Mastering Can Be Murder

On June 9, I uploaded my final mixes to Park Slope mastering house, and they began working on mastering my album. The first attempt came back on June 13, and I listened to it a few times and came back with some requested changes. That's when the trouble started. I've gone back and forth with this mastering guy so many times I can hardly keep track now. Here it is June 26, and he's still making a change that I originally requested on June 15. Mind you, the change was, "track 7 might need a little extra compression compared to the other tracks on the album." Not exactly a challenging feat.

In fact, compression has been a point of contention between me and the mastering guy. On June 15, I wrote:

"One thing that stands out is that my album is not as loud as other albums in my collection. I don't know if this is a compression/limiting issue or something else, but it is somewhat noticeable."

In truth, I know that this is a compression issue. But I didn't want to give the guy crap for under-compressing the album, so I pointed out the end result and left it at that. On June 17, after a brief conversation about another issue, he said he would "get on them in next day or two, max." Well, on June 21 (4 days later) he sent me revisions - of only 7 of the 12 songs on the album. I knew something was amiss when I started downloading. But I gave the benefit of the doubt again. I asked him to enumerate what he had done. The compression was not among the things he listed in response. So I reminded him of my request. Here's what he wrote in response:

"over compressing to make it louder is your choice. it is exactly what's wrong with modern mastering/records, but i'm happy to smash the living shit out of it to make it louder if you want (p.s., strictly for chumps, but there is an arms escalation in progress that makes the major lablels insist on that practice). just let me know."

Strictly for chumps? Is he calling me a chump? I suppose I could have said, "Just do what I ask." But I didn't. Here's what I said in response:

"Well, you make it difficult to ask for when you frame it like that, don't you? But you're also making it clear that you don't feel you could do it artfully, so I'd rather not have you do it than have you do it coarsely."

So he basically got his way on this. It sounds like I'm caught in the middle of a much bigger issue, especially given what he said in his follow-up email:

"to be clear, as email is such a hard communication format, nuance-wise, i'm happy to do anything you need to make it the way you want. however, your music is pretty subtle and complex and it would be counterproductive to further smush it. this is the scourge of the entire industry. all mastering guys complain about same thing. books written about it, etc."

I don't know where the nuance was in his previous email, but I did appreciate that he backed off a little here. Still, he's essentially sticking to his guns on this issue. I think he would be embarrassed to have his name attached to a mastering job that "smashed the shit out of" the music with compression. So I dropped it.

However, this is only a fraction of the many issues we've gone back and forth about. Other things include EQ, how long to let the fade-outs last at the end of each track, and one funny issue where one of the songs he sent back was actually several songs playing at once.

Now, to be fair, this guy's wife just had a baby, so I'm betting he's pretty overwhelmed and exhausted right now. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on most things. At this point, I'm just eager to get the last track back and be done with the mastering process.

One thing is for sure: Park Slope is unlikely to get business from me again.

Well, onwards and upwards. I'm crossing my fingers that nothing bad happens when I upload to iTunes... (I'll talk about that story in another post)

G