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Welcome to Mason Mastering! Online Mixing and Mastering Done Differently.

Writer's picture: AlisdairAlisdair

Let's go through a quick overview of our online business and what you can expect.

mixing desk knobs

My name is Alisdair, I'm the chief mixing and mastering engineer and owner at Mason Mastering. My experience in the music industry has spanned 15+ years. My first foray into the wonderful world of music production started at college. That's when it first hooked me in. Since then I've produced myriad records that have been released on labels such as Universal Music UNXT and been played on stations such as Radio 1 & 1Xtra. Alongside my own production, I've worked with many independent artists and labels as a ghost producer and songwriter.



Through my process of producing music for other artists, I come to understand, at a detailed level, what it takes for a record to stand out. How to balance a mix so that it can reach the listener in a remarkable way whilst keeping the artist's vision intact. Same goes for mastering, it's important as an audio engineer to understand balance and tone and how to best manipulate them.

Music studio hardware knobs
How Did Mason Mastering Come About?

Since I was a wee lad, I've been interacting with online mixing and mastering services. I could never afford to go to a studio and pay those kind of rates. Online was the only option for me and many other artists I was speaking to. I felt those interactions with online mixing and mastering businesses were always very detached; you pay for your master, sometimes you get to choose to pop in a short sentence for the engineer to take no notice of, upload the wav to their website, wait a few days and get it back. If you were lucky it would sound everything bit as good as you'd imagined. If not, then you get one more chance in the form of a revision to fix it. It almost always never did. But how could I have expected my mix to come back how I wanted when all I gave them was a sentence about what I wanted, using cliched abstract adjectives like "warm, punchy, and loud". The same thing occurred for any mixes I sent off, only it cost me a lot more. So, from this problem I sought to solve it with Mason Mastering.

Mason Mastering logo

How is Mason Mastering Different?

I'm so passionate about music and helping other music artists gain access to mixing and mastering that is both accessible but still caring and nurturing. I've now worked with many music artists, like you, who've always wanted someone to care and take care of their record in a way that doesn't feel detached, that doesn't make them feel like cattle. This is how I felt all those years ago. Mixing music is an extremely important creative and technical process and there is no chance of it being successful if an external engineer has no idea what the song is about, what message the artist is trying to convey, and the mood they are trying to set. This is how Mason Mastering is different. We're don't superficially care about your record, we actually care. That's why we have had so many artists coming back, time and time again. If you're like one of the many artists we've worked with and you want need help making the record you've always dreamed of then drop us an email for a chat (info@masonmastering.com).


A Quick Case Study

Labrose, a brand new band came to us asking to work with us on their debut single 'Disguise'. Now, these guys had a clear objective of how this record needed to sound. It was a moody Hip Hop record with plenty of reverb and an almost haunting vibe. I worked on this record personally, I knew once I heard the rough mix that this track was going to be special. I got back to them within about 1 minute of hearing it and said "I know what this needs". Cut a long story short, we mixed and mastered the record, and offered them some tips on how to market it using a release schedule, artwork they made themselves, and some Spotify playlists. Disguise has had around 500,000 hits on Spotify alone. For a debut single, that's nothing short of incredible. Now, of course, I'm not taking all the credit, not even most. These guys are talented. But I knew (with a risk of sounding conceited) what would elevate this record, what I needed to understand from the guys about the message of the track in order to mix and master it.


Thanks For Reading





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