It's rare for someone to be equally well known as a musician, record label founder, and mastering engineer. You are also active as a photographer and graphic designer. Is there a hierarchy or natural order among these roles?
Making music is just what I do; it's why I'm here. I feel like if I could do nothing else, it would be that. It's how I express myself. Mastering is really my day job now, because in today's music environment it's harder to make money writing music. Mastering can pay my bills, and I like to do it. I was always a very technical person. The label was started 20 years ago to fill what I thought was a certain creative gap in small American electronic music labels. It probably takes the least amount of time, because I've dialed in the process. I'm not doing a ton of releases; just a few a year. Most of the work involved is online; communication, production, and promotion. Mastering I have to do every day, because I have clients waiting for me, as well as deadlines. My own music, unfortunately, is the first thing to get pushed to the side, even though it's what I want to do the most. So I have less time to do my own music – but still enough time. The three are often combined, too, because I master most of the releases that come out on the label. I offer that to all the artists, as well as the graphic design for the album covers. That helps keep costs down with the label as well, because they're important services I don't have to pay someone else for.
How do these different roles play out on a day-to-day basis?
It's tough, especially with family and kids. I'm sure lots of artists my age have this trouble, when you have a family life and all these different professional roles you're trying to play. I never wanted a regular 9-to-5 job, so I've always done whatever I needed to do to make that possible. I love every minute of it. My day-to-day work time is largely spent mastering or doing label tasks, such as shipping orders or overseeing some aspect of a new production. There will be design or photography days, when I'm working with an artist on a new release for 12k. It really comes down who needs what the soonest, and I usually prioritize that way. It can be tough squeezing things in, but I manage to get all of it done. There's a lot of variation in the things I do, and I have to balance my studio to be ergonomic for both mastering and writing, as well as to be able to sit at the desk and work on label management.
Do you have to explicitly set aside time for your own work?
One thing I started doing last year is what I call "no-mastering Thursdays," where I just spend the day in the studio messing around and working on my own music. I had to make that time. Usually I work on an album of mine until it's done; then I take a break for a while, and then do another album. I've recently released an album [Somi]. When I'm in between projects, and nothing's pushing me to get something done, I tend to get a little lazy, except for just messing around – making sounds or something like that. Yesterday I had 20 bells out here, a mic, and a looper, just making cool loops. I record it all and I keep folders on my computer of 3- to 5-minute passages. They're going to be fodder for an album or something down the line. If I can get someone from out of town, like Marcus [Fischer] or Stephen Vitiello, in for a few days and we're working on an album, that's great, because it's just time for that. I'll tell my clients, "I'm not going to be able to work these days." Collaborations always go more quickly than working on solo recordings.
What made you decide to move your studio up here from Brooklyn?
On a practical level, it was family. Thinking about schools for the kids was something we'd have to consider in just a few short years. We had a great place in Park Slope, but I wanted to get back into nature. I think we were just getting a little fed up with apartment life, even though we love Brooklyn. It was really tough for a couple years. This is a very quiet, small town. We didn't know anybody. All the like-minded people we knew we left behind in Brooklyn. For a couple years, we were like, "Oh man, we made a mistake." But we decided to give it a couple years, and now we love it. I couldn't have this studio in Brooklyn for a reasonable amount of money. I had a cool little studio, but it was a separate bedroom.
Do you like having your work space attached to your house?
I've thought about that a bit. I've gone through iterations of studios in parents' houses, apartments, and basements. I worked my way up to a nicer facility. I have friends who rent places in town, and they really like being able to get up and go to work somewhere. I don't think I'd like it, because I do so many different things. When dinner's done and I need 45 minutes to make some DDP files and send final files to clients, I can do that because it's right here. I'm doing the grocery shopping, doing the cooking, watering the vegetables, weeding the gardens, and making sure the kids are home from school. It's easier to be here and take a break from work to do that.
How did you get into mastering?
I really got into it about ten years ago. Looking at the music I did, and what my friends in the genre did, it was all about the sounds. The music was sparse and empty, generally, so the sounds were really important. Every sound was emotional. We were all recording with suboptimal converters and Mackie boards in our bedrooms. Which is fun, but I said, "Let me see if I can't do something to take these recordings to the next level a little bit." I wasn't really thinking, "I'm going to be a mastering engineer." The first piece of gear that I bought – which I thought would be all I'd need to make everything instantly sound better – was the Manley Variable Mu compressor. I got that to take music I released on the label hopefully sound a little better. And it did, but it wasn't the "magic box." Then I thought, "Well, maybe I need a better converter." So I bought a better converter. Then I thought, "Maybe I need a nice analog EQ." I started becoming aware of mastering as a thing, and realized that that was pretty much the path I was headed on. Ever since then I've been focused on getting better sounds, better speakers, room treatment, and converters. I learned pretty quickly that there's no one magical box, it's a combination of things. As soon as I built up a decent analog chain, then I could hear a difference. Every piece added a little bit; nothing on its own was the solution, but in the end it really was better. I began doing it for my friends and for the label releases, and eventually I felt that I could safely do it for people I didn't know and not ruin their music. That fact also guides a lot of decisions. I built a room like this for other people, not so much for myself. I feel responsible for other people's music, especially as I moved away from just doing friends or label work. When you're mastering or mixing someone's music, you're ruining something that the artist put their heart and soul into if you screw up. There is a responsibility on my end to do the best I can for my clients. I want to have good speakers and a good room so I don't make bad decisions. It also helps that I'm a gear head and don't mind buying a cool piece of gear to make the job better.
What did you do to educate yourself about mastering when you were just starting out?
Trial and error, first and foremost – being able to learn on my own music and close friends' projects. Also books, magazines, and the internet. But a lot of what I've read on forums talks about the gear in a really certain way, like in rock or pop. I felt like I was on my own a bit, because all I read was about different genres of music than what I was working on. I'd hear demos of these compressors; they're putting a drum track through it, and getting these big compressed drum sounds. My compressors have never been used for that. The gear can be so program-dependent. I've gone through different pieces of gear that have not worked as well for what I'm doing. Pretty much everything I've done, though, except for photography, is self-taught. I taught myself a few years ago how to brew beer. I love to cook. I really relate cooking to creating music. If I find something, I get really into it and I want to do it myself.
I read something interesting on your website about your mastering philosophy: "I don't claim to be a transparent mastering engineer. Because I am an artist myself, I cannot help but to approach projects from that vantage point... to explore different paths, and to bring forward the artistic concepts inherent in the music." How do you find your clients respond to that philosophy?
