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Originally Posted by Florya
"you are a fool if you think your music would sound good inbetween two tracks mastered TOTALLY differently. Other people's tracks affect the way YOUR music would be heard"
A comment left by 'hevusa' on a previous post.
Whoever this idiot is just doesn't get it.
If my track was the sound of leaves rustling in a gentle breeze, that's exactly what I would want it to sound like. If my track was placed between two harsh noise tracks then so bo be it, I would still want it to be at its original volume, not cranked up to 11 to match the surrounding music. That would ruin my track. Sensible sequencing of the tracks would remove nearly all these so called 'mastering' problems
Mastering is an art form in itself and can fundamentally change the way a track sounds by the skillful application of filters and EQ. But the person doing the mastering needs to be experienced in the genre of music they are working on. It is not something that can be applied in a generic way to every type of music.
By the nature of the music that I write, fluctuations in frequencies and clashing harmonics produce sounds of their own that were never written into the original track, and after spending days, sometimes weeks, getting those frequencies and harmonics to sound just right, the last thing I'm going to do is to hand the track over to someone who's going filter the frequencies in an attempt to make it sound 'good', thereby undoing all my work.
So while Glice and GD have been kind enough to ask me to donate a track to this project, I am happy to do so. But if the track I donate doesn't fit, then by all means leave it out. I'm not being sniffy about it, I'm just saying that I have no problem with my track being dropped if my intransigence over mastering lowers the quality of the project as a whole.
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Exactly.
That's why I have a problem viewing a compilation as some kind of unity, even when there's a theme and a certain degree of cohesiveness involved, there's always some randomness to it (which I like) and you gotta analyse each track individually, as you would each artist.
I've had tracks ruined by professionals who just didn't get what we were getting at, and if I could go back in time I would opt for no mastering at all in some cases. I do find it interesting, I like to be surprised by the results but I'm not alone in this and I work with someone who, unlike me, has all the technical knowlege and devotes himself to every detail.
Personally, I'm happy listening to bedroom cassette tapes or super overly produced tracks, as the essence that interests me is beyond that.