The Borza Mastering Process

 

Welcome to Borza Mastering!

Thank you so much for the privilege of mastering your music!  I’d like to take this moment to walk you through the process of exactly what happens when you send your music to Borza Mastering.

1. Send Your Files

After double checking the mix prep guidelines and filling out the mastering brief, please package your premasters in a .zip file (or just send the WAV if its only one song), upload it via your favorite file sharing service (Dropbox, WeTransfer, Google Drive, Hightail, etc.), and send a download link to will@borzamastering.com.  For Google Drive, please ensure the permissions are made public.  A download link is always preferred over a “share folder with” auto email.

Please include a text document that includes all relevant metadata including artist name, album title, track titles in running order, and who to credit on the album (producers, engineers, songwriters, artists, and label).  Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation counts! If you need a DDP for physical CD distribution, please include the UPC/EAN code and ISRC codes as well. The text document is also a great place to leave any relevant notes or direction you’d like to share with me. If you gave me all this info in the brief, you can skip this step.

2. Make a Payment

Payment can be made via PayPal or Venmo.  My PayPal is will@borzamastering.com and my Venmo is @WillBorza.  If you would like to pay by credit card, check, money order, or if you just need an invoice, let me know and I’ll get one out to you right away.

3. Mastering

Once I’ve received your premaster files and confirmation of payment, the mastering process begins!  Here’s a rundown of what that looks like:

  1. I’ll take a first listen to your premasters double checking that everything sounds right, that there are no errors (like bouncing the mix with the cowbell solo’d… it’s happened to the best of us), and to get a general feel of the mix.  If I do hear anything I think may be off, I’ll double check with you.

  2. If all is clear (usually it is), I’ll build your session file and master your music through an array of specialized analog and digital mastering equipment.

  3. Once I have a master I’m happy with, I’ll send you a Dropbox link to your “Ref1 Master” for you to listen to and approve.  If you’ve sent alt mixes, I’m going to hold off mastering those until we get an approval on the main mix so that I can run them all through the same chain.

4. Approval and Final Master Delivery

In approving your reference master, please be sure to listen on multiple playback environments such as studio monitors, headphones, your car stereo, and your phone.  It’s important to note that full resolution, full volume WAV files will distort small commercial speakers - this is the small speaker distorting, not the master, and it’s one of the reasons many streaming platforms are now using forms of normalization to lower the volume of all the songs on their platform.

If there are any tweaks or edits you’d like me to perform on the masters, let me know and I’ll send you a new reference.  Once approved, I’ll run the rest of your alt mixes through the approved chain, build your final masters based on the formats you need for distribution, and send you a “Final Masters” Dropbox link.