Hit Music Studios

07/05/2024

06/13/2024

https://youtu.be/xn-kFz5ibGA?si=2kfx-dCw1Bdrs6Ak
YES

03/10/2024

It's that time of the year again.

12/24/2023

Just found this out.

11/25/2023

It's that time.

11/10/2023

Now hiring!

08/22/2023

I am that one friend who is the strongest tree in the forest. I will believe in you support you and stand strong above all the rest. I will protect you from the shallow rooted and the winds of strive. For my roots are deeply rooted in love, truth and eternal devotion. - JIMM

07/29/2023

The most talented and adorable, two year-old I've ever met.

05/20/2023

Back in the studio with Melissa.

05/17/2023

I’m Back.

05/12/2022

Mixing Day.

07/08/2019

Awesome day in the studio with Jamie James Slate

05/30/2019

Why is mastering an important part of the process?

Well, I'm a mastering engineer. I've been mastering for 25 years. It was always quite a big part of the process where it was a transfer service. So, you would have your mix that was done on tape, and then you would be working out how to get it onto the format, which would be vinyl or CD, things like that. But these days, it's turned into a much more creative process because a lot of people are working from home. They're not working in big studios anymore. Over the last 10 years, mastering has changed quite a lot.

Because I've been doing it for 25 years, I've kind of seen that progression change, and although it is a creative thing, I always think that you should always be trying to keep the mix as true to the mix as it was. But the great thing now – by using an external mastering engineer – is you have another set of ears where they can listen to your mix. They can't work out whether it's any good or not, but they can work out if it needs any changing or any tweaks before it goes to the final thing. Because they're listening to tracks – just as a track, just as a stereo information; they're not listening to the individual instruments – they have a very good way of listening to something whether it's too bright, too harsh, too woolly, too bassy and just those kinds of general finishing process things.

So, it's a super important process, and if you're thinking that you can cut it out or try and do it yourself, you can do it yourself. But I can guarantee that most of the time, I can get things sounding much better personally than what someone's tried to do themselves because I'm taking a different approach to it as they would. I mean, a lot of the times, they're going to want to keep it how they've got it, because that's how they liked it and they've got used to it. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right thing. You can sometimes take it somewhere else for them, and you're looking at it from a different place. So, suddenly you can take it there and they think, "Oh god, I didn't realise it could go there; I thought I'd taken it as far as I could," and that's quite satisfying as a mastering engineer to help them work that way. But a lot of the times, it's really just to be like a QC, just so that you can like quality control on what's going on with the mix, and also to deliver it to record labels and make sure that everything's correct before it goes off to any pressing plants or whether it gets cut onto vinyl or anything.

So, it's basically a very good way of making sure your track's correct before it goes off to Spotify and all these other places, and having a professional do that is obviously the best way to do it. You can do it yourself, but it's relatively cheap these days to get people to master your tracks for you, and there's a lot of guys out there. So, yeah, definitely a process that has become more important as people have been working from home, and I think it's something that you should not take lightly. Try it yourself, but always try somebody else and then see how you go with that. Building a relationship with somebody, making them part of your team is a great thing, because it means you've got someone outside who's going to give you some great info and feedback on your music.

04/25/2019

Jack Burns working on string automation before I do the final mix.

04/25/2019

Jack Burns working on string automation before I do the final mix.

04/24/2019

Mail call! 1970’s Eriksen mint!

03/05/2019

Grooving with Jack Burnzy.