the last syllable at the bridge and Reverb for extra feel. I decided against adding Vocal thickening tracks with the current setting with Grain Delay device (it sounds terrible) as compared to the previous song. After all there's the harmony track. During the bridge, I sampled the 'Runaway' part using Sampler and added an Overdrive to it. Using the sampler, I assigned trigger keys to set rhythmic playback of different parts of the sample. So, I could either play R-r-r-unaway or Runaw-w-way, you'll get the gist.

Sampler with different trigger keys

Finally, for the Master channel another glue compressor and limiter was added to the chain. Nothing much, nothing really new, just another day in mastering.



Stay tuned for the final Part V of  V for this song!