What's your best tip for learning compression? Comment below!

I'd like you all to welcome the newest mentor here at mastering.com Joseph Berg. He will be a mentor in the Membership Club for our VIP students who can book 1-on-1 sessions. He's an emmy nominated engineer who is also a student in The Reverse Engineer program with graduated with our official certification. Joseph is super talented and you all are going to love him! Please take a second and congratulate him! Bio: Joseph Berg is an accomplished audio engineer and lifelong musician who has worked as the mixing engineer on multiple Emmy-nominated film and television projects, including HBO’s Stax: Soulsville USA, which received two Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction Program and went on to win the 85th Annual Peabody Award for Best Documentary. In addition to his mixing work, Joseph has served as a mastering engineer on records with critically acclaimed musicians and engineers, including Grammy Award-winning engineer Mack Major (PJ Morton, Tank and the Bangas, The Revivalists), platinum-selling engineer Mike Napolitano, platinum-selling musician and producer Jimbo Mathis of Squirrel Nut Zippers, and legendary blues harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite, known for collaborations with Tom Waits, Muddy Waters, and Eddie Vedder, as well as multiple Grammy nominations and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. Excited to have you Joseph!!!

Introducing Radio-Ready Single: our newest free virtual event, and our biggest event yet. Over five days (yes... FIVE days!) you’ll watch the entire process of creating a professional song from scratch, from production, to mixing, to mastering. It’s completely free to attend, and hosted in partnership with Native Instruments and iZotope - just click below to register. Starts Monday, July 21st at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK time. https://courses.mastering.com/event_full/1751479153933x610297147243888600?utm_source=FTMSkool&utm_medium=Event&utm_campaign= See you there!

Believe it or not… it’s almost time for everyone’s favorite online event… “Fix-The-Mix”! If you haven’t attended one of these events (where have you been!), this is where we mix and master a song from scratch LIVE on Zoom, explaining everything we do along the way. We’re partnering up this time with our dear friends at Focusrite for another 3 amazing days of mixing and mastering. We’ll have new music…. new ways to improve your production… and the same great coaches and mentors you’ve learned to love. So join us next week for online “Fix-The-Mix” event (sponsored by Focusrite) It all kicks off on Monday at 12pm ET, all you have to do is register via the link below https://courses.mastering.com/event_full/1738156522055x837290680204015900?utm_source=FTMSkool&utm_medium=Event&utm_campaign= We’re looking forward to another great event, and we hope to see you there! Happy mixing, Rob

Most of you reading this will be somewhat familiar with the process of learning an instrument. There are a lot of ways we can compare learning an instrument to learning music production and draw some useful analogies. One core idea is this: Licks vs Scales Let’s say you’re learning guitar. Most people start by learning “licks”. Instead of learning the fundamentals of the instrument… you learn to play different songs and different phrases. You’re effectively emulating good playing, rather than becoming a good player. At the beginning, this is fine. After all, it’s okay to steal like an artist. But at a certain point, if all you have is a bunch of licks — aka musical phrases — that you use again, and again, and again… It becomes a prison that’s hard to escape. “Why am I playing that same phrase every time I solo?!” you ask yourself for the hundredth time. Here’s the solution: Instead of learning licks, learn scales. Then play them every day until it’s muscle memory. By learning scales, you’re learning the fundamental building blocks of the instrument, rather than throwaway phrases. You develop proficiency by playing them repeatedly. Then when it’s time to rip a solo, the scales are there under your fingers and you don’t even have to think. You can lose yourself in the moment and simply… play. Here’s how this translates to learning production, mixing and mastering: Licks = Tips, Tricks, Cheat Sheets, Presets, Magic Frequencies Scales = Frequencies, Volume, Dynamics 99% of people only ever learn licks. They never get a true understanding of the fundamental principles of audio. They never learn how to truly understand and manipulate the basic building blocks. But when you… 1. Understand the frequency spectrum and how to shape it using an equalizer 2. Understand volume and the key role it plays in all areas of production 3. Understand macro/micro dynamics and how to manipulate them to achieve a desired outcome