Ableton Forum

When we finish our tracks, we normally get them mastered.

However, I can't think of a way we could perform with mastered tracks. It would be just like DJ'ing someone else's music.

So, would it be safe to assume that the songs you perform with are sliced up versions of your tracks pre-mastering?

Does anyone go to the trouble of getting your mastering engineer to master on the tracks split up in to kick, snare, bass, melody, percussion, etc so that the performance version will be as smooth as the mastered version?

The stems I use to play live are all "unmastered", bounced straight out of the project they were created in with nothing on the master channel. Some people have paid me to more or less master their live stems before, though to be honest usually it's more just polishing the sounds on their own versus mastering each one to sound a certain way as a whole per se.

Besides, it's boring when you go see a band/group and every song sounds almost exactly the same as on the version you have at home. Might as well stay home.

Tarekith wrote:Besides, it's boring when you go see a band/group and every song sounds almost exactly the same as on the version you have at home. Might as well stay home.

Yup, unmastered is best. Let them here its a difference between a DJ set and your live set. Its expected.

Besides, you don't need to 'master' it to make it loud, you're in a club or concert venue, it's already going to be loud

One compromise you can make is to send a group of your "performance" tracks to a bus before it goes out of your interface/mixer/whatever. Add Ableton's limiter on a gentle setting to kind of "master" your performance. Trust me, the audience can't tell the difference between the built in limiter and whatever VST you normally use in your productions.

Above all, mastering is about making your tracks "listenable" on all kind of sound systems.
Doing a live gig is precisely the opposite.
A special gig, in a special room with a special sound system.

Take the chance to do no compromise (mastering), and make the best sound possible for THIS occasion.

For what I have to say...