Getting your music "synced" for licensing in TV, movies or ads can be an amazing opportunity for indie musicians to make money and gain exposure. But is it just a pipe dream, and is mastering a necessary part of the process ?

Chris SD from Sync Songwriter is an expert in this topic – just in the last year they've had artists get songs placed in the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning movie "Anora", for example! And this episode I talk to him about this whole topic, including:

1. What sync licensing is
2. Why song supervisors might be interested in hearing your music
3. How people normally submit their music for possible sync opportunities
4. A better way that you can connect with them to improve the odds of getting your music taken on for use in film, TV and adverts
5. Which types of songs and artists are most likely to be taken on and
6. The role mastering and audio production play in this process

And lastly we talk about the free Sync Songwriter Music Supervisor Panel that he's put together to help you find out more about all this - which is taking place this January. For more details, click here – if you decide to give it a try, you'll be helping support The Mastering Show at the same time.

Mentioned in this episode:

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

This started out as a Q&A episode, but one way or another there turned out to be a real theme to many of the questions, namely - how do you choose between technical and creative considerations, when mastering ?

Questions like:

• When the client wants songs to sound different
• When to use mid-side processing (or not)
• Transient shaping - hardware or software ?
• How much distortion ?
• When is unbalanced EQ am artistic choice ?
• What to do when the "correct" thing to do goes against the emotion of the song

Take a listen and find out how these questions all connect !

Full links on our website:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-103

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

Translation is one of the main goals of mastering - make the music sound great on any platform, and any delivery format.

But how is that possible ? How can we optimise the audio to sound great on both a huge PA and crappy earbuds, or via any data-encoded stream, when we don't have any control over those playback systems or streaming platforms ?

The answer to this paradox is deceptively simple - and powerful. In this episode I explain the common misconception of what 'translation' is; what the term really means to me, and share three simple suggestions to help you get your music to translate - on any playback system.

Full links on our website:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-102

Mentioned in this episode:

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian