I am unable to stress enough the advantage of having your home recorded Hip Hop songs Mastered by some other Mastering Engineer that specializes in the Hip Hop genre. The end result will no doubt be better when done by an experienced ear with an acoustically tuned environment & Mastering specific gear. With that in mind, it is possible for you to achieve usable results in your home Hip Hop recording studio & the purpose of this article is to help you achieve those results while using recording gear/software that you already own. If you're recording on Digidesign Protools software you'll be able to use the plug ins that included the program. Most similar programs must have comparable processing plug ins so consult your user manual for all those.
Mixtape Mastering
You will start your mastering session with a two track stereo mix of your song preferably with the master level peaking at about -3db never striking the red on the meter. This mix should already be sounding the way you want while needing a boost in volume & perhaps a couple EQ tweaks to make it translate well to numerous sound systems/sources.
Starting with the EQ make adjustments to the lows, mids, & highs, based on any notes that you simply taken after hearing your mix on several different types of sound sources such as earbuds, a car system, a bookshelf stereo, a mono clock radio, laptop speakers etc. Your ultimate goal is for your master to end up sounding good on all of the different systems where of course on larger systems with sub woofers you'll have more bass & on laptop speakers & earbuds you will see little or no sub bass. The bottom line is to have a master that still retains clarity on each of these sources. When you listen to your mix on these sources listen for frequency issues that tend to show up on multiple sound sources as these are the first things you should focus on with the EQ. You should try trial & error to obtain the frequencies and remember it is always better to fix by cutting the offensive sounds then by boosting other frequencies to pay for them. Remember that any EQ tweaks that you simply perform on the stereo mix is going to affect the whole song so guarantee the adjustments are actually fixing the issue without causing a bigger one out of another area.
The next step in your home Hip Hop Mastering session once you are happy with the EQ results will be adding a Compressor towards the track. This will be accustomed to give the song an even level sound making the track level consistent from beginning to end. The Compressor will also aid in boosting the perceived amount of the song. Below is really a set of Compressor settings that I have come to use on Rap tracks as a starting point when putting together an audio lesson Master.
gain 3.5 db
threshold -22.6 db
ratio 3.00:1
attack 11 ms
release 50 ms
knee 80
(They are compressor start off positions which I have found are a good starting place for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)
The following device in line after the Compressor is a Limiter, which is kind of like a Compressor on steroids, the Limiter will be used to max out the volume of the mix & produce a master that is as loud every commercially released Hip Hop track.
The Limiter settings shown below are settings that I have discovered to be a good starting point achieving a loud though not distorted final master of the Home studio recorded Rap track
3.5 gain
threshold 17.6 db
attack 1.0 ms
release 20 ms
(They are Limiter start off positions which i've found are a good starting place for Hip Hop recordings in which the mix has been peaked at -3db)
You will want to do A/B listening comparisons between your working master & a commercially released Hip Hop track that is similar in fashion to your song. You will need your master to become as loud because the commercially released song and translate well on all the different sound systems/sources.
Just as you will need to do with a mix, after completing your song master save it & leave it alone for a day or two then come back to it with fresh ears and you may have a different perspective on it & finds things to fix that may have been missed earlier. once you feel your song master resembles the commercially released song you're done mastering your new song.
There are many different specialty programs & software extensions that are designed for Mastering however this article is geared toward those that want to master their songs while using options that are already present on their recording software or workstation. Also keep in mind that Pro Mastering houses will furnish you with a master CD that'll be verified to be error free in addition to contain special encoding that'll be the master you would want to give to a CD replication/duplication plant to obtain mass produced CD's. It is really an important feature although it seems in the music business more & more artists are bypassing the price of getting CD's made & instead having download only releases.
The info in this article should give you a path to follow when attempting to master your Rap songs in your own home studio. There aren't any rules set in stone though trial & error have helped to formulate the mastering procedure given above.
