Vlado Meller Rocks Again

[Storyville]

Originally Posted by lucey

"Anticipate" to the loud side? That's so easy to solve with a word of communication.

Unfortunately, this is not true. One should think it would be that simple, but more often than not people are more inclined to impose their own vision rather than extract that of someone else. Put a couple of agents between the ME and the client and suddenly, it's as if the music exists separate of the musician - which can be good, and bad.

[lucey]

Originally Posted by Storyville

Unfortunately, this is not true. One should think it would be that simple, but more often than not people are more inclined to impose their own vision rather than extract that of someone else. Put a couple of agents between the ME and the client and suddenly, it's as if the music exists separate of the musician - which can be good, and bad.

Not in my world brother. Their vision plus yours is the way to roll. Everybody wins.

[hoop]

I know Vlado has gotten some critism for crushing mixes, but he does do all of David Foster's productions (Josh Groban, Celine, Michael Buble, Andrea Bocelli, etc), and that stuff isn't exactly crushed. He mastered a Popera project for me a couple years back, and loved what he did. What I really liked is that he didn't just crush the loud stuff, he manually raised the quiet sections to even it out.

YMMV, but I really like his work.

- Kent

[Masterer]

Originally Posted by Storyville

Unfortunately, this is not true. One should think it would be that simple, but more often than not people are more inclined to impose their own vision rather than extract that of someone else. Put a couple of agents between the ME and the client and suddenly, it's as if the music exists separate of the musician - which can be good, and bad.

More often than not?

While the possibility exists that on rare occasion a client will not get their say because of lack of communication in some kind of long chain of interlopers, the vast [and I mean overwhelmingly vast] majority of the time the mastering engineer is completely at the behest of the client. Records are not released until someone [other than the mastering engineer] approves them.

That someone, in my experience is the artist pretty much 100% of the time.

If you impose your vision on your clients you will be out of business in a month.

Give it a try and see.

Excuse me while I get back to these revision notes my client just sent me.

[AJR]

On mastering,

so many mastering guys get files that look like giant sausages, over limited,
too loud to begin with.... then the clients demand that they are as loud as "so and so's record" then the giant sausage wave form gets fatter with straighter edges. When people are paying 500 per hour for the top of the top mastering guys... they think they are getting what they paid for if the record competes level wise with the competition. The whole scenario is wrong. if one prints mixes with no limiting, and super gentle compression on the mix bus and gives said master to the mastering engineer....the tracks will allow him to do the business of actually mastering. Its an odd concept but its been working very well for us. I love Ted Jenson, i heard the most amazing record the other day and it was bernie grundman. Joe Gastwirt is great, Dave Collins great.....Vlado Meller great. These guys can make records sound great. but one cant put in crap and expect gold out the other end...Some times its the client that wants a massacred giant sausage of a record. And sometimes that's what it takes to get heard in this 20 foot pool of water trying to fit through a half inch pipe of a music business. my 2011 visit complete,
see you in 2012. AJR

ajr