I’m an experienced mastering and mixing engineer.  Please feel free to look at my discography, read about my history playing music and making records, learn more about my mastering and mixing services, or contact me at tw@twwalsh.com.

It used to be that in order to make a recording, a band needed to book studio time.  Even up through the late 90’s, it was impossible to make a recording on a home computer.  Pro Tools had already been around for a while, but it required specialized, expensive hardware found only in professional recording studios.  In 1999, when I was putting together what became my first solo album, I was assembling an album from a variety of formats: cassette 4-track, 1/2″ 8-track reel-to-reel, and a Roland digital 8-track which used ZIP disks as a storage mechanism.  I mixed into a Soundblaster sound card on my PC, and wrote CDs with an expensive SCSI CD burner.  I was the only person I knew that owned a burner.  The act of creating a Red Book Audio CD was complicated and very error-prone.  The mixes I got weren’t amazing.  I owned one compressor and I’d never used a plugin.  Maybe I was just lucky, but the mixes were certainly “good enough”, and my method of writing and recording would not have been possible to implement in a recording studio situation.  I spent a lot of time learning how to engineer music because I enjoyed it and I had a natural talent for it.  I was comfortable with some of the more technical aspects of the process.  On top of it all, I never really imagined that any of my songs would ever be released, so it didn’t really matter how it turned out.  I was doing it all for fun.

Nowadays, you can purchase a complete computer recording studio for $1000…every computer comes with a built-in CD burner and you can easily create CDs with iTunes.  The effect that this has caused is that it has put a lot of talented engineers and amazing studios out of business, and that a lot of terrible sounding records are being made.  I’m all for empowering artists, and certainly, the same DIY spirit that a lot of bands have today is the same spirit that lead me to explore the possibilities of recording…but a lot of folks are attempting to release self-produced music before they have the experience to get quality results, or even to judge their results appropriately.  Often, I receive mixes to master where I hear a good band…the songs and arrangements sound great!  But a poor recording or a bad mix acts as an obstacle to enjoying the music.

Mastering is the process of polishing up a group of mixes and presenting them as a collective musical statement.  The engineer will adjust a track’s EQ and dynamics individually and within the context of the whole record.  If you’re unhappy with the mix before you send it to mastering, you’ll be unhappy with the result.  The mix is your record.  When you send a mix to the mastering engineer, you should be sending your 100% finished track. If you’re unable to tell whether a mix is any good or not, compare it to one of your favorite records within that genre.  If you still can’t tell if you have a quality mix, that’s a red flag that possibly someone else should be in charge of this aspect of the production.

Communicate with your mastering engineer.  Ask him for feedback on your mixes.  If you can’t understand his feedback, or don’t know how to actually address the problems he has brought up, that’s another red flag that you need a mixing engineer.  A mastering engineer can’t “rescue” a terrible mix.  They can bring a B+ mix up to an A-.

If you care about your music, I suggest hiring professionals to record and mix as well as master it.  It will turn out better, and you’ll be able to focus on the musical aspects of your project.  You’re creating an important document of your art.  If you’re lucky, your music will outlive you.  At the very least, you should aim to create something you’ll still want to listen to 20 years down the line.

Thom Yorke’s song stream at Stereogum

Ciao My Shining Star, a love letter to Melissa - The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, will be released on the 7th September in the UK and the 29th September in the USA via Shout! Factory.

The record will be released as a physical disc with 21 tracks on it, a further 20 tracks will be available as a download, accessible once you put the physical CD in to your computer. Or, if the album is bought from a download site (iTunes etc) all 41 tracks will be delivered in one go as the full album.

The running order for the release is as follows:

Thom Yorke - All for the Best
The National - Ashamed of the Story I Told
Michael Stipe - Everything’s Coming Undone
David Berkeley - Love’s the Only Thing That Shuts Me Up
Dinosaur Jr - The Backyard
Chris Harford  - Micon the Icon
Frank Black - Bill Jocko
Vic Chestnut - Little Man
Unbelievable Truth - Ciao My Shining Star
Butterflies of Love - I Have Patience
Chris Collingwood - Cookie Jar
Frank Turner  - The Quiet One
Rocket form the Tombs - In Pursuit of Your Happiness
Ben Kweller - Wake Up Whispering
Josh Rouse - I Woke Up in the Mayflower
The Autumn Defense - Paradise
Hayden - Happy Birthday Yesterday
Juliana Hatfield - We’re Not in Charleston Anymore
Mercury Rev - Sailors and Animals
Elvis Perkins - She Watches Over Me
Sean Watkins - A World Away From This One

Additional Digital Tracks:

The Parkway Charlies - 4:04
Winterpills - And Then?
Dumptruck - Apartment Murders
Biet and Gryphon - Be Sure
Buffalo Tom - Tom Butterflies
The Gravel Pit - Closer to the Wall
The Mericans - Country Boy
The Autumn Defense - Even Better
Lo Fine - Everywhere
AC Newman - Gigantic Transatlantic Trunk Call
Syd Straw - Hey Self Defeater
TW Walsh - I Hate to Needy Need You
School for the dead - I Just Shot Myself in the Foot Again
Laura Veirs - Mr. Mingo
Slugs - Nothing But A Silver Medal
Spouse - Pasadena Love Song
Joe Purdy - Resolution #1
The Pressure Room - Tempted
Senator - The Way That She Really Is
BP Helium - You’re the One Lee

It’s available at Amazon.

Release date: September 1, 2009
Record Label: (Barsuk)
Format: CD / LP / MP3

1. Hard To Be
2. Bless This Mess
3. Please, Baby, Please
4. Curse Your Branches
5. Harmless Sparks
6. When We Fell
7. Lost My Shape
8. Bearing Witness
9. Heavy Breath
10. In Stitches

I worked hard mixing and mastering this album, and I’m proud of it.