GarageBand For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11

Mastering Mastering

IN THIS CHAPTER

What is mastering?

Understanding the Master Track

Adding the final touches

There’s no mystery about mastering — you already know how to do it; you just don’t know that you know yet. You see, mastering is nothing more than applying familiar effects, such as EQ, echo, reverb, and compression, to your entire song instead of individual tracks.

Mastering is the final step in the multitrack recording process; it’s the last thing you do before you distribute your work for others to hear. In big-time major-label music production, mastering is a specialized art performed by a handful of highly paid mastering engineers with state-of-the-art mastering studios and the highest-of-high-quality audio-processing hardware and software.

Fortunately, you don’t have to go to that trouble or expense: The plethora of presets in GarageBand's built-in mastering harnesses the knowledge of a roomful of mastering engineers.

I’m only half-kidding. The GarageBand mastering presets are excellent and can give most people the results they want and expect most of the time. However, if you plan to have your song professionally duplicated in quantity, you might want ...