Mastering

foog asked me for mastering on skold's topic, but I thought its better to start new one for it.

What is mastering?

there are written many books of mastering so I try to make this as short as possible :P

when making a song there are usually several steps:
composing - recording - mixing - mastering - track on final album.

after the recording, you have many tracks (guitar, vocal, bass etc.) that you mix (setting volume lvls, effects, EQ etc.) after the mix all those tracks go to one single track what we call as master track.

Mastering that track makes it even more thick and better sounding. In typical mastering there be used three effects which are Equalizer, Compressor and Limiter or multiband limiter.

How to use all of those I do not have enough knowledge to explain, but after the mastering you have professional sounding master track.

hope this clears something.

im about to do a course in music technology this year and have been reading up about some of this stuff so thanks for some of the additional info on it :)

Np, but I must warn you ;D. Thats an endless road...darn endless.
I heard that even these days Jean Michel Jarre studies at university of somekind for technics and stuff to arrange an orchestra (where to place violin section, lead viola, horns etc.)

doh well... Ill use presets and more jamming xD

Thanks for explaning, Empirism.