The Mastering Episode -Podcast 16

We're focusing on mastering this week and our approaches to it, why we still use external mastering engineers when possible and Nick recounts on his stories from his time with Teenage Fanclub and getting their record mastering by Greg Calbi. 

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Transcript

 Transcript has been generated automatically and not been checked for errors

[00:00:00] Brino: But we had an issue cuz custom. Held the half inch tapes, the girl and receptionist. I'm really sorry, but we haven't got the tapes so we're not gonna wear a master today. Hello everyone.

[00:00:11] We are back for another episode of Session Recall, and this week we're gonna be discussing Mastering You Don't Like You're in the same shirt as last week there, John.

[00:00:19] Jon Con: Yeah, I've got, I have this habit of I get a new shit and I don't stop wearing it.

[00:00:23] Brino: Oh, okay. We did actually say for continuity again, we should be wearing the same, I'm obviously not in the same tea, but I actually got, I have actually got another, this is a different one. This is somebody after I asked if they could send us, someone did send me another one.

[00:00:38] This is actually a different flip flop records t-shirt. It's on the rough end t-shirt, but again, I'm back in leaders again. That's three weeks in a row. I've flown back to do this podcast from studio in ever. Trying to set up exactly the same. Yeah. We're discussing mastering. Mastering. How, what percentage of your work is mastering work?

[00:00:54] jon?

[00:00:54] Jon Con: I've got mastering this week. One of my regulars like, well, I see regulars, Dale's like one of the first person I recorded at my parents' house. Mm-hmm. . And he's like, mix some stuff at home and. I do a bit of mastering from time to time. I've got a couple of regular clients who I'll get once a year. I do some reissues for people as well.

[00:01:11] Yeah. Which actually completely ruins my Spotify algorithm because then like my, I, what I end up doing is I listening to, they're all tracks and stuff. They're all old masters of certain people. So those, those nights called Tick and Talk. Hmm. And last year my most played artists, or my favorite artists are called Spotify with.

[00:01:29] Because I was referencing stuff all the time, just listening through. I think I just left it on one day and it had gone on for 24 hours and I've completely forgot about it. Right. ? Yeah, no, I do, I do quite a bit. I quite enjoy it recently as well. Started probably mastering my mixes. It was just partly because.

[00:01:45] I did it and the bad one. Yeah, sounds was great. It was like cool.

[00:01:47] Brino: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a couple of reasons. There's budget reasons. There's, you've done something from before and they love the sound of it. I mean, I get stuff, I to just master people say, do you master? And I do. And I just master it.

[00:01:58] Haven't recorded it, haven't mixed it, and I'll master it. Like sometimes you'll record and mix something and then. Okay. It'll get sent to me for mastering. And sometimes you've mastered things for me as well. Yeah, I mean a lot of the times there's a budget for mastering and we might use that. The bigger bands have certain mastering engineers they've always used and we use Pete Mayer a lot of the time.

[00:02:18] Yeah. Such good value from money you. He just gets it every time. What you get back is brilliant. But sometimes due to, you know, he's a busy, busy, busy man. Yeah. So sometimes you can't, you haven't got the time to wait or there's maybe not quite that budget, although he is amazingly priced, so you might end up doing it yourself.

[00:02:34] We've got various options, haven't we? Cuz we master from leaders veiled as well. If we're, you know, We can master here with our outboards or we can master in the box, master at home. We've both got home studios and we've both got protos rigs and we've both got outboard there as well. And we've got like, you know, our mastering mastering studio as well.

[00:02:54] like in terms of plugins and equipment, we've kind of got everything we need to be a mastering studio. And the monitoring. Yeah, it kind of get,

[00:03:00] Jon Con: it's been built up over time, isn't it? It's not something that we've just done over, over that. And I know with Leaders Veil it's, it's really well treated. It's like, yeah, it acoustically, it's really good.

[00:03:09] And then obviously like you've got I've used Sonor works in that room and it's like, so son, it's gonna be good. Just in terms of smoothing.

[00:03:16] Brino: Yeah, it's like the, the gaps in your knowledge and obviously Yeah. I use Sona works in my, in my home home studio. Just to, just to figure out where the issues are and then kind of address them and then re re-look at it afterwards.

[00:03:28] But yeah, we've got a good setup for mastering if friend's looking for mastering service. I mean, some of the outboard we've got in the mastering studio is now is Chandler, the Shadow Hill stuff. We've got the Shadow Hills. Yeah. This is all out. Not plugins, the man. Massive passive good monitoring. We've got the thermo culture, Steph.

