Chapter 16: Delivering Your Music for Distribution

Ever notice that commercial recordings sound pretty different from the computer-based productions you have heard from your friends? That is because they go through a process called mastering. Before we get to that, though, we will need to bounce our mix or possibly send our individual tracks to another mix engineer.

We will discuss the following topics in this chapter:

• Bounce options
• Exporting tracks for mixing outside the project
• Mastering and pre-mastering

Bouncing a stereo mix

You have worked really hard on your composition, arranging, and final mix. You are almost ready to send your baby out into the world. Or are you? Perhaps you want to send the individual tracks or combinations of them to another engineer.

Either way, you will first want a stereo mix for yourself, or as a guide to the engineer as to what you are envisioning.

You may consider, if you have not already, whether or not you want a fade out at the end of the track instead of a more abrupt ending. Fade outs can be quite long or quite short, depending on how you want it to sound.

In the following screenshot, you can see that for this song, I automated the stereo output to do a very short fade:

Figure 16.1 – A short automated fade out

The stereo output will be added to the bottom of the track list if you either assign it to an automation mode, or in the Mixer, you select it and go under the Options menu and choose Create Tracks, or...

Exporting tracks to send to a mix engineer

If you have a project where you feel you cannot do the mix justice and have the resources to hire an engineer, they may not work in Logic Pro or may not have the same software instruments and sample libraries that you do, so you will need to export the tracks to send to them. The process was fully explained in Chapter 12, Getting the Arrangement Right, so I will not reiterate it here.

Mastering your mix

Mastering is the final step in preparing recordings for commercial release. Mastering engineers typically do the following:

• Eliminate pops and clicks and other noise flaws.
• Adjust the volumes between songs for consistency so that listeners do not have to keep turning the volume up and down when listening to an album.
• Adjust the volume so that the loudness conforms to the standards of the intended playback medium (streaming services, CDs, and so on).
• Adjust the EQ and width of the songs, and apply compression or expansion.
• Arrange the songs' order and add fade outs, where required.
• Insert ISRC codes and CD text.

The changed role of the mastering engineer

Mastering engineers were considered an elite class of engineers. They had very specific knowledge of how the grooves on vinyl records worked and often thousands of dollars of analog gear to master with, which they knew really well. They were considered essential by record...

Summary

In this chapter, we covered all the file formats available for bouncing, as well as other options. We mentioned the information for exporting tracks, which was discussed in Chapter 12, Getting the Arrangement Right, and ended with a discussion of mastering and what I like to refer to as pre-mastering.

I hope you will find this book helpful as you begin your relationship with Logic Pro. As with all good relationships, it requires a substantial investment in time and real commitment, but the rewards are really great!

Logic Pro is incredibly deep, and new features are being constantly added, so it grows even deeper. I have been using Logic since 1.0 in 1993, and I am still constantly learning more about it in my daily work.

Good luck, and have fun with Logic Pro.

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