Jazz Mass

Ike Sturm is a bassist, composer and the Music Director for the Jazz Ministry at Saint Peter’s Church (the “Jazz Church”) here in Manhattan. His remarkable Jazz Mass, a work for voices, strings and jazz ensemble, was commissioned by St. Peter’s, recorded in 2007-08 at Avatar Studios and mastered by Randy Merrill at Masterdisk . It was released in October 2009 and received a 4.5 (out of 5) rating from the venerable jazz mag Downbeat — an extraordinary achievement. Below is an interview with Ike, followed by an interview with Randy Merrill, on the subject of the making of Jazz Mass.

TMR: I assume the project began with the commission from Saint Peter’s. Is that true or do its origins go back further?

Ike: I heard a lot of film and symphonic music while growing up in a musical family and I am always reaching for ways to express the vocal and orchestral sounds that move me so much. I was asked to write a mass for Saint Peter’s, where I work as the music director for the Jazz Ministry, and I dreamt about putting all of these sounds together. I wanted to write something special, as the piece was dedicated to my friend, Pastor Dale Lind, who has served the jazz community in New York for over 40 years. I wanted the music to sound free and uninhibited by the form or religious context, hopefully offering a new and creative means of expression in worship.

As a musician/composer/musical director, when did you find the time to compose — and what tools did you use?

I remember spending many late nights at the piano during that summer, searching for harmonies and drawing melodies on sketch paper. After motives settled and emerged, I transferred them to Sibelius on my mac laptop, which helped me explore textures and counterpoint beyond the limits of my piano chops. I sent midi files to my dad, who is an amazing composer and arranger, and he opened my eyes and ears through his brilliant thoughts, questions and ideas.

How did you choose Avatar as the recording venue?

I first recorded at Avatar in 2003 as I was finishing school and was knocked out by the sound of the studio. We were there for my friend Ted Poor’s record with Ben Monder and had the good fortune of working with engineer Aya Takemura, who ended up mixing my first record, “Spirit,” at Avatar in 2004. I knew Aya had engineered there for years and had worked with one of my favorite bassists, Dave Holland. Along with her gracious spirit, she has incredible vision and skill and I looked to her when deciding on a studio. The initial tracking involved septet with horns and rhythm, which required good eye contact, yet isolated sounds, making Avatar an ideal choice.

Ike Sturm

The recording sessions took place in November 2007, and then resumed in April 2008. What was the reason for the five-month gap?

Time flies! This was a busy time for my young family, my church work and my playing schedule. Aya and I met a number of times to carefully plan before each session, as we had very limited time in the studio and were working with a lot of musicians. I wanted to choose and prepare all of the takes before every recording date, allowing the strings and voices to be affected by the musical choices of the soloists.

What comprised the “additional tracking”?

Strings and my solo bass piece were tracked at Systems Two in Brooklyn.

Was there anything notable / challenging about the recording sessions? Looking back on them, what part of the experience stands out to you now?

The entire experience was unbelievable. I was surrounded by amazing musicians that brought joy to each session. The band had a great personal and musical dynamic and laid down most of what is heard on first takes. I remember asking Donny McCaslin to try out an unwritten section to shake things up and then hearing his masterful solo without hesitation.

The Recording Session

I conducted strings and choir in the sessions and I will never forget how it felt in the room when those sounds came to life. We did three passes of each take for strings and choir with the intention of triple-layering the chamber groups for large ensemble effect. As Aya had guessed, we ended up preferring the single passes without layering; 10 strings and 14 voices gave us a clear texture that could blend beautifully with the band. All I had to do was put the musicians in place and their gifts took everything to a new level.

What were your requirements when it came to the mastering stage?

Finding the delicate balance between preserving the organic, natural mixes and compressing just enough to make the recording accessible for diverse listening environments. Due to the orchestral nature of the piece, I wanted to maintain as much dynamic range as possible.

Was the mastering process difficult, or did it require any kind of special attention?

Randy, like Aya, dedicated himself fully to the project. We first met about 12 years ago at the Eastman School of Music, where Randy was working as an engineer. I think he must have absorbed a lot from that time, balancing the demands of diverse musical styles every day. He had a very intuitive sense of how to approach my music and we listened to records that excited me from a production standpoint.

