TIC Diary Part IV – FINAL TOUCHES
The final story for this short diary is about mastering. Most folks don’t know it but the three main parts to recording are: Recording, Mixing and Mastering. Each part has a significant impact on the product you hear. Look at recording as the ingredients in the cake, mixing as making the cake, and master as the frosting on the cake. You can still have a great piece of plain cake, but the frosting really adds the final step to the taste buds. Mastering is called the “black art” of recording. They set the levels for radio, level all the sounds, raise base or other frequencies where required. The only thing you bring with you to the mastering studio is a hard drive with your mix. If you hear a side-by-side comparison of the same song well mixed, and then mastered it is very noticeable.
Since I believe mastering is very important to the final product I want to go with the best I could afford. As it turns out I could afford arguably the second best mastering engineer in the country. Ted Jensen works for Sterling Sound in New York City. That is a two-hour ride for me. I realized if I decided early on in mixing that I would go with him – it would also raise the mixing engineers expectations. I chose Greg Dicrosta to mix because I heard his mixing and liked the sounds he got. But he raised his game knowing his mixes were going to be handled by Ted Jensen.
For mastering you are allowed to sit in on the sessions for questions and comments. I decided to take Greg and Mike with me into the city to do this.
At the time Mike was growing a beard and at this time it was a cold fall. So he was wearing a black winter pull over hat. Combined with a camouflage jacket that looked like he had just gotten out of Vietnam, he literally looked like a homeless guy. We teased him mercilessly has we went through the city because even in New York he got a few looks.
We should up for 10am appointment at Sterling Sound and they have a gorgeous facility complete with a stocked kitchen with everything imaginable. We dropped our bags in Ted’s waiting room and noticed an plaque with thirteen or so CDs in there, each indicating platinum sales levels of the Eagles Hotel California album. This was Ted’s big start in the business. Ted’s most recent project was Metallica’s much-anticipated Death Magnetic. We were nervous, and I sure was –it was my music he was going to be hearing.
Ted comes out to the kitchen and grabs us. We go to his studio, which over looks the water and New Jersey shore. Amazing. The speaker system alone was valued at well over 100k. He asks for the drive and start working “What If”.
About half way through the song he pauses it and turns around to us sitting on the couch behind him and says “you know when I saw you guys out there I didn’t expect much”, of course Greg and I eye ‘homeless’ Mike. Ted continues “but this stuff sounds really good”. I was floored. He talked a little more about how he really like the sound of the acoustic guitars and he noted that the mix had the proper balance especially in the low end. Our heads were big when we left.
As it turned out Ted was from the same town in Connecticut that Greg and Mike were originally from. He also started by playing horns as Greg did before he got into audio engineering. We spent the day there, enjoy our previous months work with an ultra professional, lived with nice compliments. Speaking for myself at least – it was a pinnacle moment of the entire recording project. It was impossible not to feel auspicious.