Noise School #1: How I 'Mastered' The Origin

I saw that a few people wanted to see my process and wanted some more resources on how I do the things I do. Some noise-musicians don't like giving away their 'secrets'. I am not one of those. I am also self-taught and likely will get some things wrong, if you have suggestions in the comments. I am not here to make your noise/music "better", but hopefully give some ideas and stuff you may not of thought of before. I am always learning new stuff too and comments on these posts for clarification and correction are welcome.

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So here is #1, how I "mastered" The Origin of My Depression.

Required: Ableton 11, unsure about older versions for .adg file


First, I didn't really. When it's pressed to vinyl it will be remastered professionally, what I am presenting is a master effects rack you can download and with some explainer with how you can modify it for your needs if its something you dig.

Second, my method is unorthodox, and is not quite the same style of mixing and mastering you might have a producer bro (or education institution) dictate to you on youtube, and it has both strengths and shortcomings.

Also this is virtually exactly what I did on the Origin in 2019, however I mix/master quite different now in a more conventional manner and I'll be critiquing below. It's also not wholly original either as I did twist some ideas from others. However for beginners it might be a good start, as well as for archival 'song exploder' kinda reasons.

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Attached below is a screenshot of the master bus in ableton as well as the actual file you are free to download and use however you want, no credit needed. It's helpful for reference if you want (and you should) change it.

First what we have is an "Audio Effects Rack", basically for ableton beginners this just means a bunch of effects grouped together as a template that can be saved and shared. All of these effects are ableton default, so no additional VSTs are needed. This goes on the master track on ableton and comes last in the signal chain.

One interesting thing is you can save this template and have it in your ableton session even before you put anything in it. I don't recommend this, you should mix everything without the master as well as you can first, but that's for later.

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First box in the rack (DepressionMasterin-2) is just the group of all that follows, no need to adjust. I generally hide it.

Second box is the rack proper and splits the master signal into three groups: high, middle and low frequencies, as each should be manipulated separately to shape the sound.


TREBLE

I've basically boosted the treble while limiting it to give the record its 'glassiness' while adding some stereo width to give a sense of space.

The first chain is the highs, the frequency range 3.36khz to 20khz. This is where the very high trebles are (for example, cymbals, whispers, high end of noise). The multiband isn't use efficiently here (as its imported from a much older version into albeton 11 which has made a lot of this unnecessary) so it essentially boosting it by 5.70db (it's also solo'd and the only frequency range turned on, as the others are covered by the other multiband chains) plus some 'inflation' where the lower frequencies (the left dark pink horizontal grid bar next to the "high") up (-16db with a ratio of 1.24). These means in the entire mix quieter treble frequencies will be made louder, which adds some clarity and glassiness (say to the metal foley). Already loud treble will not be boosted and very loud ones (the tiny bar next to it) are compressed a little.

Next is the utility which as 30S to mid/side. What this does is make the treble frequencies more out of phase and thus 'more stereo' and 'less mono'. Higher frequencies (3-4khz and above) get a clean shininess when very stereo and can open up a mix and give it more 'air' and 'space'. Don't go too hard with it as it there can be weird effects if you put it 100% or higher (in the newer utility of ableton 11).

Finally is a limiter with 1.5 lookahead and auto release capped at -2.81db to make sure treble never gets too loud and gets too harsh for the mix I was using.

MIDS

The mids are the least meddled with.

First is a more modest boost of 3.10db with a soft amount of compression above -20db

Then is another compressor (probably unneeded???) for reasons that were likely due to inexperience, or maybe because the old version of ableton had less settings for the multiband compression in 2018-19. it has a slow attack (to allow kicks and jumpscares to start a little louder for a few milliseconds to give them some attack and punch, but the release is relatively short so it can reset before it's next 'attack'. it's -12.7 Db, and -2.97db after makeup gain (this setting increases the volume back up after compression, I was a little lazy using it).

There's no utility for mid/side, as the mids should be in the middle without much alteration unless you want to make things unmanageable in the master.

Finally there is a limiter at -2.97 to make sure there is no unwanted clipping, and a little louder than the trebles for balance (I don't like too many piercing trebles in my mixes as I am quite sensitive to them, but that's up to you).

LOWS

around this time I liked to boost the quiet lows to give a full, squishy sound (especially to the quieter sections) while also limiting them so they don't turn into sludge.

