The mix was not ready and Frans sent me the ‘stems’ as they had been recorded on his Mac. I was surprised by the rhythmical, musical nature of the material. Frans told me that during the recordings they had been inspired by the sound of the 80s: flanging basses, analog synths and chugging drum machines. In total there were eight rough edits from the recording sessions. The soundcloud tracks with ‘original’ in their titles are examples. They’re the recorded sounds straight from the mixing desk, no questions asked.

Frans and I set to work at EARLabs, listening closely while making notes. We cut away stuff, created breaks and starts and endings. We doubled tracks so that we could work on stereo fx. We eq-ed so that instruments became better discernable. That process took a couple of months because each of us had their other occupations and sometimes we decided to send provisional results to Scott.

In all the process took some four months with me working alone and three duo sessions in the EARLabs studio. Mid April we decided the editing part was finished and I did the final masters. For each original I have added a mastered result. I think it’s exciting stuff that deserves a decent release. I’m not sure when and where it will be released but your enthousiastic reply will speed things up. Fo sho!

The Italian label Frattonove will release “Vignettes” later this year, consisting of 13 tracks. A major part of the music consists of guitar, naturally, to which are added electronic layers.

First analysis
Listening to the music I noticed an intimate atmosphere. The music progresses at an easy pace. Looking at the sounds with an analyzer I noticed that the sonic spectrum went up to some 5,000 or 6,000 herz. The other frequencies (we can hear up to 17,000-19,000 herz) were relatively soft to silent. That is of course one of the factors causing this intimate atmosphere, but it is strange considering the fact that guitar sounds can reach much higher. And the electronic sounds that I did hear promised much more than was currently present.

Otherwise the recordings were okay except for some strange anomaly at the start of track 13, where a very low bass sound was audible on some places sounding together with the guitar.

Mastering
I decided to try and boost the frequencies up to 10,000 herz. Carefully because we risk of causing too much hiss, or a metallic sound. Upon applying this boost (see picture) dynamically (at some parts more eq-ing than others) the sound opened up immediately. A multiband compressor applied to the same frequency range caused sudden bursts of hiss. I could tackle this with a noise gate on the side (extreme left and right of the stereofield) above 8,000 herz.

Then I got to the bass sounds in track 13. This track starts with an interplay of guitar snares. The lowest frequencies of these snares was somewhere in the 260-300 herz region. The sound I heard however was definitely lower than 100 herz. My frequency analyzer didn’t help. Eq-ing everything away lower than 100 herz contaminated the total sound image. It was barely audible but definitely there. What to do? Perhaps in a regular listening situation it would not be noticed at all. Not even Sergio and Rutger had noticed it. But I couldn’t let it go. This is a part that is subtle and the focus is on the guitar sounds. I looked more closely at what was going on on these particular parts (looping and looping and looping). I noticed two frequencies: one at 280 herz and the other just above that one, let’s say 295 herz). When I cut away the 295 herz the bass disappeared. And then I remembered my physics lessons. Most probably what I heard was a resultant frequency of the interference between these two sounds. Anyway, cutting away that particular frequency did the job.

Result
Sergio and Rutger were cheering when I sent them the first test renders, but naturally, after a closer listen some issues did occur. The most prominent ones were the result of the higher frequencies becoming more apparent. This always happens and it requires some further tuning. The job, delivery of basic material, mastering, discussion, and final delivery was done within a week.

Sergio and Rutger allowed me to publish two samples of their music on Soundcloud.com

Further reference:
Machinefabriek : www.machinefabriek.nu
Sergio Sorrentino : www.sergiosorrentino.com

Frattonove : www.fratto9.com

MUSIC
Listening to the music he sent I was taken aback by the amount of instruments, the dense and complex juxtapositions of samples and loops. Quite something completely different. The mixes were for the most part immaculate. Clean recording, well played, flawless cuts and pastes of the various soundtracks that had been samples.

ARTIST
First of all, I didn’t know Vincent before he contacted me through Facebook. But then we have the great wide open of the Internet and there I found various references. Vincent has released other music and one of his topics is the rehashing of existing movies and composing a new soundtrack that he deems fitting. Here are a few samples. He has a channel on Youtube, called [ Le Bergerrond ] so you can watch more of that. On Vimeo, this is [ his channel ]. You can read an extensive interview, conducted by the great Tobias Fischer on [ Tokafi ].
Here’s a direct link to the movie with music that will become track 3 of the new release.

