The process I undertook to complete the mastering and mixing of the track Sam Smith - 'Stay with me'
When I completed the song I created an audio mix down to an MP3 file which I then uploaded to a new cuebase project. This allowed me to add effects to the overall song and not separate tracks. The first thing that I did was to add a multi-band compressor which balanced out the sound by separating the wave forms which I could then compress separately. What the Compressor does is it compresses the sound waves, smaller or bigger to how loud and precise you want the sound waves to sound. When I was completing this I wanted to compress the bass of the track down as it was very distorted and overpowering the track. This gave the whole song the balance that was needed. I then upped the vocals because they were very quiet compared to the other tracks which yet again balanced the whole track making it sound more professional. When mixing the track I set the gain to an appropriate level so that it wasn't too distorted or over dubbed and I used a high and low EQ to equalise the whole song making sure it was in stereo and that the quality was high. Before doing the audio mix down and putting the whole song on the project I added reverb on the vocals to give it a sharper gloomy effect which suited the original song. I used gates which allowed me to pan out the sound to the left and right ear. This gave it a nice surround sound effect. I used all these effects through effects channels which I used on the separate tracks first then I created an audio mix down and a new project which I compressed the whole track to. I made sure that the mix was close to zero decibels to ensure that it didn't damage the listeners ear and to enable it to be listened on different devices such as headphones and speakers. At the end of the process of mastering and mixing, I completed an audio mix down formatting it in an MP3 file so that it was compatible for all devices and to enable me to distribute it online. Because I recorded most of the tracks live and not through direct input I had to make sure that there was no background noises and that each track was to a professional standard being at it's best quality to be listened to. Also on the vocals I used a slight delay effect to add emotion and quality to the track.
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