A new South Wales - The Alarm

[SteveG]

I somehow managed to miss this band, but this is one of Wendy's favourites. We were looking it up on good ol' Youtube and came across Mike Peters doing a solo acoustic version. This is me trying to copy it. Hard song for a Rhondda boy to sing, I kept chocking up  Done on the MBR, tarted up a bit in Audition.
I am off work for two weeks so have too much time on my hands

[hooper]

Alright, Steve.  Sounds very authentic!

So, you're from Rhonndda?  First time I ever heard of Rhonndda is in  'The Bells of Rhymney'.... one of my all time favorites, Byrds style of course.  A hauntingly beautiful song. Been playing/singing about Merthyr, Blaina and Cardiff since I was 13 years old.  I expect you know all those places...? 

[tackium]

I'm amazed at the nicely finished overall sound of most of the recordings in this site. Mine always end up somewhat "dirty" somehow.

I admit I don't know much about mastering. I also notice some of you use other programs after the BR.

What is it I should be looking (listening) for in a "mastering" procedure?

Is it  the "other" software you guys use afterwards  that makes the difference?

Could one of you post some sort of a tutorial in mastering-with the BR only if possible?

[SteveG]

I don't always re-master on the PC, quite often I cant get on the damm thing  All I have done here is tidy up the intro (Four finger taps on the guitar body) and cut off the end, normalised the file to -3Db (To give headroom for any other changes), and applied a bit more compression to spread the sound's together along with a final EQ to soften the mix. All this can be done on the MBR, several of my posts here are MBR only, I generally say if I have "cheated" after  .

What you should be listening for? On a simple 4 track mix, say bass, 2 guitars and vox with the built in drums... Pan your vocals centre, the guitars fairly hard right and left, bass to one side or the other, I normally go right about 20 for no particular reason... The idea is to have all tracks sounding clear with no interference from the others. Go into mastering mode and flick through the master presets whilst listening till you find one you like. Set the levels of the tracks so they all balance in the mix, apply reverb to each track to taste. Don't forget the drum level and verb too! Now ... tweak the preset!!! There are loads of settings to play with, start with compression, I generally find I need more, then the mix, which again is to taste and depends on what frequencies are sounding more.

Try two masters ... for example bounce your 4 tracks (drums off) with pre-mastering and then remaster with live or jangly. Try bouncing your bass and rhythm parts with soft comperssion then adding vov and solos. Press effects twice and you can edit the reverb settings. Loads of things to try 

[tackium]

I'm grateful for that explanation, though is another one that made me dizzy...(looking for dictionary...)

[Fmarkow]

Nice performance SteveG. I always dug The Alarm, never followed Peters as a solo artists but this is a nice tune and I think you did it justice. On a technical note - another good example of the versatility of the BR, you are able to make it sound smooth and mellow. Thanks also for the mastering tips, I had not thought about pre-mastering on a bounce but it sure makes sense.