Production Advice

Just a very quick post to wish you a very Merry Christmas from Mastering Media !

We hope you’re able to take some time out over the next week or two, spend some time with family and loved-ones, and generally relax and be merry : )

Here are three of my favourite musical suggestions for this time of year – hopefully there’s something for anyone’s taste:

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The message of this post is simple, short and sincere. In fact, it could almost be an open letter:

Dear Peter Jackson,

PLEASE ask your audio engineers to stop auto-tuning the dwarves.

Please.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Shepherd

PS. Please…

What the hell am I talking about ? Well, check out the first official trailer for the new film of the “The Hobbit”, above.

It’s a great trailer. As a massive fan of both the books and the films of “Lord Of The Rings”, I’m very excited. But after seeing this trailer, I’m also now very nervous.

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Another great old documentary about the recording of a classic album from YouTube – this time of Peter Gabriel’s fourth album.

I’ve written before about how much I love the sound of this great-sounding album, so finding this video and being able to see the songs actually being written – well, I got a bit over-excited, actually.

There are so many fascinating and enjoyable things here that it’s hard to know where to start, but one thing that jumped out at me straight away was – look at the studio ! If you can call it a studio. In fact, you can’t – it’s just a room with a load of gear in it – a far cry from the facilites at Real World today. And all the vocals were recorded on… a Shure SM57 !

Another is the inspirational use of early sampling technology – in this era of gigabyte-sized multi-sample sound libraries, it’s easy to forget that you (and should) build the sonic signature of an entire song around the sound of nothing more than someone blowing across a metal pipe…

And finally, who knew it was so hard to smash a telly ?

Enjoy

I’m a U2 fan.

Yes, am. Not was, am. I’m still waiting for their next great album – I’ve been distinctly underwhelmed by the last few – but in the meantime their back-catalogue will do me just fine.

I preferred it when the band wasn’t such an enormous money-making machine, and their manager’s view of the modern music “industry” is clearly blinkered beyond belief, and yes of course Bono is a complete arse of the highest order (although I think he’s an arse whose heart is in the right place, which helps) – but I still think they’re fantastic.

Achtung Baby was (and is) the album that clinched it for me, and if you’ve forgotten or never knew why it’s so great, try watching this superb – and surprisingly honest – BBC documentary.

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(And, following a conductor, revisiting old tunes and helping an orchestra get funky.)

I’ve yet to hear an orchestral arrangement of a pop or rock track yet that I’ve liked.

But having seen some of the live tracks from YouTube on the tour that prompted Peter’s up-coming “New Blood” album (see the fantastic example below) I’m really hopeful this will be the exception that proves the rule !

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