Hey folks – I have a new website:
Amongst my many feathers on my bow, or fingers in many pies, or whichever mixed metaphors you prefer… doing some freelance mastering is a new one. I’ve been obsessed by mastering (as well as mixing) for some years now, and I’m now at the point where I feel happy doing it professionally. All part of the adaptive and many-threaded career of the modern musician.
I don’t have a professional mastering studio – just my own home studio, where I record, mix and master my own (and other people’s) tracks. So I’m trying to price myself super-cheap. That said, I’m also only interested getting high quality results. For an example of how my masters sound, just skip over to here: https://jamesbellcentral.net/music/
There are, incidentally, some websites that automate the mastering process using algorithms, and they can produce great results. (I go into this in a bit more detail on the website.) They can be hit and miss though – although I obviously would say that.
But the thing is, these algorithms are now available to mastering engineers too. You can push a button and get suggested mastering settings that are generated from analysing thousands and thousands of mixes. And I find this a fantastically useful tool, as a starting point (which is what it is billed as to mastering engineers: a useful, time-saving starting point, NOT an automation system). For example, just to get technical for a moment, this software is much better than I am at identifying subtle ‘rogue’ frequencies that might cause distortion later. But it nearly always makes decisions that I feel don’t match the genre or emotion of the track.
So… I’m hoping, at least, that there’s a market for similarly-priced humans.
If you think you might be interested in a similarly-priced human, do drop me a line here:
P.S…
Although I have of course proofread it thoroughly, I’ve only just put the website up so… if you spot any typos, do me a love and let me know, right? Thank you!