We experimented with a few things that made me feel as if we left no stone left unturned. Any thoughts I had about subtle EQ or compression were met with a willingness to try it along with a helpful response. I’ll have to leave it to Randy to explain the technical side of what he did to make the mastered version so polished.

What was the mastering session like?

It was great to have our friend and guitarist Ryan Ferreira with us for the mastering session. Ryan played a huge role in the sound and shape of the project and can hear anything. I think he had a blast seeing Randy at work and the three of us exchanged ideas about the mastering. Ryan had very specific ideas about the EQ on his solo guitar track and Randy gave him the flexibility to discover exactly what he imagined as he played the piece.

When you look back at the process of creating the Mass and the recording of it, what would you say was the most challenging period?

The summer leading up to the first performance and recording was unquestionably the most challenging time. The dates approached and I was staring at empty paper, desperately trying to find sounds that could relate to the powerful text. Composing renders you completely vulnerable at times like this and it is simultaneously the most frightening and wonderful thing in the world.

An interview with Randy Merrill

Randy Merrill

Randy: I did a test mastering for one of the songs. My mastering was halfway between a straight-forward jazz record and the sound of a modern pop record, and I guess it’s was what Ike was looking for.

And what were the sessions like?

Well, the album was done over two sessions, with Ike and the guitarist Ryan Ferreira attending. The first of which obviously was doing the bulk of it and then the second of which was doing revisions. It was a pretty interactive session — we were kind of all working on it. It was another overnight session. [Randy is referring to mastering Darcy James Argue's album Infernal Machines -- see this post.] At that point I was still working out of Scott [Hull]’s room in the evenings. So I didn’t start until 7 or 8 o’clock at night.

Looking at the graphic representation of the music on your screen, I can see that there’s some peak limiting in sections but the waveforms are still shapely. And you can hear that there’s a wide dynamic range.

Yeah. We found that we had to master this in sections.

Why?

Throughout the course of one piece the tone would change and we’d have to make adjustments in the mastering. So a lot of times I’ll print, say, the first part of a song, and then if I need to make an EQ move or level move or something I’ll take another pass and we’ll splice the two versions together to make the final mastering.

That’s interesting. Can you give me some examples?

Let’s say you set your EQ to sound good on one of the louder sections. Remember, instruments tend to get a little brighter when they’re played with more force. So if you center your EQ around the louder spots — making them sound good without being too bright or too aggressive or whatever — sometimes your quieter sections start to feel a little dull by comparison. So you have to trim a little low end out of it or add a little more upper end to make the lower sections speak a little bit more. Not that you’re trying to defeat the dynamics — because that still comes across — but you also want intelligibility in the quieter, more intimate sections. These are not big changes I’m talking about — they’re very slight EQ adjustments. There were also spots where we were adding reverb to different sections too because maybe the choir part was a little dry for a particular section and yet it was intended to be really full with a big room sound. That’s another reason we’d do a separate pass. And different solo instruments. You might EQ a track so it sounds great for the whole track but then you get to this one solo section and the horn doesn’t sound quite right or the bass is too big or something.

Is this common practice in mastering?

It’s useful in more dynamic kinds of music. Though in can be used in more dynamically consistent music like rock, too. Maybe a mix engineer has done some pre-limiting and a mix comes in sounding flat. Maybe the chorus doesn’t quite “hit”. You might make a little bit of an EQ change just to make it pop out more. Or at the beginning of a song the bass feels loud but when it gets to the chorus it’s perfect. You don’t want to trim the bass on the entire song, you just want to do it in the sections where it’s too much. But I’d say that it’s more the exception than the rule in rock.

It seems like it’s a technique especially suited for large ensemble jazz. It probably doesn’t happen much in classical, because you figure they do want those extreme quiets and blaring louds.

Not totally. Some of the classical stuff that I do, people want a little more of a balance. It wouldn’t be as much tweaking as you’d put into a jazz album. But there are times where classical artists want the quiet spots to speak a little bit more. It all boils down to the listening environment, and what the normal listening environment is for most people today. It’s usually not a hi-fi situation where you’re going to hear every bit of detail, and it’s usually not a quiet, isolated room where the listening is an event and an experience. In those settings, having all of those dynamics is really great because you can actually appreciate it. But if somebody’s got a CD on in their car on their way to work, they’re not going to hear the quiet spots.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a client that has wanted to leave every bit of dynamics in the recording. They usually want some kind of adjustment between quiet and loud. It’s not even that they’re competing with anything, like for radio, or being concerned about the track showing up on an iPod shuffle. They just want to be able to hear the quiet parts in their usual listening environment.

