The keen of eye will have already noted the addition of a couple of new links in the menu bar, one of which leads to my shiny new mastering service page. After mastering my own material for a while, and lending a hand in the mastering of the odd label release, I thought I'd extend the offer.
For those unfamiliar with the term, mastering is the final process a piece of music undergoes either prior to or as part of CD track compiling (i.e. preparing the final CD 'master'), and typically consists of compression, EQ and limiting, plus level-matching (for an album, or anything that consists of more than one track!).
So what can I do that you can't already handle yourself? Well, I can offer a fresh pair of ears, listening on a different system, in a different room, for starters. It can sometimes be difficult to retain perspective when working on tracks, as it's easy to become consumed with all the small tweaks and adjustments that come as part of music production, replaying a piece of music so many times as to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Mastering has perhaps been perceived as somewhat of a dark art in the past, but there is a wealth of information out on the web, should you wish to learn how to master your own music. Here are a few of the links I've found most useful over the past few years (please chime in and comment with your own useful links):
Gearslutz - A fantastic music production community, with a dedicated mastering forum full of useful information provided by knowledgeable, seasoned enthusiasts and engineers alike.
Sound On Sound - As well as offering a forum dedicated to mastering, there are plenty of related articles waiting to be found on the site's article search engine.
Digital Domain - A superb mastering resource, and home to Bob Katz, the author of Mastering Audio, a weighty tome dedicated to audio mastering and processing. The site's FAQ is particularly useful.
But should you prefer I handle the job for you, please wander over to the mastering page, and drop me a line. Feel free to comment here too if you have any queries.