When it comes to getting an album done, the only way to make sure you actually finish it is to set deadlines. Otherwise you can listen and listen and you’ll just find more things to add or change. Can this part use another vocal harmony? Should we bring up the volume of the horns here? You can listen to the same mix for days and days and start hearing things that aren’t there, and you try to fix them anyway. So we set a date for mastering knowing we had a lot of work to do.
Mastering is the final step of the whole process to make the music ready for album duplication. It entails bringing levels up to “album quality” sound, smoothing out the edges, and really making everything sound clear. It gives each instrument a little more personality. You are able to hear the crispness of the hi hat and the sheer force of the horn section. But you must have all the right mixes before you get to the mastering session. If there’s something too loud or too soft, chances are mastering isn’t going to be able to solve it. Everything’s got to be perfect before mastering makes it even better.
Our session was the day after Memorial Day. After a long weekend of barbequeing, then mixing, then barbequeing, then mixing some more, we sat down Monday night and listened to the most recent mixes. With mastering in 12 hours, we had our work cut out for us. Two listens on two different stereos yielded a bunch of things that needed to be changed. Most of it was minor, but important. We wanted everything to be just right. Notes in hand, we sat down at the studio, knowing there would be minimal sleep.
The time ticked away. Soon it was 3 am. The headphones had not left our heads for three hours. But each song was sounding better and better. Just a few more tweaks, and we’re there. Normally in these situations we function on coffee. This night was adrenaline.
It was now 5 am, and we were listening to the final track. Everything was falling into place. We drifted into an excited and oddly fulfilling sleep, which only lasted until our 7 am wakeup call.
As musicians we hardly ever see the light of day this early. But our roommate/biggest fan, Danielle, sees it every morning as she gets up for work. Unfortunately, being a nine to fiver, she isn’t able to function on the same schedule as us. But it works out on days like this. She let us borrow her car on the condition that we drove her to work and picked her up at the end of the day. The drive to her place of employment in Princeton, New Jersey was quiet, save the cursing of traffic. For the most part we were comatose, staring blankly out the windows, fixated on nothing except the task at hand - staying awake long enough to get to New York and be able to make it through the rest of the day running on the palpable energy from working with a living legend.
New York City was bustling when we arrived. We paraded down 8th Avenue with hard drive in tow - funny how that little box can contain our entire essence, embodying everything we’ve been working toward for the past two years.
Entering DB Plus on W 57th St. was a familiar sensation. We had Home mastered there as well. The whole operation consists of three modestly sized rooms - a waiting area, an office, and a studio. The waiting room has a few pieces of eye candy - a collage of black and white photos of musicians past and present (I recall a particularly heartwarming picture of a grinning Otis Redding with microphone in hand), a “wall of fame,” as we call it, containing CD cases of various artists they have worked with recently (Norah Jones, Hugh Masakela, and Rick Moranis included), and, the most impressive piece: the gold record for Average White Band’s 1974 self-titled album, engineered by Gene Paul, son of Les, and the man who was about to master his second Bad Apples album.
To be continued…
