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How To Become a Mastering Engineer. A Helpful Guide and Career Path
Ever wanted to become a mastering engineer but didn’t know where to start?
Or maybe you just want to find out what career opportunities you can expect? I’ve been a mastering engineer for over 10 years now and so let me tell you a little bit about it.
To become mastering engineer you have to understand the processes and mindset involved in mastering. The fastest and most efficient way to do it is to take up an online mastering course from a respected and experienced mastering engineer.
Why is it important to learn from someone experienced? Why you have to listen to someone else when you could do it on your own? Let me explain.
What Does Mastering Engineer Do
The crucial part of becoming a mastering engineer is to understand what is it that mastering engineer actually do. As many people confuse mixing with mastering understanding the mastering process and the way of approaching music is crucial.
Unlike the mixing, mastering focuses on the whole song not on a separate tracks. The post production processes are not aimed at single recorded track eg guitar but the whole and completed mix.
During the mastering process mastering engineer uses very similar tools to mixing but the actual way of using it is completely different. Instead of adding fair amount of compression mastering only needs a little bit of it just to gently touch the song. The same goes with the other processes involved.
Less is better. That’s what really important.
When mastering music the mastering engineer has a specific mindset where he listening to the music. The aim is to spot little nuances and things that can be improved. Understanding the genre is key to finding those nuances.
Without the proper and trained mindset the path of achieving great sounding master might be really long and in some cases impossible. Being able to possess an understanding of the music and technicality of it is a major part of being a mastering engineer.
Can mastering engineer be also mixing engineer
Often time becoming a mastering engineer is a natural path for mixing engineers. Since mixing is a previous step of audio post-production from the mastering many engineers decide to follow the mastering path too.
You might wonder if that’s beneficial for the music if mixing engineer is also mastering engineer. That all depends on the skill, understanding of differences and being able to separate the mixing mindset from the mastering mindset.
Do you have to have a degree to be mastering engineer
You don’t have to have a degree to become a mastering engineer although education in sound production will be very helpful to understand the first steps as well as to build the relationships and make the best use of opportunities served by college or university.
How much money you have to spend to start mastering business
You can spend anywhere between $500 (headphones) to $100,000 just to start the mastering business. Getting your studio acoustically treated is expensive. Getting your computer, convertors, plugins, the hardware is expensive. Getting your mastering speakers is also very expensive.
I always advise to start with the headphones and gradually expand your business equipment.
Can you master music on headphones
In the ideal world where you can spend as much as you want on acoustics and far-field speakers you wouldn’t want to master using headphones. At the same time, mastering on decent headphones ( just like those Sennheiser 600HD on amazon for $450) can really work wonders especially when your room acoustic isn’t that great.
Use headphones (good ones) rather than crappy room or speakers. That’s my advice.
How much mastering engineer earns. Salary or pay per track
How much mastering engineer charges per track or album vary from country to country as well as from the experience of the engineer.
I’ve seen educational institutions advertising mastering salary at an average of $72, 000 but that’s complete nonsense.
Mastering is purely freelance work and what you earn depends on the client’s flow and amount of work you get from them not a set salary.
The popular rate per song is $30-$40 where more experienced engineers can charge up to $100 per song.
You have to remember that being flexible with your pricing. Client wanting to master a whole album with you will expect you to offer him some sort of discount and that’s normal (and acceptable). It’s always better to work with one artist on 10 songs than with 10 artists on 1 song each, trust me.
What hours mastering engineer works
Since mastering music is mostly solo process (you don’t really get many clients wanting to sit down with your during the session) the working hours are totally up to you. If you fell better working during the night you can work during the night. If you’re a morning person and prefer to work in the morning you can do just that.
How Long Does it Take to Master a Song
That completely depends on how difficult the mix is, how experienced you are as a mastering engineer and how well you know your processes but on average to master one song you need to spend around 45-60min.
What's the Best Way to Start Mastering
The best way to start learning the mastering is to take up a course and practice, practice, practice. Ask your friends for mixes that you can practice on and learn from other mastering engineers. Online mastering course is definitely something I’d recommend if you want to become a mastering engineer.
I created an online course for anyone who wants to start with mastering where I share my knowledge and show step-by-step processes involved in audio mastering. The course is based only on free plugins so you don’t have to worry about spending any extra money on expensive plugins. You can buy the course here.
Hope that was helpful and the path in front of you is much clearer now!
Thanks,
Tom
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