Producers Paying Someone To Master Their Beats...

  • Thread starter Thread starter karledwards
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karledwards

karledwards

Active member
The idea just came to me yesterday. Obviously alot of producers hire engineers to EQ their sh*t, but would it be worth it for a random person like me to send my mix to an engineer and pay them to master it? I'm talking about sending each different instrument/drum as a different WAV file.

Are their any producers that do this?
 
Thats not mastering that mixing. I don't see any worth in it personally, for me, might be different for others.
 
I know it's mixing, I was thinking about mastering the overall mix too. Until yesterday I saw no worth in it either. It's just I see alot of producers with terrible sounding mixes and masters. You can mix a track good, and then have a sh*tty, distorted master. I don't think it'd be worth it less you got plenty moneyy.
 
No doubt there is. Don't expect a great difference like taking your song to an engineer is going to revolutionize your entire song quality. My advice to everyday producers is to just take their project and sit-in with their engineer while he is doing his task.
 
well how does one become an engineer I mean it seems like everyone thinks they hear stuff that the producer does it you can get better at your master and your mixing and (obviously not as good as someone who does only that for their career) but good enough to where it sounds good and when you are "big" lets say then you get people to master your tracks .
 
Are you talking about mixing or mastering? For just beats, if you have a really solid mix, then just put a limiter on it and call it a day. You don't need to go hardcore with the mastering.

But if you are talking about mixing... a lot of beatmakers mix their own beats. Some of them are good at mixing, many of them are not. Other beatmakers send their beats to a mix engineer, the idea being either a) 'cause the beatmaker isn't a pro at mixing and/or b) so their beats sound tighter than the competitions' and thus they are more likely to get the placement. Bear in mind that most artists are going to drop vocals over the two-track and decide whether or not to pick up the beat based on that end result. As well, a lot of stuff goes on mixtapes where they are only going to use the 2track. So for those reasons, a solid mix of a beat is important.

Whether or not to send your beats to a mix engineer is up to you. How many beatmakers do it? I don't know, but I get a lot of beatmakers as mix clients and there never seems to be a shortage of them so obviously quite a lot of beatmakers use a mix engineer. Most mix engineers will mix a beat pretty damn cheap, but still, if you have a lot of beats to mix it can add up so it depends on how much work you are getting to justify the cost. If you don't have a prayer of ever placing a beat, then don't bother paying someone to mix your beats as it would be a waste of money.
 
The main reason I ask this is cause ever since about a year ago I've constantly wondered what was the difference between producers that become successful and producers that don't. Not just producers, but rappers too and anyone else that makes music.

Everyone can list many reasons why people don't make it, but few people can hardly list a couple reasons why people do make it. I see alot of people doing music for money. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. I hate when I see producers on SoundClick selling beats for $10 or $25 dollars. I think the internet messed up the entire music industry.

I'm not about to ramble on, but if anybody else has something to say..
 
Time for some humility: When I first started producing, CDs weren't very common, the internet was just gaining steam, and the entire beat pitching thing worked much differently than it does today. That said, one of my biggest mistakes (gulp) starting was when I'd produce a song for a local artist and then NOT get a pro to mix it. I feel like some of those early recordings could have gotten more notice if I had sucked it up, lost the cockiness, and hired a good mix engineer. It would have helped push my career a lot faster than it otherwise plodded along. In hind site, it was a mistake on my part. I meet a lot of producers who are smarter than I was then. Of course, these days, with high-speed internet the norm and every mix engineer accepting files from anywhere in the world, it's a hell of a lot easier to work with a mix engineer.
 
There is no reason to have someone else mix or master your beats.

They're just beats. I'm an engineer and don't go thru the work some of you guys put into a beat.

Reasoning: If an artist likes a beat and it's mixed halfway decent in the 1st place, they can record over the half azzed mixed beat that sounds like crap, and have their professional engineer add FX like EQ, Dynamics, Stereo Enhancers, Noise reduction, ect. When the finished track is done the beat will knock and have the same clarity as you would've got from a good mix in the 1st place. A good engineer can easily adjust freqs to make everything mesh well and sound professional, that's why it's a job everyone can't do.