To book Randy Merrill for your next mastering session, call booking manager Molly White at (212) 541-5022 or email her at molly@masterdisk.com.

What a pre-Internet sales transaction might have looked like.

Wayside Music is an excellent online retailer, with good shipping policies and customer service. It’s also the retail home of Cuneiform Records (both Wayside and Cuneiform are owned and operated by Steve Feigenbaum). So while you’re there check out the absurdly priced Cuneiform Records Drillout Sale. Most of these CDs are $4! Cuneiform Records Drillout Sale

Rob Mathes

But Sting’s new album Symphonicities, which Rob co-produced, is — even for an artist as successful as Rob — something different. “This is easily the most significant project I’ve been a part of,” he says. “It’s very difficult to describe — it’s incalculable how important Sting’s music was to me coming up.”

Symphonicities features Sting singing in front of orchestral treatments of some of the greatest songs in his canon, arranged by some of the best arrangers in the business, like David Hartley, Steven Mercurio, and Rob Mathes himself.

Rob brought Symphonicities to Scott Hull here at Masterdisk for mastering, so we’ve had the pleasure of being able to work on this remarkable record, and also the pleasure of working with and talking to Rob, who is as gracious and humble a guy as you’ll find in the music business. On a break from his current project — producing the debut album from Glee star Matthew Morrison — Rob took some time to discuss Symphonicities.

I asked Rob what it is about Sting that made him such an important influence.

He has this extremely rare thing: the whole package, the presence and charisma of a rock star but alongside superb and deep musicianship. From a musicological standpoint, he understands rhythm so deeply, and his melodic sense is incandescent. Listen to some early Sting records; they have beautiful melodies. Take the melody out and it’s beautiful on its own. He had the foresight to collaborate with Stewart Copland and Andy Summers and to marry that amazing sense of melody with the exciting punk rock and reggae rhythms in The Police. Like “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”: alongside the ferocity of that groove, the melody is like Gregorian chant! And then to see Sting grow, and leave The Police, and then write songs like “They Dance Alone” and “We Work the Black Seam” …he’s amazing.

Symphonicities

This is Sting. There is no freaking way I am going to write arrangements and send them out to be performed without my being there. You put the chart on the stands, and it can sound OK, but it will probably need some work. And your typical demo recording, even with the greatest sample library in the world, wouldn’t be effective enough. The first impression is everything. So something in me said “I already have a session booked at Abbey Road in February…”

Rob had the studio time booked at Abbey Road for one of his own projects.

I know the results I get at Abbey Road — the quality of the sound. I’ve recorded easily one hundred projects there over the last decade. I adore that room, the sound of it — it’s legendary. Just put a microphone above the orchestra; it sounds like God. So my gut reaction was that if I could create the tracks exactly as I wanted them, Sting would get a truer picture of what I could do to bring a legitimate symphonic approach to his canon.

So I went back to my hotel room after the meeting and I asked my wife, “Would it be insane to ask Sting to pay for the studio time and musicians so I can record these arrangements for him? I’ll pay the travel costs and do the work for free. He can pay me if he wants to use my stuff, otherwise, he doesn’t have to pay me anything.”

Rob told me, “honestly, if he hated what I had done I would have wanted to pay some of the studio cost back to him!” Sting, remarkably, agreed to the plan. “Sting saw the fire in my belly”, said Rob. “Going out on that limb is the reason that all this happened.”

Sting

That was the boldest suggestion I ever made to an artist. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that it altered the further course of my life. I mean, the idea came out of the air. It was almost a God thing. Some people were skeptical about me doing it this way – they said that it was going to be an awfully expensive demo. But with all of the extraordinarily gifted people on the planet, the only way to get yourself heard is if you’re insanely passionate about what you do.

Symphonicities was released digitally and on CD this week, to strong sales and critical response. Before our interview, early in the morning on the album’s release date, I had read the first three reviews I could find, and they were all positive. But Rob knows that some negative opinion is an inevitability, especially on a project that orchestrates rock songs.

