Del Barber – Juno Nom
March 4th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Here’s some cool news: Del’s album Love Songs for the Last Twenty is up for a Juno this year. I met Del a year ago, and did some keyboard tracks and mastering touch ups on the record.
He’s a good time, and I’m pretty darned impressed with what they did on the album, capturing great vibe and energy, and sounding, well, very much like Del. It’s easy to lose sight of who an artist is in the recording process.
I ran into Del again this January at a WSO fundraiser at the concert hall, and what really impressed me was how he answered the usual question during small talk, “keepin busy? on the road lots?” He said, ‘Heck ya, 200 show last year.” Wow. That’s inspiring. Even more inspiring, I asked, “Taking it easy this next year?” He replied, “No way, I’m aiming for 200 more shows this year.”
People like that are SO fun to be around! Best of luck, Del!
And there goes another mastering rule…
March 1st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Had a creative day today…. on a few mastering gigs! Who’da thought. Most times you’re supposed to remain ‘technical’, not walk all over the mixer, not get all ‘producer’ in the middle of the session. I can imagine the look of horror of a band’s face when the mastering guy suddenly jumps up, “Hey!!! I’ve got a great idea!!!” And 10 plugins later… it’s unrecognizable. I think the nature of the gig is a nice blend of ‘stay the heck out of the way’ and ‘well i guess the buck stops with me’. In today’s case, it was only… 12 plugins. On a Cuban record.
I’m not sure there’s a safe place to begin that’ll shield me from the purists out there. Anyone younger off is thinking, ‘no way man, way to use your head and try new things! there’s no rules!’ Well, ya, there aren’t, but you’ll learn you don’t get gigs because you’re known as the guy that’ll always mess with your work because he’s ‘feelin it’.
It was also one of the first times I’ve been able to use my Airfield Audio Liminator 2 compressor on the 2-bus. It’s used all the time in mixes on all sorts of stuff, but never on the mix because my Blue 230 is handling that. For most mastering gigs, the STC-8M is the tool of the hour. This time, however, I got to use all sorts of toys.
It started with a call from the engineer, my friend Larry Roy, who said go ahead and add some space if you think it’d help. Turns out, I agreed. Larry’s got a great studio, comes from an excellent musical background, and mixes with all sorts of API eq’s and comps, Millenia gear, distressors, and much more through Lipinski 707 speakers. So the mixes came in ready to rock. In the ambience department, I called up a convolution long room with a slight tail that complimented the existing space, as well as a complex, heavily diffused Lexicon PCM Native room. Both verbs had their channels pre treated with SoundToys Decapitator Preamp module, making sure that the sound feeding the plugs was a shade different than the direct source. There was a tricky goal of adding space yet character yet being subtle enough to pass through mastering. The mixes of verbs varied greatly between songs, of course, and the name of the game was to always make it sound better, not worse or just gratuitously add verb to be a ‘creative’ mastering guy.
The Airfield was brought in as a parallel comp, very quick attack/release times, light ratios, low thresholds, and it added considerable volume and body with cool compression characteristics. Transformer 2 was used, though transformer 1 is a better starting point when using the comp as an insert on a master. Also in parallel was the Drawmer 1968ME, a tube comp that was used in more of a traditional role. These two comps fed the STC-8 which was on a standard light mastering setting, and voila. Mix to taste per song, usual variable eq tweaks, and you’re left with a rare case scenario where an all-acoustic record is given a little more vibe with judicious use of mastering/mixing tools. Of course the verbs had to be of high quality, or they’d stick out compared to the high quality System 6000 verbs originally used at mix time.
I’ll post a link to the album by Trio Bembe, as soon as it’s available online.
