DI Mastering - Where Analog meets Digital

Friday, June 3, 2011

Mastering more....

Here's some more mastering work I did. The goal with these tunes were to keep them raw sounding.

You're Gonna Lose ~The Aces by derekirving

A few months ago I had the pleasure of mastering a debut record for Los Shimmy Shakers out of San Francisco. Turned out great. They wanted a vintage sound to the final master.

Here's one of my favorite's off the CD "The Twitch"

The Twitch by derekirving

"The Sneak"

The Sneak by derekirving

Shoulder Holster by derekirving

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Mastering The Aces “No One Rides for Free” for El Toro Records

We recorded this at Greaseland Studios located in San Jose CA engineered by Chris Anderson. His studio has tons of old microphones and guitar amps and he recorded our record to hard disk using Pro Tools. We recorded 11 songs live and mixed in two 9 hour days. A true budget success! After listening back to the final mixes, the only things which stood out to me were more mid-range on the guitar than I prefer and drum levels were a tad lower than I desired. Now the thought was; does this go back to the mixing engineer to pull some of the mid range frequencies off the guitar track only or see if I can smooth this out in the mastering process knowing that doing this in mastering will affect all of the instruments and vocal frequencies. I opted to go the mastering route first and was able to identify the offending frequency and pull it back slightly which gave me the desired result. The next question was should I use compression or not. After listening to the mixes without compression then listening to them with a analog compression plug-in I felt the compression helped bring out the drums a bit and overall glued the sound together without compromising our tones and the overall rawness we wanted. I opted not to use any reverb or delay during mastering as I felt this did not enhance the sound and took away from some of the natural room sound we captured. Plus the reverb and delay would take away from that loud in your face sound we were going after. Also using an analog compressor / limiter plug-in I was able to push the levels up for even more rawness without clipping/distorting the recording. I think of it similar to when your tubes have a nice glow to them when they’re being pushed.

The result is an album which we feel captures the essences of the band.

The Business Side of Things

All of my mastering is done digitally with Adobe Audition, iZotope Ozone Mastering Suite and with PSP Audio plugins pumped through KRK Rockit studio monitors. The reason I use digital is so I can (1) keep the cost down for you and (2) gives me the best representation of your music which allows more precise mastering. It’s most likely that your recordings will be on the digital medium anyway (CD or digital downloads) so mastering in digital allows me the best way to hear it before people buy it.

Rates and longer samples: Email derekirving1@gmail.com

Your music will need to be in WAV format and sent to me via digigal copy. This can be a CD/DVD, USB stick, harddrive or I can give you a private secured online folder for you to upload too. I’m also a certified GSNA systems/network auditor so I’ll attest that it’s secure.

There will be some paper work for you such as your contact info, expectations of master, mixing engineer contact and confidentiality agreement (stating you own the rights to the music and I’m only mastering the recordings, etc) which can all be handled digitally.

DI Mastering Philosophy

So what do I mean by where digital meets analog? It represents the best of old technology (analog) and new technology (digital).

My goal as a mastering engineer is to take your recordings from good to great. My experience is with bands/artists who are dedicated to their craft. So I work with rockabilly bands, blues bands, 50's rock and roll, trashy blues bands, surf, rhythm and blues, etc. Basically I help bands who love that raw primitive sound "GET" that sound. (only after it's mixed properly of course). I can not work magic. The magic is in your performance and songs. What I do comes after your satisfied with your engineer’s mixes. I'll clean up the spacing in songs, put songs in your requested order, add EQ as needed, bring the levels up to match commercial recordings you listen to or want to sound like but most of all help preserve the tones and bring them out of the speakers. My goal is to give you something that you are proud of and is a real representation of your art. This is what I expect when I’m releasing my music.

As recording artists I've recording in various studios over the past 20 years from Fantasy Studios, to small home studios to doing it myself with a laptop and a few microphones. What I've discovered is both mediums have pros and cons and I've heard poor recordings from 2 inch tape on all analog equipment and heard very good digital recordings going onto hard drives. Now I'm a huge fan of both, love analog and love digital when used properly. By that I mean you need to know the limitations of each medium and how to get the best out of them. For example my bands last record was recorded on the digital medium, but we used microphones from the 40's and 50's (tube and ribbon), old fender tweed amps from the 50's and used microphone placement to get a roomy sound. We used minimal isolation on the amps and drums, so while there was a tad bit of bleed we were still able to crank the amps to get the tones we needed. The result was great and more importunately the vibe in the studio was inspiring. About two months prior we recorded at another studio and went to 2" tape. The result was a muffled sound and un-inspiring performances.

So what I discovered is the recording medium (analog vs. digital) is not what makes a recording sound great, it's (1) how much the engineer knows about getting the best sounds out of their equipment, (2) bridging new and old technologies and using microphone placement to create warmth and (3) an inspiring environment for the artists/band to be creative. Now when you combine this with great songs performed with passion and I can master this – you’ll have gold! Or more importantly merchandise to sell and a medium to get your songs heard. Now that’s what it’s all about!