My approach was to meet Sting’s records directly face to face; not try to cop them but to create an orchestral version with the energy of original. But if critics say anything mean, can I learn from it? One example is a criticism I received of the arrangement for “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”. The critic said that the track was a little “Disney” in a few moments. That’s not what I was going for! So I listened to it again, with this in mind, and realized that I had always had a suspicion about the chorus. There are these underlying Cuban rhythms there in the song, but I hadn’t really brought them out; I didn’t go for the jugular there. So, I went back into the studio and added percussion, and fleshed out what was just implied before. I’m proud of it. This new version, which is going to be called the “Bronx Street Fair Mix” should be available on an upcoming vinyl edition of the album. So in this case, a negative review turned into something positive.

Now that the record is finished, Rob still has nothing but praise for Sting. I’ll wrap up with a few quotes plucked from a post on Rob’s blog, dated July 15, 2010.

He is constantly learning and endlessly curious. [Sting] recognizes the gift he has received: the reality that so many people want to hear him sing these iconic songs. He just wants to keep it interesting. I admire him for it and working on this project was a privilege. Above all listen to that voice. Just extraordinary!

First, here’s a look at where the two Masterdisk locations are. “A” shows our main location over at 545 W 45th Street, and “B” is the location of Howie Weinberg’s room at 321 West 44th Street. Note, for purposes of some photos below, the spot on the left where it shows the Intrepid, and the dashed line that runs vertically between 10th and 11th Avenues — that’s the West Side Rail Line, which runs under street level.

View Larger Map

Here’s the facade of the 545 W 45th Street location:

Our studios are actually in the rear of the building, on the 5th Floor.

The entrance at 545 W 45th Street.

Looking west out of the Masterdisk office windows. Note the ship in the red circle.

Here's that ship you could see from the office window -- it's not the Intrepid; it's a ship that was docked here for Fleet Week. This view is from the east side of the West Side Highway.

And this is the Intrepid. It's rather large.

Across the street and a little east from us are some horse stables.

Further east on 45th Street, but looking west, is this nicely decorated overpass. The West Side Rail Line runs below -- currently used by Amtrak.

The West Side Rail Line. It runs under the streets, and under some buildings too. This is looking south from 45th Street.

One of the panels on the overpass. Hell's Kitchen, presumably.

Lastly, for now, here's the view looking east from 321 W 44th Street. We're right next to Birdland. You can see the Met Life building in the far distance and some theaters in the middle ground.

Contact Project Coordinator Erin Hungerford at 212-541-5022 ext.103 or erin@masterdisk.com to book Tony for your next project.

Modern Mastering Miracles
In my song called “You’re Not Mine”, I was the “engineer” (with my Mbox, laptop, and hard drive) for the electric guitar session (at my guitar player’s house). We got a great performance and it sounded clean at the time, but with the dump trucks and other outside noise coming in the window of the “monitoring room” (a.k.a. the living room), I had recorded a couple of short, but detectable, channel overloads that I never heard until we got to the mixing studio. At the mixing stage, we tried and tried to fix the distortions with Pro-Tools but just could not do it. Re-recording was not an option for us from a time/budget standpoint, so I had to live with it. When mastering time came, I wanted to make sure, at the very least, that Scott had heard the crackles so he could make sure that his mastering didn’t do anything to accentuate them. Of course I also asked, “is there anything you can do to make them less noticeable, or even disappear?” Scott zoned in to the track for about ten minutes to see if he could mitigate the problem. I stayed quiet as he worked in this weird “hi-frequency-only” mode that literally made me feel dizzy. He went to headphones and I was out of the loop, until he switched the mix back on and played me the two “crackle segments”. I was speechless. The crackles were simply gone! It was a miracle. Now that I know this little trick existed, my mind raced to all my annoying mouth pops, and a drum-punch clip that we could never fix, and I knew I had a few items to attack using this little trick later!

Kirsten Thien

Song Order, Gaps in Between and We’re Done!
The last thing we did was clean up the beginnings and endings of every song. We set the final order and began working on the appropriate time delay between each song. At this point Scott had a suggestion about switching the order of songs two and three, putting the slower “You’ve Got Me” third, and the more up-tempo “Thank You for Saying Goodbye” second. Having already decided, then re-decided my song order about seven times before walking in the door with my drive, I already knew that in the pre-mastering environment, putting “You’ve Got Me” after “Thank You” just wasn’t working. For some reason, one of my strongest tracks, “You’ve Got Me”, just sounded momentarily disappointing coming after “Thank You”. I thought it was the tempo, or going from one key to the other that was creating this little let down. But when we tried the order post-mastering, it was incredible to see that problem disappear and the song really represent well in that very same order I had rejected at home! I can’t put my finger on exactly what made it work, but something we did in mastering made those two songs work in that particular order.

