BandLab, part of the new wave of online mastering services for bands, recording artists, and speakers, is doing something completely different and generally unheard of from the competition; they’re doing it for free. There is no catch. There is no limited time posted. There is no secret punchline in the fine print.
Their vision is to simply help aspiring artists enhance their recordings to a level likely suitable for radio play. If you visit their site, you will see their specifications in a simple, 1, 2, 3 format for getting things ready. They will accept mp3’s and boast this. However, you really should not send an mp3 to be mastered anywhere. You should be sending a WAVE or high-definition WAVE, at the very least. But free is free, and I’m just pointing out a well-known engineering rule that makes a huge difference.
If you’ve read any of my past blog postings, you’ll see that I’ve been a big fan of LANDR. I’ve tested them with my own material, as you get two free non-top-of-the-line mastering jobs done on two songs per month in your account. I like the way they describe it as “quick and dirty” because, believe it or not, the sound boost is staggering.
I want people to understand that LANDR gives a very important preparation lesson that BandLab does not. No, I’m not complaining because, if it’s free, why should they? They shouldn’t have to, but YOU should still know.
If you look at your music wave file on the computer screen, you of course want those waves to be uniform with spaces between them, length-wise, but not too bunched up (with horrible overkill and distortion). However, LANDR’s preparation comes from the real “masters” of mastering. When you prepare your song for mastering, do not let those levels reach above 6 decibels on the wave form. Yes, you want it softer and not to go near that red zone, where most finished and mastered recordings love to flirt with but not touch the lower levels of that zone too much. Additionally, you don’t want the bottom levels to be hitting the lowest end of the waveform, either.
The reason for this is that you must leave room for the mastering to have any great effect on the amazing stereo separations and spotlights on different instruments, vocals, and bass sounds. You must leave room and make the recording softer; 6 decibels. Very importantly, don’t use the automatic “adjust levels automatically” to cut your already “too loud for mastering” tracks down to the 6 decibel level. Why? Because the damage has already been done. The sound is still going to be muffled. You’ve just made it softer. When you master the track, it will up the level but you will end up with your original recording that lacks proper separation of the instrumentals and/or vocals.
The beauty of following their advice is that when you hear that special bridge you worked so hard on, or that certain part of the song with a crisp, quick guitar, piano, or keyboard riff, you have left enough room to make that a several thousand dollar sounding piece of music. However, if you’re up near the reds when you submit the recording and you use the automatic level-setting feature, those unique sounds will be mixed and muffled right in since you’ve already done the damage but just lowered the volume. You won’t get the “ahh” from listeners.
With all this said, read more about this on LANDR. As for BandLab, as Artists, we should still be thanking them and applauding them. I am sure they are earning money some way through advertising.
Finally, there are a few more mastering services jumping on this bandwagon, but they cost money and are just competing with each other for cost. Start with these two.
**Note to WordPress publishers. WordPress is now only letting you post on your actual facebook pages and not your profiles. Good. This is the correct way to do it. Copy and paste if you want it on your profile. Also, if you know nothing about wordpress, they have just launched wordpress.com/business for a do-it-yourself experience. For now, I’m sticking with the old school.
Until next time,
Paul Spencer Alexander