[00:03:47] Sometimes I'll master through the red busted. Just for a little of harmonic distortion, a bit of air. The free bird eq, which ther culture as well, which is a great EQ for mastering. I mean that with the shadow hills mean you don't really need no a lot else. I remember the Freebirds

[00:04:03] Jon Con: when we got it. I remember just thinking I was not really doing anything.

[00:04:07] And we try tracking with that. Remember you saying something similar? We tried tracking with it so it doesn't really do too much. I'm not really sure about it. Yeah. We put it on the mix bus and it's like, okay, sounds good. It. It's one of those ones where you take it off and then you notice,

[00:04:18] Brino: oh, okay, you just need a little bump here and there, and it's just that velvety thing and it does something and yeah, it's just, it's great, isn't it?

[00:04:25] But yeah, sometimes you just want to use a certain master engineer. I mean, back in the day, we didn't, you all just went to a master engineer. We used to attend mastering. Now nobody comes to mastering. So you, you know, we can master from. Any of our locations where we were at before, you couldn't, you had to and you went cuz you had tapes you couldn't send them.

[00:04:41] So you'd generally go to mastering up to London to, used to go to Abbey Road to do mastering. Used to go to Mike Marsh. In exchange. A lot to do mastering. It was the exchange. It was fantastic. Camden, yeah. Done stuff there and had some amazing mastering trips cuz I, the pressure's off, you're going to work with, like, especially when you're going to work with like a legendary machining engineer, you get to go to New York just to master.

[00:05:01] You're not really doing. You're delivering the tapes and then you're sitting in for mastering for the day and get to spend a few times there. So one of my best mastering experiences was actually in New York at Sterling on teenage fan club record. So they went to Greg Kby to master it, had the budget for it.

[00:05:15] So off me and Raymond went off to New York to master with Greg Calbi. He was a legendary mastering engineer and getting to go to Sterling. But we had an issue cuz customs held the half inch. So we couldn't master. We got to master in and the girl and receptionist are really sorry, but we haven't got the tapes, so we're not gonna be master today.

[00:05:34] And we were like, oh God. But they were really good with us, says, you know, we're not gonna charge you for Greg's time. He's got other stuff, he, other stuff he can do, but there's no way of knowing how long. It's gonna be because customs don't tell you that. So they said, we'll be flexible, we'll slot you in as in when we get the tapes back for days, we waited.

[00:05:52] We're, we're staying in a nice hotel there, we were in the paramount Hotel one times Square. So we got nice hotel and it's on Sony in, they can't, they can't send us home because, We're there now. So they were busy trying to find us things to do, so we're getting taken to this party and there was this going on and we're getting gone out for dinner here.

[00:06:12] And then they got us tickets at BB King's place to go and see little Richard. Off we went and we're a small, small club and we're getting to watch Little Richard. And I always remember BB King came around cuz he was there and he kind of sat on the table with me and Raymond there and we're having, we have dinner and stuff and then the bander on and like BB King's like.

[00:06:33] It's Little Richard. It's little, it's Little Richard. And then I'm like, yeah, but it's BB King, sat watching Little Richard, you know? Great experiences. And then we go. And then finally the tapes. I can't remember how lo how long it took. We finally get the tapes and then they can fit us in a couple days later off we go do the mastering.

[00:06:54] And Greg was, Greg was brilliant. You know, you go in his studio and there's a letter on the wall in a thing, and it says, Pop by to see. It says something like, I came by to see you weren't here, but it's okay. Cause I trust your ears saying John Lennon, you know, . So it's like endorsed it. I don't need to be here.

[00:07:10] You know what you're doing. Great, great guy. I'm watching him master and just kind of how little he did, but every little bit he did made a massive difference. And just the monitoring in that room and just. Getting to see him at work. Same when you go to Abbey Road and those guys, you know, they've, they just run it through that chain and it automat automatically has this kind of lift, lift and this velvety thing going on and it's just such a well-oiled machine.

[00:07:40] Those chain, those whole desks and everything and the chain it goes through. And they don't necessarily have to do a lot. Hopefully they don't have to do a lot. Cause it means the mixes are good and if the all mixes, that's a nice, nice thing to be.

[00:07:50] Jon Con: Yeah. But I always worry, I always worry that, you know, when you send stuff to mastering engineers, I'm always sure mastering engineers always just go, oh, makes sounds really good.

[00:07:57] Even if it doesn't, they're gonna go. Yeah. Sounds really good. Yeah. Always get paranoid about that.

[00:08:02] Brino: I, I do, and maybe, and, you know, I. Certainly . Yeah, you can't really, you know, if the engineer goes, how was it? How did you find it? You know, I might say, oh, well there was a little bit of muddiness around 300 or whatever.