We were done! We stayed pretty much on schedule after subtracting lunchtime and some extra chatting here and there. Scott explained that he would keep the “real-time master”, which is the best copy that can be made from the computer. His assistant would create four reference copies for me to pick up in a couple hours or the next day. I could then listen and “live with the master” for a few days or as long as I needed to decide if we wanted any touchups or to change a song order. When I was ready to pull the trigger, Scott and his crew would handle sending the best copy to the manufacturer. (And of course I asked him if there were any particular manufacturers he liked.)

After-Hours Chat
I asked Scott a few questions I had been mulling over during the session. I wanted to know how much time he spent on a big-budget album compared to an indie project. His answer surprised me: unless there are major problems with a mix, he usually finishes any LP master in about the same time frame — a one-day/8-hour session. It’s the revisions and multiple mastering sessions that drive the prices up. At its most extreme, Scott divulged an experience he had with an unnamed Grammy-winning artist he worked with years prior. Having already re-mixed several times and re-mastered over the course of two weeks, the album was finally sent off to manufacturing. A few days later, during a mastering session to prepare singles, the artist turned to his producer and said “Why didn’t we put background vocals on this song?” He began singing a harmony part and it was clear that it was important enough to act on. Calls were made over the next few hours, and within days, the presses were stopped on the CDs at manufacturing; background vocalists, producers and engineers flown in and out of town quickly; and the background vocal track was actually laid over the mastered track right in the mastering studio before the master was sent back out for replication. That last-minute change cost them, but the song and the album went on to win several Grammy awards.

I hope to someday have a budget that allows me to follow my creative impulses at any point in the process, but that’s not today. If I want to win a Grammy on my budget, preparation, good research, and being willing to spend money on the important things are the only way. In the end, I got the same mastering treatment as the Grammy-winning artist — the same ears, experience, skill, equipment, and listening environment. My record sounds polished, ready to be heard anywhere, and I’m I’m proud to present them to my fans. Now, everything I’ve lived and breathed for over a year is sitting in my little hand, and I’m faced with the question that Scott says he hears often as the mastering session winds down: “So what the hell am I going to do with myself tomorrow?”

A FEW ARTICLE “BONUS TRACKS”

How Scott Fixed the Clicks
Clicks and pops are mostly isolated to the high frequencies, so Scott isolated everything in the mix above 15k. He generated a soundwave of just that frequency range, so that he was able to see and manipulate the problem area in Sonic Solutions. His adjustments were done at a level of precision that we would never get in the Protools environment. Sonic Solutions and his other gear used in the mastering process are designed for this type of precision. At the same time, the problem has to exist in a pretty narrow EQ range and if there’s heavy reverb/delay on the problem, you can’t isolate it as well. In layman’s terms, average harmonic content is figured for the problem region and for a small region before and/or after the problem. Using mathematical algorithms, Sonic Solutions generates a mirror image of a specified range of the sound wave and reforms a single non-clicking wave using “interpolation”. (Get your old math books if you don’t remember that one.) The tool is very different from anything that is done in the recording studio environment and “should not be tried at home”.

Some Factors that Make Mastering More Important than Ever
MP3s – Especially for indie artists, the first listen that many people will have of your recordings is from a super-compressed MP3 file, and possibly through computer speakers. If you do not master your tracks, you have less control over what will “pop” out in this format.

Home recordings and traveling hard disks – Many, if not most of us, nowadays do some recording or editing of our tracks in a home or project studio. We record and mix in a number of different locations before the project is done, adjusting as we go along. Drawing all these disparate sounds together into one cohesive unit is a major task of the Mastering Engineer.

More competition through greater access to recording gear – Almost anyone can come out with a CD today, with very little expense. The barriers are down, but the desire for the best quality music hasn’t gone away. People make decisions very quickly (like, in seconds) when it comes to judging new music. Don’t let some funky frequency, disparate volume levels, or a mix that sounds right only in your own studio be the cause of your music or artistry being dismissed too quickly. Other artists, producers and even industry folk may see through this to your undeniable talent, but the general public is not as forgiving. Make sure they want to buy your next CD too!