PROCESS
First was a complete listening session to all of the music. The first half reminded me a lot of the Montréal scene and at many times of the earlier collage music of John Zorn (Spillane era). It is lyrical at the same time as jumpy and chaotic. There is only a very slight hierarchy in the instrumentation; every instrument is treated equally in the mix so that it is difficult to focus. This forced me to tread the music very carefully. My first test renders were flatly rejected by Vincent. I had made the typical mistake of going on for hours trying to force my will upon the sound with various means (transient correctors, compressors, limiters, exciters) until I couldn’t hear clearly anymore. I then made my best shot and sent it to Vincent. Who listened with fresh ears and replied: “I don’t like any of the mixes. The only aspect that I love are the drums additional presence on the second piece, but even there it tends to kill the dynamics that I love.” Ouch!!! that hurt. But he was right and I thanked him for this criticism.

I decided to change the process entirely. Wait a few days and start all over again and then slowly build up. This led in some cases to nothing more but some eq (in the bass area) and a very lightly applied maximizer to get a better hold of the dynamics. This yielded a much better frequency balance and transients left intact. The second round of test renders yielded a much better result. It was closer to the original mixes but all of the weak points in the originals had been repaired. There is a better contrast between sounds and the ‘bottom end’ of the sound is heavier, giving the whole more ‘mass’. Vincent was much satisfied with this second version.

I did a final master render of all of the tracks and uploaded them to Vincent on January 20.

what is the FREEMASTER PROJECT ?

The FREEMASTER PROJECT is started to help artists to get their music mastered properly. Every month throughout 2013 the EARLabs STUDIO does one mastering project for free. The artists can apply via Facebook.com/earlabs.

In July I spent some time post-producing and mastering a series of recordings by Jozef van Wissem, the Dutch lutenist. It didn’t progress the way I had expected it but it was, as with every mastering project, quite an experience!

I only knew Jozef Van Wissem remotely before we met in September 2011 in my hometown where he did a quick concert with Stephan Mathieu. Van Wissem is an artist with a certain aura. That and the fact that he plays an unusual instrument with the necessary suave and bravoure and excellent skills raised my attention. We shook hands afterwards, exchanged a few words and that was that. Van Wissem took off to another gig. Later I bought his latest release, “Concerning The Entrance Into Eternity” which he recorded with Jim Jarmusch. I was surprised to hear some flaws in the recording (purely from a technical point of view), did some ‘enhancements’ and showed them to Jozef via mail. Later I promised to do some more work but it took until February of this year before I really got to do it. By that time I was really interested in doing a project with him and in May we came to an agreement that I would master his forthcoming release.

Jozef sent me a bunch of recordings and the recording of one-hour interview from npr.org. There was no definite order and there was no definite selection but could I start working? JS: Sure. What’s your creative point of view here? JW: I want it as loud as possible. JS:  You mean: ‘make it bangin’ ‘? JW: That would be nice.

I first made a few test flights. Three versions: louder, louder with an edge, LOUD. LOUD means compressing the attacks of the lute to smithereens and a lot of attention on the ‘tail’ of strums and plucks. A full and dense sound. The attacks are no longer ‘TK’ but ‘TGGRBRR’. It actually went against my personal taste but then again: if Jozef wants it, he gets it. Of course the loudest version was appreciated most……

The next step was getting a good grip on all of the tracks. If you need to push the sound to and over the limit then you need to be careful. So, getting the right balance for all of the tracks turned out to be quite a job. For days I had lutes playing in my head. Then I was asked to extract two tracks from the radio recordings. The first was a duet with Jim Jarmusch. Because radio compresses its sound by default and this recording was done áfter the compressor in the sound chain, this huge noise kept popping up like someone was hoovering the floor while Jozef and Jim ploughed on. But it appeared to be one of  Jim’s own devices. I tried to get it more to the background but actually it was futile and so you can still hear it (should this track end up on some release somewhere).

After a week or so, things settled in a bit. Jozef was confident about the tracks for the next release and their titles (which made their own little dance, btw) and I delivered 10 tracks, of which 7 were given the vinyl mastering treatment and got their place on the forthcoming vinyl release (title beyond access) and 3 are stored for a future release.

In the aftermath I was asked to mix the voice of Tilda Swinton over a lute piece for a compilation release.  Oh well, it’s all in a day;s work. As chaotic as this assignment was, it also gave me a good chance to work on a recording with a clear focus on an acoustic instrument. It also gave me the chance to retain the best of the instrument while blowing it up, almost out of proportions.

I hope to post some sound samples as soon as I get back from my trip to scandinavia (mid August).

Remix
I won’t bore you with all the details. In the end I deepened out the lower basses and carved out the rumble from the lower mids, leaving more space for the sounds that make a difference in that area. In the upper regions I widened the stereofield, at the same moment enhancing the loudness there. Only then did I get to listen to the actual mix by TR/AR and found that they had (naturally) also compressed the mix so that it sounded fuller. The crowded lower mids were still present. From a perspective as this being a part of a dark movie this is totally understandable. The track obviously enhances a scene that depicts chaos and tension (I haven’t seen the film, so I’m merely projecting). A dark sound is fitting. I, on the other hand, am not constricted to this and so my sound is lighter.

