J. Anthony Allen builds a mastering effect chain in Ableton Live, starting with three core processors he always uses first. A mastering chain is effects like distortion and reverb applied in order, and while you can save templates, each track needs careful tweaking. The real art is dialing in the settings.
So now it's time to start doing some processing. Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is the effect chain. You see people talking about the effect chain all the time. So let me explain to you what an effect chain is. You can find this a lot if you Google around, like, what is the Lady Gaga vocal effect chain? Like, this is something that people search for, and what they're searching for when they type that in is, is the string of effects, like this effect and then that effect, and then that effect that people that engineers use when they're mixing Lady Gaga's voice. Right. You can find popular effect chains for popular guitarists. So an effect chain is a series of effects. The distortion, the echo, the reverb, in this order on these settings makes the effect chain that so and so likes for their guitars or their voice. Okay? So what we're going to do is we're going to build a mastering effects chain. Now, once you build a master effects chain that you really like, you can save it and use it all the time. You're never going to be able to just slap it onto another track and say, sweet, I mastered that track, and walk away. It's always going to require tweaking and working with it. But I'm going to give you right now, right up front, my master effects chain skeleton. This is what. When I'm mastering something, I'm going to put these three things on it right away without even thinking about it. And then I may add some more stuff. And after that, it's a matter of dialing it in and tweaking it. Okay? So that dialing it in, tweaking it, that's where the real art of this comes in. And don't forget what I think I said at the beginning here is that all of this is an art, and it's a very precise art, okay? So it takes experience and it takes time. So if you're not getting the sound you want right away, don't worry, you'll be okay. But this is where the art really starts to come in when we're dialing in these effects. But more on that in a minute. Let's go into the skeleton effects chain, and then we'll start working through how to dial it in and what those settings actually are.
