Don’t know where to start mastering your own tracks? Learning the techniques to master your music is a challenge by itself, let alone understanding the role of your hardware, acoustics and psychoacoustics. With the One Hour Mastering Workshop, you now have a fighting chance.

The One Hour Mastering Workshop is a free ebook that guides you through the whole mastering process step-by-step in about an hour, using the accompanying bundle of five free mastering plugins. The workshop is available as a PDF ebook and plugin bundle in VST, VST3, AU and AAX format.

Originally, The One Hour Mastering Workshop is part of the Focal Press book ‘Home Studio Mastering’ by author JD Young.

‘I have been producing music on a computer since I was fifteen, and always felt drawn to the mysterious art of mastering,’ says JD, who researched the topic over the years, step-by-step overcoming the challenges of mastering in a home studio. ‘It was very fulfilling to write my book and be able to share my experiences with other home studio producers. With the free One Hour Mastering Workshop and plugin bundle, I want to take this one step further, and make the core concepts from my book freely available to everyone.’

Besides writing his book and workshop, the past five years JD has been active as a plugin development partner for several different plugin brands. He created the free mastering bundle that comes with the workshop himself, and is planning to create more mastering plugins in the future – with the help of his readers.

‘I really enjoy interacting with the community that is forming around The One Hour Mastering Workshop. Because of that, I want to invite other home studio producers to be part of the development process of new plugins by coming up with plugin ideas, beta-testing early versions.’

So, if you have an interesting plugin idea that could complement The One Hour Mastering Workshop, it is possible it will actually be built and become part of your arsenal of mastering plugins.