I hope you enjoyed our presentation of Kirsten Thien’s excellent article about the ins and outs of the mastering process. Check out the album which was the subject of the article, You Got Me, here.

People Get Ready
Preparation is key for staying on budget. When you consider the hourly rate you’ll pay for a good mastering facility, your preparation becomes exponentially more valuable than it was even when you were preparing for studio recording or mixing time. Even if you negotiate a day rate, you will pay more if you go over a certain amount of time — or you’ll have to cut corners when you run out of time. My biggest fear was running out of time or money because of things I could have avoided. Here are a few things I did to get ready.

Kirsten Thien

MASTER CLASS – DAY OF THE SESSION

I eventually chose Jigsaw Sound in SoHo because their new engineer, Scott Hull, came highly recommended. [Scott was at Jigsaw in 2005. -Ed.] My research on him made him my top choice in my price range. It turns out that the fit was more than serendipitous. I chatted with co-owner of the studio, Dave Ares, before the session and learned that he and his partner Mike Iurato started jigsaw in 2001 specifically to fill a need they saw in NYC. “We were seeing so many indie records that weren’t even being mastered b/c the budgets wouldn’t allow it.” says Dave. So they created a top-level mastering environment, and offered it in a price range that made it accessible to indie projects. Over the past 3 years, Dave has seen many an artist come through the doors with anticipation on their faces, and watched them leave, sometimes ecstatic and dying to get their product out, and other times devastated and wondering what they did wrong. I thought this was a good person to get some advice from, so I asked him for some tips on preparing for a successful mastering session. He came up with some great ones.

Inexperience with the process will cost you time (and money you don’t have): Even if it’s your first session, do some research ahead of time so you’re not completely surprised about how the process works.

Scott Hull

When you walk into a well-designed mastering room, the first thing you notice is that it is completely and utterly silent (except for the ringing in your ears). You almost feel like you’re in outer space, and the words you speak just disappear the minute they come out of your mouth. This environment is created to be the most unforgiving, transparent, and revealing listening environment on Earth. Be ready to hear every little thing when the music comes on.

Scott and I said hello a bit, plugged in my hard drive, and started the session off with opening up the tracks in my ProTools session. We started listening to the songs at a low-to-medium volume. While the music played, we talked a little about the goals of the project. “A lot of times, the music tells the story on it’s own, but one thing we have to talk about is the ‘volume question’.” Scott explained.

If you hadn’t already noticed, do an experiment and play (in chronological order) some CDs that you’ve purchased from 1995 to today. Especially in the last few years, you’ll hear a noticeable volume increase over time. Pop music, particularly music that is driven by radio play, is getting louder and louder. The loudness does not only affect the actual and perceived volume, but also the overall sound presentation because of the extensive compression and limiting that is used –- it’s crunchier, there’s less “space between the notes,” and there may be less overall dynamic range because it starts out loud so it only has so far to go. The “volume question” is one that even the big-budget producers and artists are grappling with. We indie artists who want to compete with the big boys need to give some thought to the question and work with our mixing and mastering engineers to make sure that our intentions for both commercial success and artistic expression are carried out.

After he had listened most of every song, Scott had a good idea of where the mixes and album were going as a whole. He found some areas he knew he’d want to work on to improve the overall sound. And then he got to work on Song #2. “As I listen through,” Scott told me, “the starting song sort of picks me.” It turns out that a lot of times, the 2nd song is a good place to start because it gives some guidance as to how far you can push the envelope on the first song. You want the first song to pop and attract attention, but if it pops too much and Song #2 doesn’t lend itself to that treatment, you could end up making it sound a little flat.

When we got to Song #3, I noticed Scott looking around on my drive while the choice mix was playing. Next thing I know he turns and asks me if I mind if he checks out the “Bass_Reg” mix. When he heard a “problem” with the mix I had chosen, he went straight to my drive to scan my alternate mix choices for the song. Since they were all in a folder named after the song, and had file names that told him what made the mixes distinct he was able to find his alternatives very quickly and keep us moving forward. I took a moment to pat my self on the back, feeling at the height of organization!

