Mastering: Eden Shadow – Phases
Sometimes it’s nice working on something a little different. Prog rock certainly isn’t something I do a lot of and can certainly possess some interesting challenges. More often than not, the tracks are long (5min+) and can have a very dramatic shift from heavy guitar and drums, all the way down to chilled pads and acoustic instrumentation. As a mastering engineer, you need to find that balance between controlling the harsher parts of your dynamic range while also not taking anything away from the creative use of loud/quiet segments. Like many albums, finding that balance can be tough, but ensuring it is similar throughout the eight or so tracks is the real test.
This album from Eden Shadow includes some of those long, epic instrumentals that need a lot of manipulating through automation or object based editing. You could easily slap a compressor and limiter on top and just squash it, but that’s far too boring (and lazy).
The albums is available on Bandcamp and iTunes. Have a listen here: