Check it out party people. William Murphy’s album has been nominated for a Grammy gram gram. I mastered it so I’d sure love to see a winner here. Best of luck to everyone in the running.
Category: What’s Going On…
New tunes from About A Mile out today. Check out the sounds produced by Ian Eskelin, Mixed by Neal Avron, and…ya know who mastered it. Dur.
Featured here on NewReleaseTuesday
. Dig the video below. Be sure to click for HD video and audio…that 320 stuff sounds like it was made in a bucket.
Check ’em out on the Facepage here.
You may be able to hear the bass from here. Today I’m finally getting solid work done on my man Rio’s album, in hot anticipation for his listening party tomorrow at County Q Studio in Berry Hill. He’s got a very inventive mix of pop, hip hop and soul, all rolled up and packaged with some awesome switch at the end. He’s a fairly brilliant producer and writer, and it’s a real pleasure to work on his stuff and work with him. You really should check out his fan page over at the FaceThingPage. You can do that here – Rio Ville Facebook or you can follow his tweets, which often contain links to his music and videos right HERE
Categories
A Monday Variety Pack
What a day! A variety pack indeed. So far I’ve worked on screaming chick rock from Uncommon Road, some seriously great SoulHop from Rio Ville (my term, not his) some vibey Christmas rock from Starfield, some spanish jazz fusion and some pop en Espanol from a nice dude I just met and I haven’t figured out who his artist is yet. Sometimes I kinda roll like that. Detroit, Nashville, San Diego and later some punk from South Georgia for the guys in Stages and Stereos. What an awesome day of stuff from all over the map, figuratively and literally. But now it’s time for an ear break, grab some cat food and possibly take a bit out of this Starbucks card that’s burning a hole in my wallet.
I’m going to be looking at a lot of progress bars today – I’m rendering XD Masters (Expanded Dynamics) files for the songs that to be the radio singles for Francesca’s amazing Christmas album. Yes, I’ve mentioned the amazing Christmas album once or twice. It’s good. You’ll know when she’s blowing up the charts this fall.
For the last couple years, I’ve been doing this thing, as I’m sure other mastering dudes have, of sending specially treated versions of mastering for radio play. I call them XD Masters, and they’re cool.
We know that “radio” does stuff to the music we send out. They’ve got a tough spot. Radio audio guys have a particular challenge when it comes to dynamic processing for FM broadcast. They have to try to get songs from 1984 where there was no loudness war, no monster digital limiting, no actual concern for how loud a song was recorded to sound as good as they did then while being parked next to some seriously loudly mixed/mastered current day tunes. We can save the debate on how loud is too loud. That’s client to client – although I don’t crust (whoops. awesome typo. thanks Reid.) the life out of stuff, FYI. ANYwho. The only people who really have a say in that are the people making the music and paying me for quality louderization. (New word. All mine.)
So I’m sending out versions of the songs for radio intent with the louderizering backed off. It sounds better on the radio because their compressors aren’t re-compressing down to broadcast-happy level – essentially undoing what was done in mastering. Radio gets more dynamic, not so hot mixes, their broadcast compression doesn’t have to work so hard, thus, it sounds better.
That’s fun, right?
I just finished the Mastered for iTunes version of Francesca Battistelli’s new (and AMAZING) Christmas album. I can do it for you records too. You’re going to want this one. You’ll play it for years. I’m playing it now, and it’s 90 degrees outside.
Categories
A Little Room Tuning Anyone?
I went over to my man Sean Moffitt’s studio today. He’s had a bit of a subwoofer casualty, like ya do, and his KRK has become DED. Well. Dead. Whatever. Time for an upgrade! He headed out and grabbed a couple new tasty subs and I headed over with my trusty room measurement gadgets to line ’em up and get the crossover set right and all that good stuff. Easy job as those things go since he already had a setup rockin’ pretty well with the old sub. Now he’s got them off to the sides, symmetrical like, and we tweaked the crossover to get a little more chest thumpy goodness out of ’em. Having two now is much better. Bollocks to whatever anyone else says, you can hear a sub off to one side of a stereo pair. Having a sub on each side of the speaker setup makes for a more solid center image. So there. They can be a little more complicated to set up, but I think it’s worth it. Honorable mention to having one sub right in the middle. That’ kinda causes another problem to deal with though. It all depends on the stuff that depends. No two rooms and speaker setups get the same treatment.
Time to hang with the wife. Saturday and football. Beer:30 methinks.
Anyone who’s spent much time talking to me knows that I’m not exactly a “Lyric Guy” – meaning, I listen more to the sound of the vocals, but not always exactly what they’re saying with the vocal. I’m more interested in making the vocal sound engaging to the listener. The lyrics are for *them*, not me.
Not always.
I just did a single for Stages and Stereos. It’s gripping. It’s about a guy who is in the military, in the middle of the action, and it’s one of the guys in the band. It’s different when it’s real. The bass player was in Afghanistan. He was running and stepped on an IED. It wasn’t pretty. He didn’t come away unscathed. He’s alive and sharing. That’s bold and I think it’s great. Be on the lookout for this one.
Oh, it also ROCKS
Engineered and produced by my old buddy Lee Dyess at Earthsound Recording – bringing me screaming rock with killer kick drums and really loud snares since 2004…or something. It’s been a long time.
Ok. That’s a stretch. I totally have a kitchen sink.
This week has been chock-full of different stuff.
The upcoming Francesca Battistelli Christmas record is in the can…well…the stocking, so to speak, all but the parts order. There will be a Mastered for iTunes version available, if you’re an iThing haver. Also CDs at stores, like our forefathers bought music for their CD boom boxes when they walked up hill both ways in the snow. At Christmas. See how that happened? It was an accident.
Also this week, an album for Jeff Sparkman at Trinity Church, a bit of a rocker with some acoustic niceties mixed in. Tuesday was an EP for Matt Boswell, brought by long time regular producer and engineer Jordan Critz. An album by artist Jennifer Shaw, from producer and engineer Paul Marino. A couple of songs for Don Chaffer and his wife’s band Waterdeep (awesome cover tune, by the way) one club bumper for DJ Maj, a punk rock tune from Stages and Stereos for my buddy Lee Dyess at Earthsound Recording…that song will have its own post. It’s interesting, and I want to make sure I’m not blowing anything by talking about it before they do.
Now, it’s back to finishing the Trinity Church recall mixes and getting into Lisa-Marie Fisher’s album. She’s German, doing a pop thing with a little country feel. A little work from my family’s homeland. Isn’t that fun?
Seriously. If you’ve read this far, you must be bored or avoiding something. Maybe, if you’re not doing anything, mosey over to my facebook page and give it a Like. You’ve obviously got a minute to kill on Friday afternoon.
Have a great weekend, and send me some tunes!
Categories
Mastered for iTunes. Yep.
I’m in the midst of mastering the new Francesca Battistelli Christmas album, which is pretty fantastic, I’ve gotta say. She sounds just gorgeous, and the mixes are out of hand. I love it. We’re doing a MFiT version, so it will be silky smooth on your iDevices and whatnot.