Free mix
After that I started a free mix party. I still used all of the sounds that we’re in the original mix but I allowed myself more freedom. Well, actually almost every single sound was reprocessed. Some only slightly, others even went through an Audiomulch patch (a personalized Metasspatosaurus for the knowledgeable among you). During post-production I took great care in NOT letting the result be a squeezed envelope (you know those tracks that look like sausages when you see them represented at Soundcloud). Instead I tweaked the sound carefully so that the dynamics of the music are optimally exposed. I am aware that this mix is totally unsuitable for a soundtrack but I think it yields a good result for the listener without the image.

Finally I had to transfer the track to mp3. I have again been trying to get the music to Soundcloud as best as I can. As a result I did not upload FLAC ( leaving the crunching and squeezing to Soundcloud) but I converted the original to mp3 myself. I remembered suddently that I have the original Fraunhofer codec which is the most accurate and has a lot of settings (like avoiding the wretched joint stereo) that yield better sonic results.

Short sighted Soundcloud bot
I intended to publish both the remix and the free mix but as it turned out Soundcloud refused the remix. Their robot ‘detected’ that I was uploading a track that was already claimed by Mute (representing Trent Reznor) and stopped the upload. I was under the impression that Reznor would allow ‘non-commercial’ publication but apparently Soundcloud has a different opinion. I tried contacting Reznor about this but to no avail. If you want to hear my mix I suggest you [ e-mail me ] and I will provide a ‘secret’ download link. Below is the free mix at your disposal.

Upside downside
The other challenge was that I was offered not just the stereo mix to work from, but also the stems. Working with stems (mixes from individual instrument tracks that are exported from a multitrack editor/sequencer) you have much more grip on the individual sounds and you are thus able to finetune more precisely. But every opportunity brings a risk with it. In this case that is obviously tweaking the stems too much. Which was exactly what happened. In the end the balance that Sjoerd wanted and carefully crafted was different from mine. After hours of tweaking, sliding up and down of faders, inserting EQ on individual tracks and still not getting where I wanted to be I decided to let things rest.

Squashing perfect waves
One of the things I learned was to squash nice sine waves into block waves in order to get the beat pumping. My earlier attempts at ‘playing nice’ failed totally. Every time the result was that it sounded good and decent but that it lacked balls. It just didn’t spark the brain. No ants in the pants that make you dance.

Okay, last Saturday morning I decided enough was enough. I threw away my earlier projects and started anew. All stems in tracks. All percussion tracks grouped together, all synths grouped together. I doubled two tracks (hihats and a temporary organ track) in order to get them really on the side of the stereo field. The techno pump track was given a slight EQ on the 800 Hz band filling a small hole in the spectrum that the synths had left open. And then it was just a matter of pushing the beats into the red area.
This caused problems with the synths because at every 1/4 beat both synths and kick were present, overloading the system. So I inserted a side chain compressor into the synth group that would automatically lower the volume of the synths for about 10 milliseconds. Just enough for the kick to rear its ugly head before the synths seared on.

On the master buss I then did my usual mastering voodoo taking care of the complete picture. Sjoerd was happy with the master and so was I. Here’s the before-after comparison.

Track 4, original file

Track 4,restored file

Detailed view, restored wave form

As usual the first stage of any mastering process is getting ready. In Reaper I set up four projects, one for each side. This helped me to get in touch with the scope of each side in the (vinyl) listening process. Looking at the tracks envelopes tells me something about what I’m going to hear and it tells me about relative loudness of the tracks, etcetera. After that I start listening to each track, making notes. I have a habit of also watching at the track as well using a few simple tools that give me information about the frequencies (Schwa’s Spectro) and the stereo field (Schwa’s Schope).

It was quite clear that the tracks that Scanner delivered were from ancient sources. The envelopes made it clear that they tracks had been recorded with heavy limiting and these tracks had been recorded from these mediums (tapes) with a lot of headroom. The first thing I set out to do was get the original envelopes back.

Heavy limiting steadies the energy with which the music leaves the audiosystem but the process also distorts the nuances in the sound, and can lead to distortion in the sound (as can be clearly heard in the sound samples below).  Additionally making use of more or less volume enhances the overall listening process. For instance, if you want to make a song more and more aggressive then it’s a bit stupid to start it with all systems full blast. By doing this UN-limiting process I tried to restore the transparency of the original recording and restore the dynamic rises and falls of the tracks. More than 50% of the tracks have been subjected to this process.

After this prep I started working on each track. Listening, listening again, making notes, adjusting settings, making more notes. After I got the first settings for my compression, eq-ing, expansion right things went a bit faster. I had made a couple of custom pre-sets which provided a base to start from. Using these pre-sets I was able to quickly adjust the sound of the original and with that reach an overall sound for the album. Still, it took me some days to get it all right.

