A compressor is an important tool when it comes to mastering. Today we’ll go through some tips to get the most out of it. First: What is a compressor? A compressor, in short, is a device which reduces the dynamic range of an audio signal. Dynamic range is the difference in loudness between the loudest and quietest parts of your mix or any kind of audio source. A compressor reduces the volume of the peaks or louder parts of a mix (for example when a kick drum hits). As a result, you get a more „flat” audio curve. The dynamic...

1. Compressor: Transfer Curve View The ”Transfer Curve” view is the second view in Ableton’s Compressor. It’s confusing to a lot of people, so I thought I’d explain it. Remember what an y=x graph looks like? The display in this mode is very similar to a graph, but instead of the x and y it displays input volume and output volume. When the Ratio is set to 1:1 no compression is happening - the compressor doesn’t affect the volume at all. That means that no matter how loud the input signal is, the output level is exactly the same. That...

  In this tutorial, Francois is writing and voicing uplifting Summer House chords in the C#-Minor scale shooting trying to achieve a optimistic and stable sounding chord progression in the style of EDX, Nora En Pure, Dinka, Armas, etc. Listen in! Feel free to take a look at our MIDI packs:   MIDI Pack   Learn more about our Harmony and Chords: Course: Harmony & Chord Progressions        Keywords: EDM, Progressive House Chords, EDX Chords, Nora En Pure Chords, Dinka Chords, style track with ableton live, drums with ableton live, remix ableton project file, edit, starting with ableton live, starting out with ableton live.

Referencing is a very useful tool when mixing or mastering any track. Here are a few tips on why and how to compare your track to a reference. It helps you making the right decisions. After hours and hours of listening to a track, your ears get used to the sound of your mix. With the complexity of today’s music, it’s necessary to spend a lot of time on drum patterns, melody writing or sound design. By the time you get to the mixing stage, your ears have already gotten used to the sound of the mix - and that’s...

When mastering a track it’s crucial to understand the difference between RMS and peak levels. Today I’m going to show you what they are and how we can use them. Back in the day when I was starting out with making music, I faced the problem of my tracks being too quiet. Even though the „peak volume indicator” showed that my track’s highest volume was around 0dB, it was still too quiet when played alongside professional tracks. Loudness ≠ Peak Volume What I was trying to get out of my track is loudness. What I was looking at instead was...

In this article we’re going through the mastering chains of pro producers like Deadmau5 and Laidback Luke. We will also show you our PML Mastering Chain, made with Ableton stock plugins. These racks come in handy when polishing up your tracks - that’s why we have included them as a free download. Enjoy! Get the free download of our Ableton-only mastering rack in the free section Deadmau5's Mastering Chain   1) LinEQ (Waves) Low Cut: roll-off below 32HZ (depends a bit on input track) Removing low frequencies we can hardly hear on most playback systems and gaining headroom for our other elements....

If you’re like most producers, chances are that the last element of your mastering chain is a limiter with a ceiling at 0dB. Unfortunately even though in our DAW such a track isn’t clipping, it can distort after conversion to analog audio. Today I’m going to show you how to avoid this problem caused by a phenomenon called ISP (inter-sample peaks) I used to master my tracks with the peak volume at 0dB, which was the ceiling of my limiter. „Why should I give my track more headroom if audio distorts only over 0dB?” - I thought. One time I...

For the last few decades, the music industry has been fighting on producing loud records, as they assumed that people prefer loud music over music with more dynamics. Not only today’s research proves that to be false, but also a new tool is being implemented by streaming services, which makes the loudness war pointless. The loudness war has led mastering engineers to use heavy compression and limiting on albums to the extreme. Metallica’s 2009 album „Death Magnetic” is the loudest album in music history, and in my opinion it sounds terrible. As a response to the loudness war, a mastering...

  In this tutorial, Francois is writing chords in the F-Minor scale shooting trying to achieve a rather dramatic and full sounding chord progression on an 8-voices and detuned saw lead sound. Listen in! Feel free to take a look at our MIDI packs:   MIDI Pack   Learn more about our Harmony and Chords: Course: Harmony & Chord Progressions        Keywords: EDM, Progressive House Chords, Future Bass Chords, Martin Garrix Chords, Avicii Chords, style track with ableton live, drums with ableton live, remix ableton project file, edit, starting with ableton live, starting out with ableton live.

There’s a lot of misconceptions about mastering. Some confuse it with the mixing process, some treat it as a „magic spell” to make your track shine. Today we’re going to bust the myths about mastering, so that you can apply it well. Think of mixing and mastering like this: Mixing is getting individual parts or instruments to work as a song. In the mixing process we are processing individual tracks in order for all the tracks to sound good together. Think of it like building a car. All the parts of the car need to be assembled properly in order...