Stem Mastering Disco House Explained

Studio expert Larry Holcombe presents a comprehensive series of video tutorials on mastering disco house tracks with stems! If you've been curious about how mastering with stems can improve the sound of your disco house tracks, this is the course to watch. Larry walks you through each step of the process, demonstrating effective and creative uses of compression, effects processing, tape saturation, EQ, harmonic excitation, and more. You also get all the stems so you can follow along on your system! These videos are for those new to mastering with stems.

Videos

• Preparing the Mixdown (06:32) - To begin, we create stems from the mixdown project of this disco house track and are ready to dive into the stem mastering.

• Stem FX Processing (09:25) - This video concentrates on processing the individual stems, including creating time-stretched sections and manipulating parts using remix FX, reverb, and flanging.

• Channel Strip Emulation & Tape Saturation (09:15) - Next up, we experiment with using channel strip emulations and tape saturation on our busses to drive and saturate the track.

• Bus Compression (11:49) - Pre-mastering bus compression is added next to hype up the mix and also enhance the groove using musical release times to tie the mix together. We audition different workflows, including SSL and Digital compressor variations.

• Mastering Pt. 1 (15:16) - Once we have our bus processing dialed in, we continue on to create a bespoke mastering chain for the track with EQ, parallel compression, and harmonic excitation.

• Mastering Pt. 2 (16:05) - Finally, we finish off the mastering chain for our disco house track with stereo image processing, digital clipping, and maximization.