I cannot stress sufficient the benefit of having your home recorded Hip Hop songs Mastered by an face Mastering Engineer that specializes in the Hip Hop genre. The end supervene will no doubt be best when done by a trained ear with an acoustically tuned environment & Mastering definite gear. With that said, it is inherent for you to perform usable results in your home Hip Hop recording studio & the purpose of this record is to help you perform those results using the recording gear/software that you already own. If you are recording on Digidesign Protools software then you can use the plug ins that came with the program. Most similar programs should have comparable processing plug ins so consult your user hand-operated for those.
You will start your mastering session with a two track stereo mix of your song preferably with the expert level peaking at about -3db never hitting the red on the meter. This mix should already be sounding the way you want while needing a boost in volume & maybe a concentrate Eq tweaks to make it translate well to various sound systems/sources.
Hip Hop
Starting with the Eq make adjustments to the lows, mids, & highs, based on any notes that you taken after listening to your mix on some separate types of sound sources such as earbuds, a car system, a bookshelf stereo, a mono clock radio, laptop speakers etc. Your goal is for your expert to end up sounding good on all the separate systems where of course on larger systems with sub woofers you will have more bass & on laptop speakers & earbuds there will be microscopic or no sub bass. The key is to have a expert that still retains clarity on each of these sources. When you listen to your mix on these sources listen for frequency problems that tend to show up on multiple sound sources as these are the first things you should work on with the Eq. You should try trial & error to find the frequencies and remember it is always best to fix by cutting the nasty sounds then by boosting other frequencies to cover them. Remember that any Eq tweaks that you perform on the stereo mix is going to affect the whole song so make sure the adjustments are absolutely fixing the question without causing a bigger one in an additional one area.
The next step in your home Hip Hop Mastering session after you are happy with the Eq results will be adding a Compressor to the track. This will be used to give the song a plane level sound making the track level consistent from start to finish. The Compressor will also aid in boosting the perceived volume of the song. Below is a set of Compressor settings that I have come to use on Hip Hop tracks as a beginning point when putting together a song Master.
gain 3.5 db
threshold -22.6 db
ratio 3.00:1
attack 11 ms
release 50 ms
knee 80
(These are compressor start off positions which I have found are a good beginning point for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)
The next gismo in line after the Compressor is a Limiter, which is kind of like a Compressor on steroids, the Limiter will be used to max out the volume of the mix & create a expert that is as loud as any commercially released Hip Hop track.
The Limiter settings shown below are settings that I have found to be a good beginning point achieving a loud yet not distorted final expert of a Home studio recorded Hip Hop track
3.5 gain
threshold 17.6 db
attack 1.0 ms
release 20 ms
(These are Limiter start off positions which I have found are a good beginning point for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)
You will want to do A/B listening comparisons in the middle of your working expert & a commercially released Hip Hop track that is similar in style to your song. You will want your expert to be as loud as the commercially released song and translate well on all the separate sound systems/sources.
Just as you will want to do with a mix, after completing your song expert save it & leave it alone for a day or two then come back to it with fresh ears and you may have a separate perspective on it & finds things to fix that may have been missed earlier. Once you feel your song expert is comparable to the commercially released song you are done mastering your new song.
There are many separate specialty programs & software plug ins that are designed for Mastering however this record is geared toward those that are trying to expert their songs using the options that are already gift on their recording software or workstation. Also keep in mind that Pro Mastering houses will yield you with a expert Cd that will be verified to be error free as well as comprise special encoding that will be the expert you would want to give to a Cd replication/duplication plant to get mass produced Cd’s. This is an foremost highlight though it seems in the music company more & more artists are bypassing the cost of getting Cd’s made & instead having download only releases.
The information in this record should give you a path to supervene when attempting to expert your Hip Hop songs in your own home studio. There are no rules set in stone though trial & error have helped to formulate the mastering course given above.
Mastering Hip Hop Songs in Your Own Home Recording Studio Or Computer
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