Last year, I finished Christmas and Glowsticks too late to get on iTunes. Not this year. But, to make it interesting, I decided to remaster the entire CD before releasing it on the online download sites.
So what does this mean?
I’ve been doing a lot of listening lately–to commercial dance music, and I realized, when I compare Christmas and Glowsticks to commercial recordings, that it needed to be a little more punchy. This year I’ve learned a lot more about music production, so I figured that I would use my new skills to add some gloss to last years’ tracks.
Now, for the technical part.
I’m going back and getting my original Glowsticks files from storage. I’m making a few tweaks, here and there, of the original files, and then I’m exporting “stems” of instrumental groups: drums, bass, synths, leads. But I’m exporting at 32 bit. Working with files that have such a crazy high bit depth means that I can export the files at a lower volume, and not have to worry about them clipping, while retaining all the character of the music. Essentially, with that high of a bit depth, each sample of music, each moment contains so much information that later, in the mastering stage, I can boost the volume without damaging the original character of the sound–without creating “artifacts”.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m exporting at a slightly lower volume than normal, around -3db (many mastering engineers say that -6db should be standard for digital mixes, to avoid clipping).
So, how does it sound?
I’m liking the sound more than last year’s mixes. The sound is loud and punchy, but it also breathes. There is dynamic range.
Also, because I’m exporting stems, I am doing lots of other clever things like sidechaining the bass and drums–this means that with every drum hit, the volume of the bass drops in volume to get out of the way of the drums. I’m also using some shelving EQ, so that the bass mostly sits only in the lower end of the spectrum, and doesn’t have high harmonics that interfere with the higher instruments. And I’m shelving the synths so that they don’t have much bass frequencies, so they don’t step on the bass’s toes.
Essentially, the mixes sound better, more punchy, warmer, and the instruments have greater clarity.