[00:08:13] Or, you know, the, the vocal was a little bit lost in the mix. I've just brought that out a bit or something. You might just give him a no. That kind of feedback. We certainly not gonna say it was an absolute bag of sha and I spent put my hair out for three days and trying to fix everything that you'd totally messed up.

[00:08:29] So yeah, there is that element, but that's why when you go to master. And you work with these guys, you actually, you know then because you get to see how much they do, how much is needed, what are they doing here, and I always have a look at what they doing, what are they taking at, what they adding and if they're battling with it and going through, and you might hit one problem track where they just go, this just doesn't sit with everything else and this is because of that.

[00:08:49] And when you're there you get to see that. So that paranoia go is cuz you know, yeah, they're not doing anything. Yeah. Obviously they're always telling you it's great, aren't they? But yeah, we do a lot, a lot of mastering. So, Get stuff. I mean, every week there's stuff to master, whether it's a single or an EP on album, getting stuff all the time, getting more and more now.

[00:09:08] And as we're doing it, more and more people are, obviously bands talk and they're saying, oh, we're getting, you know, Nick mastered hours. And maybe that's, you know, we're, we're quite reasonably priced, so we, if the, the budget's not there or if we've recorded it, why not master? But I do like sending it off to Pete cause I, yeah.

[00:09:25] Extra pair of ears. You know, you've, you've recorded it, you've mixed it, and then just getting someone like Pete May to

[00:09:30] Jon Con: just, it was one of the things I did in my old studio. One of the things I was really happy about, I went to Hafod for, like, I was doing, attended mastering for a while, and I was really glad I did that because it was just like an extra pair of ears.

[00:09:40] And it was like the, the QC'ing thing, I suppose it was like someone else was checking over it because Yeah. In a, the tunnel vision.

[00:09:45] Brino: Exactly . And it's, you know, they're mastering in a room that's set up for mastering, that's got really good monitoring. You know, like, like Orbiter Sonora, where we do the mastering over in, in Spain.

[00:09:54] It's. Oh, mastering room there. It's really set up, you know, the monitoring in the room and everything's treated for, for mastering, so it's a great place to do it, but our rooms are good as well. But yeah, I mean, you know, with the mastering, when I get sent stuff I haven't recorded, it's nice when you haven't recorded it, you don't know all the elements, you haven't got all those things going round in your head about it, and you can listen to it objectively and go, oh, that needs a bit.

[00:10:16] Always think, you know, the less you have to do, like the better sometimes. Yeah. You don't have to do a lot. If it sounds good, why? Why mess with it? Yeah. Why? You know you are there. You're there to make sure it sounds good and if it already sounds good, then that's just verification for them that. It sounds good.

[00:10:34] Then you'll do the technical aspect of it, the levels, making sure there's nothing flabbier at the bottom end, or if there's tiny little bump here and there. And then the technical stuff, which is adding the codes and doing the d d P Masters and all that, which, you know, is a big part of the mastering, which takes that responsibility off a band member or often an engineer or something.

[00:10:53] Yeah. Cuz you've gotta get all that data. Otherwise, you know, that's an important part of it. Giving them their d d P with all the right data on and compiling. You know, a lot of the time when we master an album, isn't it, the time is. Spent compiling the album, making sure the, the gaps are right. All that technical side.

[00:11:10] It's not just, it's not just, does it sound good? It's how can you compile this album and, you know,

[00:11:14] Jon Con: does it sound good from start to finish? You've like, does and is also, does it flow

[00:11:19] Brino: Yeah. Level matching. So do you, I assume you really like me, you've switched between stuff you've mastered and your ab and go back to make sure stuff's got Yeah.

[00:11:27] You know, flow to it.

[00:11:28] Jon Con: Yeah. What I normally do when I'm, when I'm kind of doing it is I'll bring in all the tracks onto one session. I'll probably have their own tracks. In Pro Tools, which I'm using. Yeah. And then I'll just have like the. The final master is in the session and I'll like switch, go ab ab between the different tracks.

[00:11:42] Brino: Yeah, yeah, that's right. I've got, I've got all the all of 'em in one session as well, so then, yeah,

[00:11:47] Jon Con: it's just very easy to kind of like, you know, loudness match or just check like is everything kind of flowing? His reason is jumping out, or do I need to kind of revisit it?

[00:11:54] Brino: Yeah, because obviously Dynamics in a mix and how much compression they've used, stuff like that can affect, like some songs can just jump at the speakers already and maybe the others don't.

