„An album is one whole, and it should be treated like one.“
Once your album is produced, one thing is still missing — the step that turns it into a finished product: mix and master. With several songs it is about more than each track on its own. They have to work together, stay at the same volume and carry a similar energy, so the whole thing is heard as one album. That is where I come in. I mix and master analogue, which gives your track a colour that plugins can only imitate with difficulty.
Get your free previewUnlike a single song, what matters here is not only how one track sounds on its own, but whether all of them together sound like a record. So I do not mix your songs one after another like unrelated jobs. Before anything else I decide where your voice sits, how wide the stage is and how much depth there is. Those decisions then apply to every track. That way your sound stays recognisable, even when one song is quiet and the next one breaks loose.
Mastering is where you notice fastest whether an album was thought of as a whole. If track three is clearly quieter than track four, the listener reaches for the volume, and that pulls them out. I set the loudness across all songs so they feel equally loud, without crushing the quiet one. Then there are the transitions: how long the gap between two tracks is, where one fades out and the next one comes in. What you end up with is not a collection of separate masters, but an album you can listen to from front to back. Because I master analogue, your songs get one consistent colour and a glue effect that plugins can only reproduce with difficulty.
The same applies to an EP, only tighter. It is shorter, and that is exactly why it forgives less. If one track falls out of line sonically, you notice immediately, because no other track catches it. So I treat your EP like an album: one sonic decision for all songs, instead of optimising each one separately.
With an EP too, the master is what turns the tracks into a release. The same loudness across all songs, transitions that match the running order, and an ending that feels like an ending. Whether you go out on Spotify, YouTube or pressed to vinyl afterwards does not change the principle.
How I work, meaning what actually happens during mixing and mastering, is on my mixing and mastering page.