For budding musicians who don't know

[GMayle]

This is advice for people new to making electronic music, not for you who already know.

If you make an electronic tune it needs to be mixed and mastered before it will sound ok on someone else's equipment. The mixing process gives each instrument its own space in the overall tune. Mixing each instrument is done usually with tone controls such as EQ and filters. There's loads of tutorials and information on how to do it on the internet. The most important thing is to get the kick and bass to sit together at roughly the right volume. Most people have the kick peaking at about -10dB, and the bass sitting nicely with it. The rest of the mixing process is about using EQ and fillters to stop the instruments overlapping too much, for example you don't want a lead synth that has so much bass that it makes the kick drum or bass sounds unclear. It's not as difficult as it sounds if you get the kick and bass right first. Your final mixdown should peak at about -6dB, to give you headroom to make it louder when mastered. For mastering, you have several options. You can do it yourself using multiband compressor to shape the tone, using a known good reference tune as a guide, EQ to sweeten the sound, and a limiter to make the whole thing louder. There are auto-mastering programs such as Master Match and Ozone that do a basic job. For free mastering, you can use Bandlab's website, into which you submit your mixed track and get a louder mastered version back. The main thing is to check that your tune plays OK on CD, on a TV, a phone, car stereo before you send it out.