Third phase to balance the volume again. Again, listen and make notes. I have set every track to -1dB peak volume and a dynamic range of 11 dB’s. After a few turns (of all the tracks) and adjusting and re-adjusting I finally had all tracks rendered to new versions. Although I can be enthousiastic about my own work it’s always a test when you present it to the artist. After all, it is he or she who has worked on the tracks for months sometimes and the work has become their (brain)child. And it’s always to rewarding when you get a positive or even enthousiast response (“…. it’s sounding really great, very impressed with this speedy service too.”).

SCANNER – EARLabs Master Project by EARLabsRADIO

3 Samples of pre / post mastering. You can hear the distortion in the original versions, which have disappeared in the mastered version. (Music published by kind permission of the artist)

Big Robot’s line up for this release was Ole Christensen, Per Sjöberg, Joakim Langeland and Kjetil Manheim. Guest appearance on “EHTP” : Victoria Johansson on electric Violin, Sanna Saarinen vocals and Olav Bakke on Bass Clarinet. Conrad Schnitzler was part of the Big Robot lineup in 2009/2010 and played on the albums “Aquafit” & “Horror Odyssee” and the EP “Heute Schnee”.
Seven tracks will be published on LP/CD in March/April of this year. Two tracks will be featured on a British compilation.
Big Robot’s music leans heavily on synthesizers, but is by no means traditional synthesizer music (droney or dreamy). Big Robot played with The Residents on stage in 2010 and part of the sound palette is somewhat similar at times. But they also bring British sounding dub stuff if the moment calls for it.
Ole Christensen sent me 10 tracks, totaling 77 minutes.

Macrro view of track 2; looks hard limited

Detailed look at track 2; spikes are nicely cut at 0 dB

Closer look at track 6; more dynamic variation

Unfortunately the tracks were already somewhat limited but without sounding squashed. For a mastering engineer to work on heavily limited tracks is difficult, because most times you need extra headroom to be able to expose hidden sonic gems inside the tracks. The first thing I did was lower the general volume of all tracks with 2.5 dB’s. Because the sound was still okay I decided not to regenerate the broken peaks (which in other cases I have done (with great results).
After I had set this up I went to work, going from track one to track nine. Track 10 is a live registration which was to get ‘the special EARLabs treatment’, meaning that it will be edited, reconstructed and so on.

Mastering music that is already pleasant to listen to is kind of hard. As a mastering engineer you have to keep a distance and approach things more in terms of spatiality, frequency balance, width and depth. You also look ‘below the surface’. Can a superficially nice sounding track give even more with a few master strokes? Every track was worked on this way.
To give you an idea of my work here are a few short sonic snippets.

Master studies : Big Robot by EARLabsRADIO‘

Please download the tracks (as FLAC) to get a real picture. The Soundcloud compression is not very good.

It was pressed in an edition of 100, but that’s too little. “Stunning, out-of-nowhere private press LP in a hand-numbered edition of only 100 copies from this Norwegian loner. Ujamt has a spiritual connection to the kind of cultic rock/ritual of Silence-era groups like Parson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, International Harvester et al but transmuted to a much more intimate/weird home-recorded environment. Rostad uses electric and acoustic guitars, bass, vocals, drums, percussion, synth, piano and various objects to create minimal folk-psych constructions that marry repeating melodic cells with eruptions of noise/keyboard drone and throat gargling vocals. The combination of almost Terry Riley-styled insistence with crunching electronics, droning strings, arcs of wordless vocals and jarring jump-cuts situates the album somewhere downwind of Richard Youngs’ classic Festival side on Table Of The Elements or even early Alastair Galbraith and Rostad has a similar genius for extrapolating nagging, minimal melodies across a series of instruments, with keyboards and clattering drums that sounds like the dream duo of Klaus Schulze and Hermann Nitsch giving way to nagging, folk-simple strings that are as hypnotic as anything from Cold Sun. The album is neatly divided between abstract electro-folk jams, massively heavy fuzz/vocal chants and haunting, precisely arranged smears of song, with choirs of French horn giving the whole deal a hazy devotional feel while the quality of the cracked instrumentalism and the overall hermetic/cultic feel give the nod to Joakim Skogsberg’s amazing 1971 album Jola Rota or even The Faust Tapes. Can’t recall being so completely blown away by an out-of-nowhere release in a while but in a run of only 100 copies complete with an original photographic piece of art and fold-out screened sleeves this won’t stick around for long and is sure to become a major modern touchstone. Timelessly beautiful and very personal avant/folk jams. Highly recommended!”

Order it at [ Volcanic Tongue ] while you can!