Mastering With Maor Appelbaum – Studio Rundown & Interview

Mastering is a bit of a black art, as far as I’m concerned. Mixing makes sense to me – I’m no mix ninja by any means, but I’ve done a bit here and there – it’s at least reasonably straightforward. But I always imagine mastering is done in a dark cave where your CD master is lowered ceremoniously into a giant bubbling cauldron while a lone witch or wizard intones ancient magic words and sprinkles herbs into it until POOF! it sounds much better and the wizard takes your money.

ADVERTISEMENT

So when I called Maor Appelbaum to master an album I did a number of years ago, I’m sure my ignorance was readily apparent. I knew that mastering was not something you want to get wrong – it’d be like fumbling it in the endzone – but I didn’t know a whole lot else. You can take a perfectly good mix and ruin it if you’re not careful. Luckily, Maor was very patient with me, even giving me a second pass and some solid advice on how to prepare the songs for mastering when my initial mix wasn’t quite there, and then he drastically improved what I gave him.

This is a pretty cool interview and studio tour, courtesy of Warren Huart, and reveals that in fact, my theories about how mastering is done were just a tad off base. It also gives us a pretty thorough look at the gear he’s using in there.

Written by

As Editor-in-Chief of Gear Gods, I've been feeding your sick instrument fetishism and trying unsuccessfully to hide my own since 2013. I studied music on both coasts (Berklee and SSU) and now I'm just trying to put my degree to some use. That's a music degree, not an English one. I'm sure you noticed.

Latest comments
  • I should not of watched this while baked. My lord.

    • Thanks for the heads up

      • A Way To Get Paid $97/hour And More…….After earning an average of 19952 Dollars monthly,I’m finally getting 97 Dollars an hour,just working 4-5 hours daily online.….. Weekly paycheck… Bonus opportunities…earn upto $16k to $19k /a month……….Only a few hour required to understand and start working…….look over here
        .pb..m.
        ➤➤➤ http://GoogleTopCareersGetMillionsFinancialJobs/get/morethan$97/h…
        ✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

leave a comment