I am unable to stress enough the advantage of having your home recorded Hip Hop songs Mastered by some other Mastering Engineer that are experts in the Hip Hop genre. The outcome will no doubt be superior when done by a trained ear with an acoustically tuned environment & Mastering specific gear. With that said, it is possible for you to achieve usable leads to your home Hip Hop recording studio & the objective of this article is to help you achieve those results using the recording gear/software that you already own. If you're recording on Digidesign Protools software then you can use the plug ins that included the program. Most similar programs should have comparable processing extensions so consult your user manual for all those.

Mixtape Mastering

You will start your mastering session with a two track stereo mix of your song preferably using the master level peaking at about -3db never hitting the red on the meter. This combination should already be sounding how you want while needing a lift in volume & maybe a couple EQ tweaks to really make it translate well to numerous sound systems/sources.



Starting with the EQ make adjustments to the lows, mids, & highs, according to any notes that you taken after listening to your mix on several different types of sound sources such as earbuds, a car system, a bookshelf stereo, a mono clock radio, laptop speakers etc. Your ultimate goal is for your master to end up sounding good on all of the different systems where of course on larger systems with sub woofers you will have more bass & on laptop speakers & earbuds you will see little or no sub bass. The key is to have a master that also retains clarity on all these sources. When you listen to your mix on these sources listen for frequency issues that tend to show up on multiple sound sources as these are the first things you should work on with the EQ. You should try trial & error to find the frequencies and remember it is usually better to fix by cutting the offensive sounds then by boosting other frequencies to pay for them. Remember that any EQ tweaks that you perform on the stereo mix is going to affect the whole song so guarantee the adjustments are actually fixing the issue without causing a bigger one out of another area.



The next phase in your home Hip Hop Mastering session once you are happy with the EQ results will be adding a Compressor to the track. This will be accustomed to give the song an even level sound making the track level consistent from start to finish. The Compressor will also aid in boosting the perceived amount of the song. Below is a set of Compressor settings that I have come to use on Rap tracks as a starting place when putting together a song Master.



gain 3.5 db



threshold -22.6 db



ratio 3.00:1



attack 11 ms



release 50 ms



knee 80



(These are compressor start off positions which I have found are a good starting place for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)



The following device in line following the Compressor is a Limiter, that is kind of like a Compressor on steroids, the Limiter will be used to max out the volume of the mix & create a master that is as loud every commercially released Hip Hop track.



The Limiter settings shown here are settings that I have found to be a good starting point achieving a loud though not distorted final master of the Home studio recorded Hip Hop track



3.5 gain



threshold 17.6 db



attack 1.0 ms



release 20 ms

Mixtape Mastering

(These are Limiter start off positions which I have found are a good starting place for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)



You will need to do A/B listening comparisons involving the working master & a commercially released Rap track that is similar in fashion to your song. You will need your master to be as loud as the commercially released song and translate well on all the different sound systems/sources.



Just as you will want to do with a mix, after completing your song master save it & let it rest alone for a day or two then come back to it with fresh ears and you may have a different perspective on it & finds things to fix that could have been missed earlier. once you feel your song master resembles the commercially released song you're done mastering your brand-new song.



There are many different specialty programs & software extensions that are designed for Mastering however this article is geared toward those that want to master their songs while using options that are already present on the recording software or workstation. Also remember that Pro Mastering houses will provide you with a master CD that'll be verified to be error free as well as contain special encoding that will be the master you would want to give to a CD replication/duplication plant to get mass produced CD's. It is really an important feature although it seems in the music business more & more artists are bypassing the price of getting CD's made & instead having download only releases.



The info in this article should give you a path to follow when trying to master your Rap songs in your own home studio. There are no rules set in stone though trial & error have helped to formulate the mastering procedure given above.

Mixtape Mastering