Miss Geo is a Rhode Island-based singer songwriter. Her new album, The Story, is an excruciatingly (yes) catchy indie-pop record with clever lyrics and tons of stand out tracks. Check out “Broken Wrists”:
I’ve been meaning to feature Miss Geo for a few months now, not only because the music is killer, but because I want to talk about a lesser known service that we offer at Fix Your Mix called stem mastering. Stem mastering, sometimes also called stem mixing or separation mastering, is a hybrid between mixing and mastering. To explain how this works, I’ll tell you a little bit about how this record was made.
The Story was produced, engineered, and mixed by my good friend Rob Arbelo here in Boston. What I received from Rob was stereo “stems”–a single stereo track of drums, a stereo track of all the guitars combined, stereo vocals, bass, and a stereo track of synth/harmonies/noises combined. The benefit of mastering from stems is twofold:
- You can’t always be sure exactly how mastering will affect a mix. Sometimes guitars get louder, the snare’s sustain increases, the kick gets lost in the chorus, etc. By effectively mixing and mastering at the same time, I was able to quickly and easily tweak basic levels and EQ while retaining the essential character of Rob’s mix.
- One of the most often-cited benefits of mastering is an objective ear to lend fresh perspective to a mix. In my opinion, stem mastering is infinitely more valuable in this capacity than mastering alone.
I love working from stems, so if you’re a self-produced, DIY artist and want to mix it yourself without sacrificing the energy and clarity of a professionally mixed record, this may be the route to go. Or if you’ve spent months producing the hell out of someone else’s record and you’ve got a great mix that just needs a little tweaking, stem mastering will allow you to take a nice long nap while some other guy does the boring stuff!
UPDATE: We are now officially offering stem mixing at $80/song.
“Broken Wrists” was featured on Hype Machine yesterday and tons of people have been favoriting it, so if you like the song, heart/ReTweet this to bump Miss Geo up on the HypeM charts:
You can also stream the full album on Miss Geo’s Bandcamp page. I recommend the tracks “Snake Soiree,” “Statuette,” and “Time Travel.”
Miss Geo links:
Stem mastering!! What a fantastic concept. This article couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks!
Brilliant work, blogwise and sonically.
Cheers,
Adrian