We mastered a couple tunes, and I could totally start hearing a major difference. As the end of Song #3 played, the bass was ringing oh-so quietly for what seemed hours after everything else died. I had never heard that before. Easy to “fix” in this case, but Scott told me that one of the most common mistakes made in studios is either abruptly cutting off quiet parts at beginnings and endings, or, alternatively letting something very quiet (chair creak, voice click) stay in the mix that shouldn’t. The mastering environment is unforgiving in its exposure of these little bits. In a recording studio, with computers and gear whirring, there is a limit to what you can hear through the speakers. Before you print a mix, make sure to listen through headphones or you might end up in mastering and find all sorts of little sounds popping up or disappearing inelegantly.

We’ll post the final installment of “Mastering an Indie Project: The Diary of an Obsessive Artist, Part III” tomorrow.

As of this writing, in June 2010, Kirsten is in the process of wrapping up the recording of her third album, which numbers among its guests the great guitarist Hubert Sumlin (Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf). Visit her online at www.kirstenthien.com Thanks to Kirsten for allowing us to post “Mastering an Indie Project”! -James Beaudreau

Kirsten Thien

Because it’s a bit of a black box for many artists, mastering is often one of those expenses that gets slashed to a bare minimum. There are lots of programs emerging that add mastering to the list of things you can now do at home. You could also buy or “borrow” a program/room and master your project on your own. Or maybe you’ll consider a mixing engineer who recently started mastering in his recording studio. These are all options for the budget-conscious, and are better alternatives to not mastering a record at all. All these alternatives considered, I decided that mastering by an experienced mastering engineer, in a carefully designed listening environment, would be the best way to ensure that my recording would sound the way I intended it to no matter where listeners were tuning in.

From Recording to Finishing
Like so many of us do now, I financed my entire CD project out-of-pocket. We scrimped to get the most out of every dollar, learned to do a lot on our own, and had to make some compromises to save money. Part of that meant being very flexible in how, when, and where everything was recorded and mixed. Some basic tracks and vocals were recorded in a great studio environment; some were done in well-equipped project studios, and I did a fair amount of recording with my Pro-Tools rig in living rooms of guitar players, kitchens of harmonica players, and in my own apartment. Dan Myers, the mixing engineer, was our first stop on the highway of pulling everything together. He mixed almost every track on the record, but even so, mixes were done over the course of 6 months and in two different studios (Dumbo Studios in New York and Mixolydian in Lafayette, NJ). Even so, there were two tracks recorded and mixed by other engineers entirely in a totally different studio environment. This is where “mastering” valiantly entered the picture, so we could be sure that the differences that made each song unique were not a distraction to the listener.

Choosing an Mastering Engineer and Room
The decision on where you will master your record and who will engineer the session is going to depend on many factors. Here are some things I took into consideration:

We’ll post “Mastering an Indie Project: The Diary of an Obsessive Artist, Part II” tomorrow.

The Masterdisk VMS-80

Not All Record Cutting Equipment is the Same.
Masterdisk has maintained one of only a few existing VMS-80 lacquer cutting lathes. It is quite simply the finest disk cutting lathe ever produced. With it’s “modern” 1980’s technology, a master cutting engineer can fit a longer side at a louder level than any other lathe. You will find that many disk cutting businesses that have sprouted up recently are not using this superior equipment. Even experienced cutting engineers can’t produce the same results on lesser quality lathes. Channel separation, distortion specs, bass quality and transient integrity are all vastly improved with our cutting equipment. And modern enhancements and modifications extend the low frequency response, improve high frequency tracking and allow us to cut a louder and more dynamic record.

Experience Counts.
Record mastering was and is an apprentice-learned craft that took several years to master. Young engineers and studios have to experiment with hundreds of variables to try to achieve a high quality cut. We’ve seen all of the problems and pitfalls that can beset a vinyl project, and we get it right the first time. Choose your vinyl mastering engineer carefully. We can make your records sound amazing!

Plating and Pressing.
Once your record masters are cut you’ll need to get them processed, plated and pressed into vinyl records. This too is a process where lots can go wrong, so choose a pressing plant with a great reputation. Give us some information about your project and we can help match you up with the best pressing — standard or any degree of “deluxe” — for your money.

