Mastering without masters

Malawian music is not far from Zambian music in terms of composition and presentation, but what sets the neighbouring country apart is the quality of its music.

Minus poor recording equipment, another problem that dogs Malawian music is music mastering.

Music producer Qabaniso Malewezi, who studied music at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, defines mastering as a way of unifying the sound of a music album.

He explains that the aim of mastering is to make the album sound consistent from track to track because as, usually, songs are recorded in different studios and might have different sonic characteristics.

According to www.discmakers.com  every music album is mastered before its release to prepare it for radio play and retail sale. This is done because studios record one song at a time, resulting in songs that all peak at different levels.

Thus a mastering engineer can unify a music album to give it a consistent sound from track to track by pumping up the volume of the overall album.

Some local musicians and record labels prefer mastering their music. Among them is Nde’feyo Entertainment which will be mastering their next albums abroad.

Khumbo ‘Kabuzi’ Munthali, one of the directors at Nde’ feyo, tells Society that lack of local expertise in mastering has forced them to seek the service abroad.

“Malawian music is of low quality because we do not master our albums and, in cases that we do, it is not properly done so we would like to do that abroad,” says Kabuzi.

Music icon Lucius Banda says, just like recording, mastering is expensive and because the Malawian market is only willing to buy music cheaply, it does not make business sense to invest more money in mastering.

“So what happens is that musicians produce music [that suits] the asking price of their audience. Malawian musicians want to make good music, but it comes at a cost. Piracy is also another factor that is killing music, as such musicians don’t want to invest in music that is why they use short-cuts,” says the ‘people’s Soldier’.

According to www.sageaudio.com, there is a contrast between mixing and mastering music as mixing is the step before mastering that involves adjusting and combining individual tracks together to form a stereo audio file after mix down while mastering is done when the stereo file is clearly polished.

In separate interviews, Q and South Africa-based music engineer Pempho ‘P’ Kafoteka, cited ignorance on the fundamentals of mastering and recording by most musicians, engineers and producers in the country, hence the overall quality of music is affected.

“The problem is that everyone gets a computer and suddenly thinks they have a complete studio, but mastering requires proper understanding of things such as compression,” said Kafoteka.

Adds Q: “Mastering is best when it is done to enhance and not correct. It is important to start with good clean signals because you can’t improve quality of a signal after it has been recorded. So, the mastering process will be as good as the original quality of the recording.”

Q urges Malawian musicians and engineers to acquire some training in how to master music and understand the process.

“There is a lot of information online now that it is possible to teach yourself,” says Q.

Kafoteka pleads with fellow trained engineers to transfer their skills to others for the good of Malawian music.

Q further explains that for one to master music, they need special equipment as mastering equipment is different from that used in recording.

Kafoteka warns that engineers should neither overlook the final stage of mastering nor assume that making a song louder is basically mastering as there more that goes on.

“For that final stage to bring out the best in the quality of a song, they should entrust their music into the capable hands of someone who has an ear for mastering; that is how they will have the best quality of music distributed around and broadcast,” explains Kafoteka.

Q is an engineer and a producer who is popular for the production of albums for legendary hip hop group Real Elements while Kafoteka, who was co-owner of Baseline Studios in Blantyre, has mastered music for artists such as Sonye, Young Kay, Barry One and Tay Grin.