[00:12:02] And even though they're kind of appearing that they're at the same levels, then they just have completely different dynamics. So it's addressing that so that, yeah, especially if they come next to each other on the album. It, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter if it's a kind of slow kind of song that starts quiet that's following a big song because it, but if it's two big songs together, yeah.

[00:12:22] It's like, you know, you gotta address all those things. There's that massive technical aspect to it. Yeah. In an ideal world, it would always go off. I mean, I'd love to use the big guys. You know, I've had stuff Bob Ludwig's, massive stuff. For us and we've had stuff done at Metropolis at Abbey Road and yeah there's lots of great machin engineers.

[00:12:39] There's a guy out in Portland as well who's brilliant and you know, with the Thunder stuff, we always use Edwards and he's always does an amazing job. And we'd love to always use a machin engineer. Really, but it, as part of our business that enables us to obviously get work as well and get paid some.

[00:12:57] And it's an aspect that we do. But yeah, on a record that I'm producing or mixing, it's nice to send it off to, I mean, Pete, would you be, it would usually go to have that kind of, and if they always come back sounding so good.

[00:13:09] Jon Con: Yeah. Cause I remember we did like began we, going back to General Fords Army we, you did a shootout, didn't you?

[00:13:14] Between a few? Yeah. Yes. And there was like, it was like Abbey Road did one, like

[00:13:19] Brino: it was Abbey Road. Pete and Bob Ludwig. So we had a track done. Through all three. And it was one of those things that at first spec, like for Simon, who is Simon Ford General Ford's army. For him it was like, there wasn't much what was that?

[00:13:37] I was gonna say

[00:13:37] Jon Con: Daisy flaming the porcelain cage.

[00:13:39] Brino: gave, flaming the porcelain cage, the lost album. One of the, one of the absolute masterpiece. Great fun to work on. Great album, musical. Just, just brilliant. Yeah. And should definitely have a lot more credit than it, than it does. . So yeah, some really interesting tracks on there.

[00:13:57] He's an interesting artist, but yeah, we did have the shoot off and it maybe it, it's not as obvious at first. It more obvious to me the train deer. But Simon, you know, it took him a little while and then he was like, right, we, I mean, we discounted the Bob Lu won straight away, not because there, there's anything wrong with it.

[00:14:15] It was just pretty much like, like the mix. It was just exactly the same as the mix. But. I'm slightly too bright Maybe. We had a road one, which just had this velvet kind of love wrapped around it. You couldn't quite put your finger on, but it just had this thing, it made it sound really warm and really nice.

[00:14:40] Yeah, and kind of you imagined that over time. , even though it hadn't done a lot to over time, you wouldn't get tired of listening to that. Whereas the Ludwick one, maybe you would, it was kind of maybe over time you, you would, and then the Pete one was great and it had slightly more width and side, like, really liked what it did to his vocal.

[00:14:59] It, it had this effect on where his vocal sat and the kind of. Kind of jumped up. And so he really liked that and he was like, Hey, I, I really like the ABI Road one because of this, but I really liked the peak one because of this. It's slightly peach, slightly the edgier, the vocal sat really nice and they were both good for, for different reasons.

[00:15:21] Not that they were miles apart to be honest. You know, the mixes were good anyway and knew they're both good masters. We went with Pete cause. It was, it was about that. That vocal, the vocal kind of thing, won it. But I mean, I really liked the AbbVie Road one, but then for an unsigned artist, self-finance like Simon, it's like do you spend, do you go into the thousands?

[00:15:43] How much difference is it gonna make to his record sales? And you know, he is trying to make the best record he can, but he's already spent on his money on session musician studios. It's like we can have this master, this one, which I really like, cuz the vocals for a few hundred or this. Into the thousands.

[00:15:59] So for an unsigned artist like Simon, it's justifying spending that thousands, you know, is the end user. By the time everyone listens to it on a little pair of earbuds, I mean, you are always trying to make the best one record you can for the budget you've got. The difference for him wasn't big enough to justify spending hundreds and hundreds of more packs when there was absolutely nothing wrong with Pete Mayers.

[00:16:18] He actually really liked Pete May. Also really liked the other one, so it was then, well, I really like this, so let's go with this. And it saves him money, which then he can put into promotion, you know? Yeah. But I still think people should always get their stuff mastered. You know, people say, oh, they, they can just run it through a, a limiter or whatever on, on their system.

[00:16:37] And it sounds like a bag of shit really does, sounds nice and loud and nice and crunchy, whatever. But then it gets played on the radio and it dies a horrible death or always get, you can get master in, done really well for a really good price. So I would say always go and get it professionally mastered, just to have that validation as well.

