Mastering Two Songs Live!

โ€ƒFirstly I mastered the song Game Boy by AnneAnne, a synthpop-ish piece that is an astoundingly impressive display of composing, lyric-writing, instrumental performance, singing, arranging, production, and mixing… that all coalesces into a bangin’ track filled with clever and hilarious 80s and 90s nostalgia tech puns.

โ€ƒNext up was Dimenensional Drift by Human Synthetics, an amazing atmospheric d&b piece, replete with crushing breakbeats and enveloping bass that continually shifts and evolves as it progresses, evoking a dark and moody vibe that is enticing and addictive to listen to and get lost in.

โ€ƒFor both pieces i used my newly-developed Finalization effects pack and template for Ableton Live Suite 12, demonstrating how it allows you to get as deep as you need to with professional mastering and high-quality results with no need for external VST plugins.

โ€ƒIt was a great joy to work on finalization of both of these songs on-the-fly at the Music Production Club meeting! Thanks to both of the artists for contributing their songs and to Brian Funk for hosting the meeting plus recording and producing the video.

โ€ƒIf you want to hit me up for audio mastering, feel free to use the contact form or check in over at the Animus Invidious Discord.


โ€ƒAnd no i don’t use generative ai for any aspect of writing this blog because that would be lame, unimaginative, boring, below my standards of quality and veracity, and personally unfulfilling.

Finalization: Audio Mastering Template for Ableton Live

โ€ƒ๐‘ญ๐’Š๐’๐’‚๐’๐’Š๐’›๐’‚๐’•๐’Š๐’๐’ is a self-installing Effects Pack and Template Set for Ableton Live Suite 12.4.1+.

โ€ƒIt includes seven bespoke custom effect racks, each meant for a specific purpose in regards to audio finalization and optimized for the highest-quality fidelity and most tasteful results possible. You’re not meant to use every single effect for every mastering job โ€” but amongst the tools provided are all the capabilities towards such ends that one might ever need.

โ€ƒ๐•๐ž๐ฅ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ. โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒSmooth out top end sharpness.
โ€ƒ๐’๐ž๐œ๐ซ๐ž๐ญ ๐“๐ž๐œ๐ก๐ง๐จ๐ฅ๐จ๐ ๐ฒ ๐„๐. โ€ƒUnique multichannel EQ.
โ€ƒ๐“๐ซ๐ข-๐‹๐ž๐ฏ๐ž๐ฅ ๐’๐ฉ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ. โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒNext-level effects layering.
โ€ƒ๐–๐จ๐จ๐Ÿ.โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒLow cut and boost duties combined.
โ€ƒ๐๐š๐ซ๐š๐ฅ๐ฅ๐€๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐’๐Œ๐€๐’๐‡. โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒAuxiliary density injection.
โ€ƒ๐ˆ๐ง๐Ÿ๐ฅ๐š๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐š๐ญ๐จ๐ซ. โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒ Inflator clone using Ableton’s Saturator.
โ€ƒ๐๐š๐ซ๐š๐ฅ๐ž๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ.โ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒโ€ƒSeamlessly blend MS and LR Limiting.

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Magic Numbers: Rounded Fractions

๐Ÿง Memorizing Sucks.
As audio engineers, certain numerical values become often-used and thus can become useful to memorize. If you suck at memorizing stuff like me, graphs and charts can be helpful.

๐ŸŽ›0โ€”127.
In Ableton Live and other programs, range values are often scaled from 0 to 127, rather than 0 to 100. So it can be useful sometimes to know certain fractional values to type in (either mathematically perfect for extreme precision, or rounded values for quick input).

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Tempo Dynamics

When applying dynamic effects, we are rarely going to need the entire timing ranges available, depending on the tempo, right? The new Tempo Dynamics pack provides go-to racks with minimum and maximum values hard-wired to ranges most potentially useful, given the chosen tempo โ€” avoiding values that are likely too fast or too slow to be helpful.

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Ableton Live 11 Key Map Guide & Template by PerforModule

The PerforModule Key Map Template for Ableton Live 11: mapping computer keyboard keys to as many potentially helpful functions as practical.
[Note: if you’re on Live 12 now, maybe hold off on downloading this perhaps for the moment, since i’m working on a new keymap template for Live 12. Feel free to steal some of the ideas from this post in the meantime, though!]

The Template

There are three parts to the template:
โ€ขa Live Set pre-loaded with the recommended key mappings,
โ€ขa Diagram showing color-coded key functions, and
โ€ขa Spreadsheet listing custom-mapped and built-in key mappings, also explaining some quirks.

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Mosey on over to this dropbox folder to download the Key Map Template Live Set, Key Map Plan Diagram, and Spreadsheet Guide. Read on for nauseatingly meticulous details below.

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Free Loudness Meter VSTs

โ€œWTF are Loudness Units?โ€ you may ask. Well, they are simply a measure of loudness, just like decibels.
One LU actually is equivalent to one dB. However, an important difference is that Loudness Units are โ€œshapedโ€ according to the human earโ€™s proclivity to hear certain frequencies more easily than others. Effectively, LUs tend to feel more consistent to our brains than dB will when measuring varying frequency content, and therefore LU meters are preferable to use (compared to, say, RMS meters) for assessing the overall loudness of music.

Below are shown six free LU (aka Loudness Unit) meters, listing features of each. The most important value when matching the loudness of songs is IL (Integrated Loudness), which is the average loudness over the entire course of given time (with very quiet material gated out).

These devices are available as VST effect plugins for any capable VST host (such as Ableton Live, for example).

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