With inflation (making quieter frequencies louder, rather than louder frequencies quieter) applied to the lows and subs, you can have a slimy wormy bass pierce through the mix while not being overwhelming mud when loud (or if compressed, jittery compression artifacts.

The multiband inflates freqs below 157hz (mostly subs) all the way to -10db, which means there is rarely bass absent in the mix, and the bass resonances of other-wise non-bassy sounds (i.e. piano) get bigger.

(Btw the mid multiband is from from 3.36khz to 120hz. This means there is an overlap between the lows and the mids which boosts the freqs between 120-157hz as they go through both channels meaning you have a big unintentional bass boost from me being bad at maths and sloppy, however I liked the bass presence on that record so I guess it was a happy mistake. however i'd recommend you just do this with an EQ. besides, everything is compressed later anyway.)

then there is a utility with 100M or mono. Ableton 11's utility upgrade removed the need for this with simply having a "bass mono" which wasn't there when I recorded this and before I upgraded. Centreing the bass/subs makes them less muddy, more clear and punchy and is a common production technique. However be careful to automate to turn it off when you use hard panning that contain these frequencies, as the bass will still be in the middle.

The there is the glue compressor (which has a different algorithm from the "normal" ableton compressor and is mostly used in master tracks). It's weird. It compresses -2db and adds 8.89db in makeup with soft clipping (subtle distortion) added.

Finally another limiter to make sure it never gets too loud, quieter at 3.94db. It's likely quieter due to the multiband chain overlap described above, as I usually like having a lot of bass. That being said it is quite inflated, making sure the bass is never too loud nor quiet and can give a squishy, booming presence to everything.


BEAT REPEAT

If you are new to beat repeat, it's essentially a looper designed for much shorter loops, sometimes mere milliseconds long and ableton's version is tempo sync'd. If you have some of the recent liturgy records she uses one in some of her songs which sound like glitches. I have one on the master in case I want to use this effect (keeping the chance at 0% and only automating the repeat when needed with the automation in automation mode. I have it before the compressor to prevent too much clipping from it. I might go into how to abuse this effect another time, as I use it often.


BOOM SIDECHAIN COMPRESSOR

on the surface it's barely anything with -0.97db threshold, but placed on peak mode. That's because it takes a sidechain input from a "boom bus" with +12.6 gain, 100% mix and no eq (the sidechain is nested in the above image, click on the pink triangle to see it tho). Basically it means when audio is input from the bus channel (or something simpler like a kick) it compresses the sound leading to an overall "boom" effect. I got the idea from a lot of action video games and movies as well as how kicks are traditionally sidechained in electronic music. However since it is tied purely to an automation line (not pictured) in its own bus (also not pictured) you have a lot more control over the duration and intensity of the bang. I might return to this technique in more detail another time too.


SPECTRUM

It's just there to analyze frequencies to make sure no unwanted frequencies dominate and so you can also see the frequency distribution for reference and troubleshooting. It has no effect on sound.


COMPLETE LACK OF FINAL LIMITER

If you are a normal boring musician or actual professional producer, you are told to avoid clipping as it "sounds bad". Plenty of parts in The Origin (i.e. An Angel's sludge section) are in the red, and to my ears it sounded perfectly fine, and I didn't notice clipping for things I didn't want clipping with because of after some mixing. I don't know if I can recommend this. Clipping is wonderful and should be loved and respected, and indeed peeping into one of Ben Frost's ableton sessions, I saw it did indeed occur and still sounded good, something he mentioned in the notes. Clipping in the master is totally up to you. Sometimes limiting everything and keeping it "clean" is much worse.

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So that's it so far. These days I don't do a lot of the above the same way that I did in 2018-2019. I've been using Ozone more mastering as it has a lot more control, and have also stripped back some of the mastering anyway to focus more on the mix. I now mix before mastering rather than use a master bus to fix everything in advance, as sometimes if there are a LOT of things in the mix, stuff can get lost. I might touch on this eventually.


Leave any comments if you have any questions or if the .adg doesn't work. Feel free to use any of this for your own stuff. Take everything with a grain of salt and experiment with the above to your owns tastes. I am not the best of this, but I had a few people ask how I did this and here it is. I might do this again in the future with what I do now as well.