Impactful Mastering for $80

Give your music the final touch that takes it to the next level. I can offer a highly trained second set of ears with neutral monitoring for objective decision-making.

I master tracks for maximum emotional impact and dynamics. I love listening to a mix and figuring out how to enhance what's there to best serve the intent of the music.

I grew up in Vermont around traditional Irish music, and so I have a deep appreciation for acoustic and live music, even though I also dig everything from Funk to EDM.

I perform the majority of my mastering work on headphones. This allows me to carry a studio on my head with a perfectly flat frequency response. Another nice bonus is that I can fit my mastering studio in a backpack and take it on the road with me. I still enjoy mixing in monitors.

My Process
1. Quality Control
I listen to your track(s) closely for anything that should be re-addressed in the mix before proceeding to mastering. If I hear any undesired artifacts, such as pops or clicks, or anything else, I let you know and you can send me a corrected mix version.

2. Evaluation
Getting a sense of the desired emotional impact of the music is very important to me at this stage. I jot down what I love about the mix and what I think may be able to improve. Mastering is as much art as science!

3. Enhancement
With processing, I subtly bring out the aspects of the mix that I love and attenuate any issues that I feel need help, all with context in mind. How is this master going to compare to other songs in its genre or other songs on the same EP or album? Will the mix still sound fantastic in mono, in the car, or on earbuds?

4. Leveling and Sequencing
I arrange the tracks in order (for EP and albums) with the right amount of spacing for the album to flow. I also take care of the boring work of encoding metadata such as ISRC codes and track titles.
Finally, I enhance the loudness of the music to an appropriate level for the genre and finally delivary mediums. I will never compromise the impactfulness of the mix just for loudness sake!

5. Delivery
I deliver the masters in the necessary formats to specificaton for duplication and distribution. I typically deliver hi-res wav files for distribution services, MP3 files for press kits, and a DDP file for CD duplication.