I write a music blog about ableton...stuff like this. If you want to read more, visit This blog is about "Preparing your Mastering Engineer". Recently, I have been doing my first real set of tracks for mastering. The first I would consider worthy of mastering and therefor, have spent a lot of time trying to make it as smooth as possible, especially when dealing with mastering engineers via internet. Being in Japan, leaves me with only SUPER EXPENSIVE options for mastering, and, less chill communications. No discrimination intended, but you really want to be able to explain yourself to your mastering engineer. Anyway, I have made MANY mistakes (THANKS RICH!!!!!), and luckily, my engineer has been patient with me. Anyone can get a track mastered, but if the track was SHIT in the first place, it doesnt magically become gold. "You cant scrub rocks into diamonds". Anyway, I am going to go over some of the important things to think about before mastering a track, and a few things about how to make your mastering engineers job easier. This is coming from the musicians point of view, and I know that mastering engineers out there will probably say "YOU GOTTA DO MORE THAN THAT!!!!"...but, these are just some of the common mistakes I made in the beginning, or at least realized through reading some books and discussing with people on ableton forums. (great by the way!) Lets start with some really basic things that seem to be the source of a lot of problems. I will be talking about ableton live, but these ideas can be applied to other DAWs. Also, my mastering engineer doesnt JUST master...he also cleans up tracks a little one by one, and does some adjustments to the levels of bass, kick because I cannot turn my speakers up to club level where I live. This is important. So, I send tracks one by one when exporting....and let my engineer do a little bit more fancy work with the mastering. I am lucky to have a very hardworking and caring engineer. This is partly mixing and partly mastering. 1. Bad samples. Get in a habit of checking your samples. Dont go too fast, and do it WHILE you are making the track. It takes one second to make sure the sample is not bad. I have noticed that some samples are already clipping in their original form...even important things such as kicks, etc. MAKE SURE its not clipping. If it is, DONT USE IT. Find a better sample. This is a shot of one of my kicks I made a mistake on. Im a dumb ass! That was the kick on greatest composer. It was bad from the start. 2. Make sure YOU DONT CLIP the samples. Remember in ableton, just because your master is set to -WHATEVER, or 0...you can still be clipping your actual samples and synthesizers. Its important to put a spectrum RIGHT AFTER your samples (not at the end of an effects chain) and check out samples periodically as you make tracks. Sometimes, it might not be smart to get "OUT OF THE GROOVE" to do it, but when you are finished, just go back and check them out. Make sure within your simpler or sampler, your sample is running below 0db at least. Also make sure your wav samples are not clipping either by moving the fader in clip view. Look at the TOPS AND BOTTOMS of the samples as you move it to make sure it isnt already infact cut off (bad sample). You dont want to use those.... 3. Make sure your levels were made to go to mastering in the first place. General rule of thumb...set your KICK at -12 db, and build from there. It is unlikely that you will go much higher than your kick. Then, you can leave your track with enough headroom (AT LEAST -6db) for your mastering engineer. Have your MASTER set to 0 also. Dont move it! This is not a volume control knob remember....it is your MASTER FADER. You are co.....