Today the thirteenth Yule Lad to come down from the mountains is Kertasníkir.

The English translation of his name is Candle-Stealer and he "Follows children in order to steal their candles (which in those days were made of tallow and thus edible)."

If you haven't been following along for the last 13 tips you can check them all out here:

Kertasníkir is going to finish it all off with a few random mastering tips to get you making release-ready records:

Once your mix is finished make sure you have a few references you can use to compare your release to commercial releases. It will give you a comparison to strive for. Use multi-band compression, linear-phase EQ and limiting at the very least to make your mix sound like a mastered release. This is the time you glue everything together with compression, create an even more balanced frequency response with EQ and limiting to make it commercially competitive. In addition, make sure you use metering tools to tell you about loudness and frequency balance so that you can tell whether you're going off track with your EQ'ing and compressing. Lastly, if you're mastering a single on the master fader of your mixing session make sure you don't make a mastering decision that's better suited as a mixing decision. Don't balance mastering EQ to get rid of a kick drum problem. That's a mixing decision on the kick drum track. Use mastering EQ to fix low-end problems if you have them, not individual track problems.

In fact, that trick with fixing the mix as I'm mastering is something I show you how to do in the Quick Mixing/Mastering package.

I'll let you all go and enjoy the holidays. I hope you have some time off and get to enjoy it with your family and loved ones.

Merry Yuletide / Gleðileg jól from me to you!

Björgvin | Jól 2015 | Audio Issues