What’s Cool About Vinyl?
People really cherish their record collections. Why? It’s because records provide a musical experience that you want to come back to. Vinyl returns us to a time when music was something to set aside some time for, not just something that you put on as a background to a day’s activities. Records are a very tactile and visual experience. Full-size artwork, combined with the hi-fi sound, makes vinyl a more immersive musical experience. And vinyl holds its value much better than CDs; on the collector’s market some vinyl trades hands for three figure sums. Whether it’s being spun on a high quality playback system or an inexpensive USB turntable, vinyl is resonating with people because it provides a rich experience and value for money.

Loud Records vs Loud CDs.
There are virtually no level wars on vinyl: the length of the sides and the depth of the bass in the recording dictate how loud the sides can be cut. In some music genres — like rock, hip-hop or pop — the compression and limiting used to “make it loud” can actually make the music sound small on vinyl. Interestingly enough, a heavily limited and compressed recording cannot be cut to sound as loud as a recording that has most of its dynamics intact. The cutting lathe needs the slightly quieter sections to help make longer sides fit better. If you know in advance that you are going to make vinyl, consider asking your mastering engineer to make a separate master for vinyl or at least making a second pass that has less peak limiting and allows the music to breathe. The vinyl will sound better, and it doesn’t have to be heavily limited to sound loud.

Cutting from Analog Tape.
Masteridsk is one of only a small group of dedicated mastering studios that can truly cut to vinyl directly from analog masters. Specially modified tape machines are needed to do this. There is a small computer in the lathe that needs to know what music is coming before it reaches the cutter head. This “preview” or look-ahead signal tells the lathe how much room to leave on the disk so that the next wrap (groove) will clear the previous wrap and not collide with the already cut groove. So, if you don’t have one of these specially manufactured preview tape machines, then you simply cannot cut from tape to the lathe. Many studios that claim they can cut from analog actually have to send the audio through a digital delay box, and send that digital signal to the preview and main converters. There is a lot wrong with this method, and because of that, most studios are not completely clear with their clients about their signal path to the lathe. If you have analog masters, you really should — if at all possible — plan on cutting directly from them. The record will turn out better.

Cutting from Analog Tape: Panic at the Disco
In 2008 Scott Hull cut the Panic at the Disco album Pretty. Odd. straight from tape. Scott says, “I did two distinctly different masterings for the record. One was only for the CD. It wasn’t terribly loud or compressed, but it had a competitive level and sonics for radio play and shuffling in iPods. For the vinyl, however, I re-mastered straight from the original analog mix down masters. This meant that I had to edit the heads and tails and splice the original master together. It was like it was 20 years ago! The bottom line is that the final product really sounds amazing.”

Expect the Best from Masterdisk.
Please call to talk with one our project coordinators about your upcoming cd and vinyl mastering. It doesn’t matter if you mastered your music at another facility or if you used one of our engineers. We will process your order, cut your record, and help you understand all of the details, with all of the quality, integrity and professionalism you would expect from Masterdisk.

Science or art?

Mastering is a very technical art. There are certain requirements, yet there are many exceptions to “rules” and many good reasons to ignore the rules entirely. Even though it’s sometimes creative to “shoot from the hip” and let the pieces fall where they may, mastering, in my opinion, needs a healthy measure of control. Just how loud is “too loud”? Can there be such a thing as too much hype? Can the quest for radio play make an otherwise exciting album sound boring? For me these questions have to be asked and answered on every single project. If you are familiar with some of the work in my discography, you may find part of the answer in how each project sounds.

For me there is not so much a single “right way” for an album to sound. The grouping of the songs, the sequence — the art of the album — is so much more important than the actual sound of any single component.

A lot of mastering questions are answered with “It depends….” Well it does depend. I like to let the music of any project approach me. I mean, I let the music tell me what it wants to be. Then I listen to what the artist and producer want their album to sound like. I ask questions related to the way the music strikes me and how it should strike me. What kind of audience is this music expected to have? How is it likely to be played back? Is high resolution the most important aspect? Or is it just as important that the listener feel moved in another way? Somewhere in all of that emerges a “plan” or direction for the sound of the project.

It has often struck me as peculiar that I don’t really identify with a particular style of music more than others. I don’t need to have lyrics, or even understand the language that is being spoken or sung. It can be far-out or very traditional. It’s the language of the music guides me and when it all falls into place it’s like magic.

Many of you may have heard someone say that they don’t understand the “how” of mastering, but they do know good mastering when they hear it. Mastering can help a listener enjoy the production more, not get hung up on “flaws”, and stay engaged in the musical experience. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.