Appetite for Destruction
Posted on | July 21, 2008 |
Sometimes I can tell – almost immediately – if a client (or, potential client) is going to turn out to crash and burn. But, as a business owner offering a service, all I can do is be of assistance and try to facilitate their product to the best of my ability. Last week I got an e-mail from someone describing their project (and need for mastering) as “urgent” and quickly made their way to “nonexistent” in the matter of just a few days.
Whenever someone contacts me with the questions “how fast?” and “how cheap?”, I can almost set my watch to a 3-5 day span before they end things with “we got a friend to master the album” or “we found someone cheaper”.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a friend master an album, or shopping around for the cheapest price. But neither of those scenarios is a recipe for success or professional results. We’re not talking about a car wash or oil change. We’re talking about mastering an album.
My advice to musicians is always to do your homework and get the best you can afford: whether it’s mics, processors, or mastering. It seems shortsighted to go through the process of making an album (and all the work required) to sabotage it in the end by getting “quick and dirty” mastering.
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From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
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