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How records are actually finished
Written for people making them rather than for people writing standards. No settings to copy, because the settings that transformed someone else’s record were a fix for their room, their microphone and their voice.
Grouped by what you are trying to do rather than by which product it leads to. Each guide links the capability it relates to, so you can stop reading and go and try it.
Finishing a record
What the last stages actually do, and which one your problem belongs to.
- How to master a songThe whole process in six steps, in the order they have to happen, with the four mistakes that undo the rest.
- Mixing vs mastering: what each one actually doesTwo different jobs with different tools and different questions, and a simple test for which one your problem belongs to.
- How to EQ vocalsMost vocal EQ is subtraction, and most of it happens on other tracks. Why boosting the vocal usually fails.
- Mastering hip-hop: the 808, the knock, the levelThe genre's risk is concentrated at the bottom of the spectrum and the front of every drum hit, and loudness is where both get spent.
- How to use a reference track to mix and masterChoosing a reference that fits your song, comparing it fairly at matched loudness, what to listen for, and what happens when mixing or mastering matches it.
- How to master a song in Logic ProMastering a finished mix inside Logic Pro: Mastering Assistant, doing it by hand with the stock plug-ins, measuring it, bouncing it, and when to hand the mix to someone else instead.
- How to master a song in FL StudioMastering a finished mix in FL Studio: the chain on the Master mixer track, measuring its loudness, export settings that keep your work intact, and when to hand the mix on.
- How to master a song in Ableton LiveMastering a finished mix in Ableton Live: the device chain on the Main track, measuring loudness when Live has no LUFS meter, export settings that keep your work intact, and when to hand the mix on.
- How to mix vocals with a beatPutting your own voice on a beat or an instrumental: files that line up, the vocal level finished records use, making the voice sit, and what an automatic mix does with the two.
Loudness
The part of the craft that changed completely when streaming started turning everyone down.
- What LUFS actually measuresWhy platforms normalize by loudness rather than peak, what gating does, and why your DAW's peak meter disagrees with the encoder.
- LUFS vs true peak: what each number tells youOne number is how loud the track sounds, the other is the highest point of its waveform. Why they move independently, and which limits apply where.
- Streaming loudness targets, and what they doMastering louder than the target does not make you louder. It makes the platform turn you down by exactly that much, with less dynamic range than you started with.
- LUFS for Spotify, and what the normalizer doesThe published target, the quiet, normal and loud listener settings, the one case where Spotify limits your audio, and where true peak bites.
- LUFS for Apple Music: Sound Check and the targetSound Check on tracks and albums, what Apple Digital Masters actually is, and why the lossy encode makes true peak the strict number here.
- How to make a song louder without clippingWhere a song’s loudness really comes from, why turning it up clips, how far a limiter can take it, and why streaming turns extra loudness back down.
- LUFS for YouTube, and what Stable volume doesWhat YouTube does and does not publish about loudness, what others have measured, what Stable volume changes while people watch, and how loud to make music and spoken videos.
Repairing and rescuing
What can be fixed after the fact, what cannot, and how to tell before you start.
- How to remove noise from a recordingHiss, hum, clicks and room are four different problems. Treating them as one is why noise reduction makes voices sound underwater.
- How to remove background noise from a videoGet the audio out of your video, clean it and put it back so it lines up exactly, what Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve already offer, and how to handle wind and echo.
- Six home recording mistakes you cannot fix laterMost home-recording problems are fixable in a mix. These six are decisions made at the microphone that no amount of processing undoes.
How the tools work
The mechanisms behind the things that sound like magic, explained without the magic.
- What stem separation actually doesIt estimates the sources inside a finished mix. Understanding that it estimates, rather than recovers, explains where it succeeds and fails.
- How to make an acapella (and an instrumental)Where the rights stand, three ways to get a vocal on its own, what to do about bleed, and how DJs line an acapella up by tempo, key and phrase.
- How pitch correction actually worksThree steps, and the hard one is the middle. Why retune speed rather than strength is what makes a tuned vocal sound tuned.
- What Auto-Tune actually isOne company's product, not the technique, and the famous robotic sound is a speed setting, not the sound of tuning something hard.
- What Dolby Atmos music actually isObject-based rather than channel-based, which is why almost everyone hears it as a binaural headphone render, and why it plays back quieter.