Phewww!!! I have finally mastered my new album Red Gold and I am feeling relieved and excited to see out 2023 with WAV files in my pocket. But, like most stages of this project, mastering took some time for me to get my ear and head around.
This is not my first DIY production, but as I complete my 6th self released album it is becoming clearer to me that each stage of the process, from the songwriting all the way to mastering, requires particular mind/skill sets that take time and consideration to transition through. The critical headspace is quite different when you are songwriting as opposed to engineering audio, yet these are the career hats you are switching between regularly as you create.
Since finishing up at HOTA at the end of June, I have been completing the tracks at home in Burleigh Heads, recording more vocals and an assortment of instruments like melodica, organ and ukulele. I even set up my walk-in wardrobe in the bedroom to record my daughter Jonquil and partner Bernadette (the birds around Burleigh Heads are such a nuisance).
I did some extra sound design and recorded some of my mixes underwater in the bathtub, but I was not as impressed as I would have liked. I bought a small waterproof bluetooth speaker and submerged whilst playing one of my songs (the idea was to cross fade between the real mix and the underwater mix so it felt like you were going underwater). The bathtub itself created some weird frequencies that did not sound natural (I should have gone back to a creek and tried it there). However, recording shakers and tambourines underwater were a lot more successful, in fact they sound great.
I did revisit Studio 2 to track two new songs on guitar, so that all the main guitar tracks on the album have inherited the cavernous sound of HOTA’s basement. This is an example of me trying to be the performer, producer and audio engineer all at the same time. It was a battle between me, my guitar and the many creaks, pops and air conditioner noises that inhabit that space (thanks Ryan for sorting out all those air con issues)
I had Dan Booth and Ben Dougherty visit to lay down some more electric guitars. I love sitting back and letting someone else play guitar. It means I can put my producer hat on and direct Dan and Ben to fill out the textures needed to lift the songs. There are a couple of tracks where each of their guitars dance around each other despite them not playing together.
The mixing process took a lot more time than I anticipated, but that is always the way with my projects. It usually takes me a good two weeks to start trusting my ear and understanding the room I am in (not an acoustically treated room, rather a rectangle brick box). But time is a good thing when mixing, so you can bounce out the tracks and play them on a variety of stereos and crappy bluetooth speakers to see if they translate to the real world (going for drives in the car is a great way to listen to mixes…..as a passenger of course, thanks Bern)
Half way through mixing I took my desktop to the Mac store as the cooling fan would kick into extreme mode within 5 minutes of Protools being opened (I did not feel like spending my own energy fixing tech problems). No hardware issues, but a complete wipe of the drive to get it back to a sane workflow (it took two days to get all the relevant programs and plugins back onto the computer).
Finally I took my mixes into Serotonin Studio (thanks Guy and Jake) to run them through an SSL Sigma summing unit along with an SSL mix bus (some good D/A conversion and transistor goodness). The combination of Dynaudio and Genelec speakers gave me some great monitoring but again, this takes some listening time to understand and appreciate.
I utilised Brainwork's Masterdesk as my digital plugging and ran the audio through a nice tape simulation. This took a bit of playing around with to get the right saturation and also to learn about the useful resonant frequency cuts that the MasterDesk has to offer. I tried not to limit my audio too hard so as to protect the dynamics of my mixes, but when I got them home and played them on my crappy speaker, most of the bottom end of my guitar was either a little dirgy or a little too bouncy. “Jake…I need to come back!!!!!”
Finally, finally….I addressed the as mentioned issues in my mixes and took them back to Serotonin and repeated the process. I ran all the songs again and pushed them a little harder through the SSL ( It was sounding great)....
I took the mixes on my family’s little pre Christmas holiday to Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) and they translate well….in fact I love them….There is maybe one song I would revisit if I had a chance, but it is said that the Romans always made a mistake in their ancient mosaic designs, just to point out that we humans are not perfect, that we are no Gods….so there!!
My ear can relax now and I can put on a different career hat to truely finish this project….One which requires a bit more administration and networking so as to help spread the work about Red Gold (out in March 2024)
Thanks again to HOTA, home of the Arts for all their support so far.
And thanks to RADF, Regional Arts Development Fund for helping support the next stage of this album.