Ochre

Now that I’m back in the land of music-making after a summer of ridiculous humidity, pink flamingos and pastel-coloured houses (guess where?), I’ve re-opened my shop and resumed mastering. Current mastering rates: £12 per track (plus £12 for CD compilation). Current shop inventory: double AMND 12″ vinyl for £10 (CDs now sold out). As ever, if there’s anything you’d like to see in the shop (more CDs etc.), I’ll try and make plans for it.

I now have a new website for the mastering side of things, too: Melograf Mastering!

Also added a nice new album review from The Milk Factory.

Just a final reminder that I’ll be closing the mastering service and shop before the end of the week, until August, as I’ll be off to concentrate on my thesis work over the summer. I’ve got 7 Midsummer Nice Dream CDs left in stock, which would be nice to clear; considerably more vinyl is available, so don’t worry about that — plenty left. If you need any odd tracks mastered, please arrange to get them to me by Wednesday at the latest, just so I’ve got a couple of days to work on them and get them back to you.

I’ll still be online around here though and obviously contactable via email—not going to leave the face of the planet while I’ve got an impending album release.

Just a quick note — my mastering service will be put on hold from the end of the month until the beginning of August, as I’ll be away from the studio for a while. So, if you envisage needing my services over the next few weeks, then please get in touch ASAP to see if I can fit you in before the summer break. Once I return, the service will be back with a vengeance, hopefully with some exciting new toys to play with.

Okay, with all that renovation kerfuffle out of the way, I’m happy to get the mastering underway once again; I’ll be chasing up those of you who’ve been in touch during the downtime, and have organised a schedule to catch up with this.

Meanwhile, I’m currently working on a remix for The Collectors (featuring Benet Walsh, co-writer of a few tunes of mine that made their way onto the Death of an Aura EP, with more to follow). It’ll be a digital-only release at some point in the first quarter of 2009, I think.

Also, watch this space for a new vinyl EP release, being manufactured as we speak. It’s been too long since I’ve had something out on vinyl, so I’m pretty giddy about getting my mits on it. I don’t even have a turntable at the moment… okay so I just want to lick the vinyl—what’s wrong with that?

If I had to profess some sort of New Year’s resolution, it would probably be along the lines of ‘be more productive.’ So, apologies for the radio silence over the past couple of months or so; I’ve been pretty much occupied by some festive employment, which will thankfully draw to a close this weekend. I’d like to think that from then on I’ll be a little more forthcoming with blog updates and future project information.

But just to let you know I haven’t been completely idle, as apart from the Ed Chamberlain remix, I’ve also been collaborating with the industrious multi-instrumentalist Benet Walsh, whose name you may recognise in electronica circles from his work with Plaid (providing guitar for the tracks Ralome and Eyen, among others). Hopefully we’ll have penned a couple more tracks together, in addition to those we’ve already completed, for release at some point this year.

On the mastering side of business, I’ve been enjoying some rich and varied projects ranging from Gaelic laments to experimental ambient, house and metal—hopefully this will continue through 2008!

The keen of eye will have already noted the addition of a couple of new links in the menu bar, one of which leads to my shiny new mastering service page. After mastering my own material for a while, and lending a hand in the mastering of the odd label release, I thought I’d extend the offer.

For those unfamiliar with the term, mastering is the final process a piece of music undergoes either prior to or as part of CD track compiling (i.e. preparing the final CD ‘master’), and typically consists of compression, EQ and limiting, plus level-matching (for an album, or anything that consists of more than one track!).

So what can I do that you can’t already handle yourself? Well, I can offer a fresh pair of ears, listening on a different system, in a different room, for starters. It can sometimes be difficult to retain perspective when working on tracks, as it’s easy to become consumed with all the small tweaks and adjustments that come as part of music production, replaying a piece of music so many times as to lose sight of the bigger picture.

Mastering has perhaps been perceived as somewhat of a dark art in the past, but there is a wealth of information out on the web, should you wish to learn how to master your own music. Here are a few of the links I’ve found most useful over the past few years (please chime in and comment with your own useful links):

Gearslutz – A fantastic music production community, with a dedicated mastering forum full of useful information provided by knowledgeable, seasoned enthusiasts and engineers alike.
Sound On Sound – As well as offering a forum dedicated to mastering, there are plenty of related articles waiting to be found on the site’s article search engine.
Digital Domain – A superb mastering resource, and home to Bob Katz, the author of Mastering Audio, a weighty tome dedicated to audio mastering and processing. The site’s FAQ is particularly useful.

But should you prefer I handle the job for you, please wander over to the mastering page, and drop me a line. Feel free to comment here too if you have any queries.