How much of a lead time do people give you as a mastering engineer?
You know, in the early days when I started out this whole thing, it was in '91. There was always a production coordinator. People would book the mastering session about six weeks ahead. Sometimes three months ahead. Nowadays, they get finished with the record, book the mastering, and expect you to be available instantly.
I see that all the time. Especially with independent bands or artist-financed projects.
We figured out a way to do it though. You get together, gather the team and say, "This is the game we're playing, this is the field we're on. How are we going to make this work?" Then we do it.
What kinds of things have you implemented in order to have faster turnaround?
Well, it's how fast, how affordable, and how good. The "how good" thing is covered, because of what we do. The "how affordable" angle is how do we figure out how to make the rate, just to pay our bills? Really, we're not getting rich. At the end of the day, when you add up rent, the employee costs, taxes, and all the things that add up to make your overhead, your goal is to make at least that number. Then it's "how fast," which is what you asked about. Because we're all analog, it's not as simple as opening a file, doing some tweak, running an export, and you're done — although that is the expectation of (all) the younger generations coming into the business. They have it in their mind that this is the way to do recording, mixing, and mastering. It takes communication between the person in the mastering room (where you put up the file, convert it to the analog, put it through the board, make some tweaks, re-record it to digital) and your production guy. He's working on that while you're working on the next thing (that somebody wants). It's really like a chain of events. You've got one person working in the room — or maybe two — and another person working in the production department. Then there's someone who's communicating with everybody. Sometimes the communication is, "I have no further updates" which tells them that we're still in a holding pattern while we're working on this. That's very important communication. The communication is as important as everything else. If they want something super quick, they will feel secure if they get communication about it. You could sit there and say, "It's not ready yet" and then get into some discussion about why it's not ready; but if you constantly communicate and update, they can see that you're working on it.
What is the production department, just so our readers understand the process?