If the beat is so poorly mixed that it is beyond this point(most likely due to overprocessing being done by someone with no clue of what they were doing trying to mix, ironically)the artist will request the song tracked out.

In either situation you're losing out because whether your beat is well mixed or not beforehand has little to do with the outcome of the song. keep in mind this is all assuming you're working with guys who are professionally mixing their finished product.

If not, you can give them the cleanest, best mixed beat in the world and they'll manage to f**k the quality up beyond repair. So either way, pointless.
 
I guess. I was waiting for you to say something. I was talking in the terms of shopping your beats around. It seems like alot of rappers these days just go by how the overall mix sounds. You could have the rawest beat in the world, but if the master sucks who's gonna want to buy it. People who listen to your beats with intent to buy em don't look at em like "Oh this one has some potential, maybe I could get an engineer to make it sound harder". Sadly, most rappers these days have no idea what an engineer is or does.
 
^^^And those are the same one who would f**k your mix up if it was good in the 1st place.

Producers tend to think they know what rappers are looking for. Anyone on these boards who was a rapper at anytime in their life will tell you otherwise. I've never heard a beat that I thought was too poorly mixed for me to rap over while I was spitting. And this was the days when a beat would set you back $1500 easy and producers didn't have compressors and limiters. Just an MPC or Triton hooked up to a pair of speakers. You even got beats on tape, lol.

I got clients who come in the studio as recently as 2 days ago asking me to rip instrumentals from a youtube vid for them to rap over because they already wrote the song. They get bummed when I have to explain to them how poor the quality of that will turn out.

But i can't save the world, beleive it's the mix. Everyone on this site does this week. Next week it'll be the gear again. Never the finished product and your hustle at pushing it.
 
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I used to rap, still do a little. I've heard plenty of horribly mixed beats. Most of the time it's because people on here give some bullsh*t advice to someone that leads them to start doing too much. Like EQ'ing, compressing, and limiting everything.
 
True, you cannot explain the importance of a good mix to some people. Usually the advice being given on the internet makes it to be like theres some kind of magic formula which leads to a good mix. Like, yeah you should add so much gain to this and that frequency for your vocals..end result usually a ****ty mix.

Whether or not you should have your beats mixed is of course totally up to you. You could wait until there's a finished track with vocals. Or, if you want to have the beat mixed good because the sound of your beats will then stand out next to the beat cds of other producers, that might be a good option too. Both situations are pretty common.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
There is no reason to have someone else mix or master your beats.

They're just beats. I'm an engineer and don't go thru the work some of you guys put into a beat.

Reasoning: If an artist likes a beat and it's mixed halfway decent in the 1st place, they can record over the half azzed mixed beat that sounds like crap, and have their professional engineer add FX like EQ, Dynamics, Stereo Enhancers, Noise reduction, ect. When the finished track is done the beat will knock and have the same clarity as you would've got from a good mix in the 1st place. A good engineer can easily adjust freqs to make everything mesh well and sound professional, that's why it's a job everyone can't do.

If the beat is so poorly mixed that it is beyond this point(most likely due to overprocessing being done by someone with no clue of what they were doing trying to mix, ironically)the artist will request the song tracked out.

In either situation you're losing out because whether your beat is well mixed or not beforehand has little to do with the outcome of the song. keep in mind this is all assuming you're working with guys who are professionally mixing their finished product.

If not, you can give them the cleanest, best mixed beat in the world and they'll manage to f**k the quality up beyond repair. So either way, pointless.
Click to expand...

qft, working on a project right now with a few LQ beats, pulled out the EQ and they're crispy again.
 
karledwards said:
I used to rap, still do a little. I've heard plenty of horribly mixed beats. Most of the time it's because people on here give some bullsh*t advice to someone that leads them to start doing too much. Like EQ'ing, compressing, and limiting everything.
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Exactly what I was saying, I may not have worded it right. But, when people just made beats, no one complained about a bad mix. I've never heard a "poorly mixed beat" until people had access to tools the producer shouldn't be touching unless he's also an engineer.

