Year Two – Day 105 – June 21st 2010
Mastering Session
I take a train to Frankfort, get in Joe's car and we ride to Blue Bell. We listen to the mixes on the way up and he plays me some City Line Stuff. It's funny how a relationship can shift just by spending time with someone. It's even funnier when someone is exactly who you thought they were when you first met them. You never know what sort of effect a person is going to have on your life when you first meet them, God reveals that to you with the passage of time. This guy opened up a creative door that I didn't even know was in the room and finally I got the right person to make the record I always wanted to make.
Today we were mastering the record. I don't know much about the mastering process, the guys who are going to do it, or where the hell we are in fact going. But for the first time in this entire process I'm putting my faith in Joe and not even questioning it. He's been right 99% of the time throughout the entire recording process (I did win one acoustic guitar battle) so I figure why fight it in my head or out loud.
We pull into a house. An older lady answers the door and so does a strange looking dog (I would find out later it was a poodle owned by the mastering engineer, he basically didn't do the punk ass poodle haircut on his dog...a thing I respect) she tells me and Joe that the guys are downstairs.
We walk downstairs and into a very impressive recording studio. It's not very fancy but there's something about the room that let's you know that it gets a good sound and that if the walls could talk they'd tell you some very interesting stories.
I meet two guys named Paul they will be taking care of my record today. Joe has to work so he departs not soon after they begin. I sit for a while and it wouldn't be long till I start asking questions. This is the first mastering session I've ever sat in on and I'm curious about what actually happens. The general thing people say is that they just make it louder, but even I can see there's so much more than that. Paul starts talking to me about equalization, compression, limiting, noise reduction among other things...my eyes glaze over as I don't have a clue what he's talking about. All I know is that the songs sound better then they did before and that they are working to establish a sonic consistency so that everything sounds like it came from the same guy.
They're super cool guys. We chat about music and life stuff, I realize that they are the guys from Get The Led Out, this super cool Zeppelin Tribute band that Andrew Lipke plays in, I laugh at how small the world is. I'm flattered by the compliments they give me as we go through the songs. I'm even more flattered when they compliment everyone else. Musician's of this caliber and school confirm what I've been saying in my brain for the past few weeks, this is the best stuff I've ever recorded.
Six hours later my record is finished, ready to be duplicated I write two checks and am out the door.
I take the train into the city and go straight to Philly Rising.
It took six months to finish Superego. So to have a finished album in three weeks is really an amazing feeling.
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