[00:16:54] And just because that's what, you know, mastering engineers are used to doing that if that's what they're there for, that that process at the end, that extra pair of is. But yeah, definitely make sure you get your stuff mastered.

[00:17:04] Jon Con: With the Simon session, did you attend that mastering or was that just It was online?

[00:17:09] Brino: No, no. It was all online mastering. And you've attend, but

[00:17:12] Jon Con: you attended. With Scott.

[00:17:15] Brino: The last one I did at Abbey Road, the last session at mastering. Yeah. I attended the Master in Abbey Road. Yeah. For Kit and Pyramid's last album with Scott. I think, you know, Scott, we could have done the online thing, but I think as an experience Scott wanted to go to Abbey Road and we spent a lot of time on that album.

[00:17:31] So he was like, no, let's see the whole process through. And we had kind of business meetings to dis. Anyway, so things to discuss. So it was like, right, we can do all this in one hit. We go to London, we go to mastering, we make sure we see it through. It's a nice experience to go to Abbey Road, he'd never been, and then we can have our meetings and talk about all the business stuff that we had to talk about anyway.

[00:17:50] Yeah. And it was really reasonable. It, it was great. They didn't have to do a lot to it, but great experience, great day out. They were everyone nears. so great. Anyway. And it was reasonable cuz it was done pretty quick to be honest. It didn't actually yeah, it was a really reasonable price. They did.

[00:18:06] Jon Con: And some I'm guessing that for attended mastering, they're not really charging per track then They might be trying charging

[00:18:12] Brino: It was per hour. Per hour. Yeah. So it was per hour, but we were getting through them. And did they

[00:18:17] Jon Con: do, I'm just wondering, did they do the half, half speed mastering thing or not?

[00:18:21] Cause I've heard like replaces I think is it metropolis might do this. Yeah. Where they're like, they play it back at half. . So obviously it's like the shift space bar trick you do in Pro tools when I'm trying to do edits and stuff. Yeah. And then like obviously it's playing back at half a speed, but then you capturing it again like a faster one, but then it just means that like, I'm not really sure why,

[00:18:42] Brino: but they didn't do any of that.

[00:18:43] But I dunno if they do do that technique there. No, I'm wondering if it's,

[00:18:46] Jon Con: is that for, is that for vinyl have to get a mastering, mastering engineers on Yes. Other master only engineers who do that and find out.

[00:18:53] Brino: Well, we've talked, we have talked to Pete about coming on, but he's such a busy man. But that's true.

[00:18:57] If we can get the the stars to align, then he will come on and be doing a mastering podcast with us. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Anything else to add? I think that's kind of just send us your tracks for mastering. Yeah. We'll master them. We

[00:19:11] Jon Con: and if there's anything standard out, I think what I've got at the moment, one or two people, I'm giving them feedback going.

[00:19:16] Well, I think we need to just make a couple of adjustments first. Yes. Before we do it, before you send it over. I think we just. Tweak the levels, like pre

[00:19:23] Brino: vocals up a bit. Yeah, yeah. I respect that. When a master engineer says that, you know, if, if you just dropped your snare or brought your snare up a little bit or something, those little things.

[00:19:30] But maybe we'll post some tracks, get permission off the bands and maybe post some tracks that pre-master and then mastered that, that we've done or that some other master engineers have done. And then we can actually talk about you know, the differences and what's been done to them. And I've got some, an album, I'm gonna master it.

[00:19:47] In the next couple of weeks actually. And it's just, it's well mixed and everything, but the vocals just a little bit too, too buried. So in that mastering process, it'll be bringing that vocal out and the techniques to, to bring that vocal out. Yeah. Just a, just a little bit, where are we gonna be next week, John?

[00:20:03] I'm gonna be, I'll be back in Spain, going to work on some, start work on some tracks with Max Rafferty over in Spain. No. Yeah, and at my, my place Nada Surf in Leaders Vale this weekend, so finishing off their album, which is sounding really good. With my old production buddy Ian Lawton who's gonna be a guest on here.

[00:20:25] Great. Front of house engineer. Tour manager. Yeah. Try and grab him for a podcast on the weekend, John. Try and get cool. Interview with him. Alright. But yeah, I'll be back in sunny Spain next week.

[00:20:34] Jon Con: Cool. As always, as I say before, we've got a workshop that's happening in April for production workshop available.

[00:20:42] Which you can visit session recall.com/leedersvale if you have any questions, us an email podcast session. Com and you can give us a comment if you're on YouTube. But thanks again very much for watching. If you, if you to know anyone who would find us interesting please share with 'em as well. And hopefully we see you all again in the next one.

[00:20:59] Brino: Great. Bye-bye. Cheer job cheer mate.