I’m going to tell you about a few tricks and tips that’ll help to get your home-recorded tracks sounding a bit more professional. All the processes I’ll describe are to be added to your stereo mix, in a similar way to the mastering process.
Equalisation
EQ is an extremely important aspect of music production. The main area that seems to be a problem is the low-mids, from about 150Hz to 450Hz. Bass frequencies are the most powerful, and mid frequencies are the most commonly occurring in all instruments, so you ca end up with quite a build up of strong middy sounds on your track if you’re not careful, leading to a muddy, unclear final mix. To start, make sure you add a bass roll-off (pictured below) to any tracks that don’t need any bass such as vocals, acoustic guitar and the like.
Bass roll-off EQ
When it comes to EQ-ing the full mix, try reducing the low-mids a bit like this:
Low-mid EQ
You don’t want to cut too much out, as this might start to effect the sound of each individual track, but a subtle cut as shown above can help “clean up” the overall mix and make it sound a bit clearer.
Another trick to give your track a bit more of a sparkle is to add a bit extra high-end. Add a little shelving EQ as shown below, but listen to any “S” sounds in the vocal, and to any cymbals you have in the song, as these can be brought out by adding too much to the higher frequencies, and you want the track, as a whole, to sound balanced across the spectrum.
High-end boost
It’s also a good idea to roll off the really low frequencies, so there isn’t ay low frequency noise in your song. You’ll need a good set of monitors to hear what difference this makes though.
Compression
Compression can be a tricky one when it comes to effecting the whole song. Subtle amounts of compression can help give a track a bit more power and increase the volume, but too much and your track will sound squashed. Only use low ratios and thresholds close to 0dB. The way to spot over-compression is to listen out when something loud happens in your song – if all the other elements suddenly drop in volume when something loud kicks in you’re using too much compression.
Multi-band compression is really useful for compressing your whole mix. It lets you compress different frequencies to different degrees, so you can compress the bass without effecting the higher frequencies, kind of like EQ.
Limiters and maximisers also use compression to increase the perceived volume of your track. It’s important that your song is loud in order to compete with commercial or professionally mastered music, but you don’t want to compromise the sound quality by over-compressing it. On a typical limiter, there will be parameters for threshold and ceiling. Keep the ceiling at 0dB, and lower the threshold until the music is coming out at a good volume. Listen out for over-compression as I explained above though, as you need to find a threshold value that increases the volume of the track without making it too obvious.
So those are just a couple of tips to help give you a better sounding home-recorded tracks. If you’re still struggling, there are a number of professional mastering services out there, which charge anywhere between £10 and £100 per track, depending on the kind of mastering you go for.
Graeme Allen is the founder of, and chief mastering engineer at Amati Studios. The company has a range of mid-size nation-wide recording studios and an online professional mastering service.