And I'm not downplaying the mixing process, but I've been in enough listening sessions to know if you're dealing with artists who are about any type of business, they're blasting your tracks when they listen anyway, so loudness, clarity, and low end have no factor in the listening phase. It would definitely matter when some guy on myspace is checking your music on his laptop speakers. But he's some guy on myspace using laptop speakers. :cheers:
 
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Bottom line is, unless you have a very nicely tuned listening environment, an engineer in said environment WILL probably be able to make your stuff sound better. I've been makin beats and doing my own mixes for over 10 years. However earlier this summer, I got onto a label and was commisioned to do some remixes and a full album worth if beats. I have a decent setup for monitoring, (yamaha hs80's and krk rockit 5's to compare mixes on)... i did my best making the mixes sound good on my setup and i was actually confident that we wouldn't need to do much on the mastering side. So two weeks after I'm all done with the album for the most part, my buddy who's girlfriend ends up landing the job at CRC (largest recording facility in the midwest) we take the session files over there to sneak in some mixing and listening on their outsanding neve console with a $30k monitoring setup...

I sit back while she basically mixes the songs from where i "left off".

We let her do a couple songs from scratch with her ear when we werent around and then i sat in on a couple other songs and steered her in the direction and sound we were looking for.

I learned 3 very important lessons:

1) the mixes she did on her own were just horrible. I mean they were super clean and whimsy in a colgate tv commercial music kinda way which completely took the umph, abrasive qaulities and boom bap out of the tracks. Dont get me wrong they were clean as hell and very wide, warm but some engineers that are just not experienced with hip hop or the likes may not get you sounding the way you want to.

2) the tracks/mixing sessions where I sat in and said..." yo, those drums need to be way louder"... "less reverb on the hook, it sounds cheesy" and stuff like that. I gotta say wow! those tracks came out amazingly better than what I was able to accomplish in my aprtment studio.

3) I learned where my skill set with mixing really was. As soon as i heard some of my stuff that sounded good in the volkswagen, at the home studio... in my buddies apartment stero, etc... we pop it up on the 12" genelec monitors at CRC and I was immediately like, "DAMN, this one sounds good" and "oooh, what the **** was i thinking!" on that one

Bottom line: You can always benefit from a proper moniring environment even if you are tenured and can mix well for the most part AND... never let your pride get in the way of the greater good and your art/reputation as an artist.

If you got the money, connections, label or access... by all means do it and make sure you are sitting in on the sessions to lend your ear and input to your own art. and if you're gonn apay someone.. make sure it's a commercial studio, not some dude who used to work at a commercial studio who has some mackie monitors in his apartment just liek you.
 
Not being sexist, but I've yet to cross a female engineer who did a good job with hip hop. inclding Ms. largo.

Females tend to overlook the thump when mixing which is wierd, because girls in the club and passenger seat of your ride are all about the bass.

That's not being sexist, just speaking from my experience. They do their think on Pop Records and certain genres of RNB. but don't trust no 808s and sine waves to them.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
Not being sexist, but I've yet to cross a female engineer who did a good job with hip hop. inclding Ms. largo.

Females tend to overlook the thump when mixing which is wierd, because girls in the club and passenger seat of your ride are all about the bass.

That's not being sexist, just speaking from my experience. They do their think on Pop Records and certain genres of RNB. but don't trust no 808s and sine waves to them.
Click to expand...

LMAO.

You crazy dog.

HAHA
 
eleveight said:
If you got the money, connections, label or access... by all means do it and make sure you are sitting in on the sessions to lend your ear and input to your own art. and if you're gonn apay someone.. make sure it's a commercial studio, not some dude who used to work at a commercial studio who has some mackie monitors in his apartment just liek you.
Click to expand...

Good monitoring is everything. but good monitoring boils down to the ears recieving the signal. If the engineer is a beast on a pair of Mackies in his apt. It will make for a better mix than being done on the most professional of setups.

I've stolen alot of work from big studios straight out of my home and did a way better mix than them. And I'm not even on the insecure side, I engineered at the studios I stole the work from. Why pay $60 an hour for me to be your on call room engineer when you can come sit on my couch at my crib all day for the same cost of 2 hours there when I can give you the same sound out of my home? I also don't use mackies, but I ain't using Genelecs either, lol. :cheers:
 
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