Masterdisk - inside mastering vinyl and cutting records

If you haven't been following Scott Hull's insanely informative blog about all aspects of vinyl records...and I mean everything from cartridges down to the groove itself...go deeper down the rabbit hole with his 13 part blog post over at the Masterdisk blog.
I read Masterdisk was going to be having a hands on vinyl class/event at their offices in midtown and I signed up figuring I should learn a little about mastering for when I start pressing my own singles at the very least decide if it was necessary to the process, but I had no idea we were going to actually get into the lathe cutting room, and watch the cutting process.

I knew mastering was an intermediate step between the recording process and finally getting it onto vinyl, but what do they actually do to the source recording?

Randy Merrill described Mastering as putting together a consistent package together, EQ-ing and compressing the sound to give it a greater depth and we listened to a bunch of examples on ridiculously impressive neighbor terrorizing speakers. He deals with everything from determining the space between tracks, to making everything flow as an entire piece, and the process is different for a vinyl master versus cd, of course. The expectation is CD's most likely will be looking for a hotter, louder mix but those same compressions and EQ are going to be different for vinyl. Randy said it's usually a more relaxed, more natural level when thinking about vinyl, but that he needs to watch dynamic high frequency information like cymbals or vocal "esses", which turns into an even more interesting problem once you physically get into cutting into a lacquer master. On the other end, low frequency stereo is hard for the lathe to reproduce (and I wonder if your ear can even distinguish stereo bass), so normally lower end frequencies are mastered to a mono signal.
He really got into the details of the process which I completely appreciated, I'm not that familiar with the specific gear, but as an overall concept to enhance a listening experience seeing what's possible with mastering is pretty incredible.
But this is just the first step in the vinyl process, when it ends up at the lathe technician, he's got an entirely different set of problems to deal with.


That's when we got to where the magic of cutting actually happens, the mastered tracks are sent as a single file 'side' to the lathe tech, who has to contend with grooves per inch, cutting depth, spacing and those challenging "esses".
This cutting machine was state of the art in 1982, it's one of the rare models to actually contain a 4 bit 'computer' which helps control a variable speed screw, allowing for adjustment on the fly of the space between grooves. This is a huge advantage if the entire side is longer than from 18-20 minutes, you're going to seriously have to find a place to start jamming grooves closer together, but what really started to get interesting is when he started demonstrating the physical difference between a cymbal crash for example on the outside of a disk, which could travel as much as say 4 inches, versus that same cymbal crash on the last track, close to the inside ring might only have an inch of groove. Under a microscope we got a chance to see that massive wavy cut the high frequencies created. Not only do the grooves have to allow space between for reproducing that dynamic, but the cutting head itself has to be heated to a much higher temperature to accurately cut into the hard lacquer, as opposed to a bass note which can travel the length of an entire revolution. You start to see where there's a low tolerance for any one step in the process.
It's also amazing to start to look at music in this time based spiral, the entire thing from one groove to the next is traveling at a different speed than it's neighbor. It's also why bands actually had to consider not having high frequency heavy tracks when finishing out a side, they would go for the ballad, or the slow track. Back in those days of only records, musicians would come down the hall and pick up a reference lacquer like this, to listen at home. They also told us once these completely 'cure' they really isn't going to degrade like I previously thought, they can be reliably played like any other vinyl into eternity.
If you're going to go on and press thousands of these, at this point the disk would be shipped to the pressing plant and sprayed with a thin coat of silver and electroplated with nickel to come up with the metal stamper. At that point you could even make negatives of this master for multiple stampers and send them out to other plants, etc. All these different pressing plants are actually included in the matrix numbers of vinyl, and the seriously hardcore could tell you if that pressing was a good year for that plant, or how many generations out the stampers were.

The key to a good record starts with the band and a good source recording, but the mastering process is as important as any one of these steps int he chain, these guys know the technical side of physically committing sound to vinyl. It doesn't matter if it's a quiet folk recording or blown out, in the red garage punk, if you go that far to press it, take the extra step to put it down for the rest of history right. It's a highly esoteric process that takes people with an insanely specialized area of expertese to perform, I have a huge respect for these guys making the magic happen at the end of the day.

The real surprise is that Scott and the rest of the guys at masterdisk took time after their work day to illuminate the process for a bunch of vinyl lovers.... you go home and look at the rows of vinyl in a completely new way. From beginning to end, there's an amazing amount of people involved in the process, from the band down to the guys operating the hydraulic press, or a guy sitting at his kitchen table gluing together sleeves, and hand numbering 7 inch vinyl.
Not to brag but this is why I love NY, to have an opportunity to visit a place like this, and see the mystery firsthand....throwing back the curtain made people who love vinyl already, now look at these discs with more reverence.

I would come every Sunday and it would never get old.

Go follow the masterdisk blog and if they offer this again, go down there and check out how that record makes it to the turntable, or seriously consider contact them if you're involved in pressing records.

LIve! From 14th Street! with Art in Odd Places and Masterdisk

Hey there, just wanted to let everyone know about this project happening tomorrow on 14th and 10th ave, NYC. At 2PM in the park between the west side highway and 10th ave, right in the center of the grassy hill there we will be cutting a record, live.

A while back I went to Masterdisk in midtown to check out their mastering facilites and learn a little bit about what goes into cutting the lathe master that gets plated and stamps out the records that we buy in a store. Checking out the lathe cutting room with Alex and watching him cut a record in front of us was pretty amazing. After seeing a tweet from them around the same time about wishing they could throw the lathe cutter into a truck and cut a live record...well that got us thinking...couldn't we live stream a performance to the lathe cutting room a few blocks away instead?

At the same time Art in Odd Places was having their annual public art project across 14th Street and having worked with that great festival before we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to attempt this under the umbrella of AiOP with the help of Masterdisk and 4 great bands.

Since this project is about communication and what happens in the translation between technologies we then wanted to tie in some of those recording landmarks with the bands pieces.

Matt asked Kevin from Animal Hospital to work with the earliest recorded audio from Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph. A demented lo-fi scratchy tune from possibly Édouard-Léon himself.

I talked to Pat from Ashcan Orchestra to listen to the first radio broadcast off the coast of MA in 1906 to see what they'll come up with.

Finally we gave our friends in Soccer Mom (10" out on sweaters and pearls!) an image of the voyager disk for inspiration.

Matt suggested we could go one step further and call in a band to play over the phone and that's when we thought of The Hussy in WI.

The three bands will play live for each side of the record and Matt and our trusty technicians/photographers Jim Manning and Rob Coshow will capture it all, while I'm at Masterdisk with engineer Alex DeTurk making sure it's coming through and watching the record being cut. When it's finished I'll jump in a cab and head down to the park to listen to the record with the bands and anyone who decides to show up.

I'll be posting pieces of the final audio and some video of the performance in the coming weeks. I'm excited, the weather looks like it's going to hold out, and it should be a pretty crazy spectacle on a Saturday afternoon. Go check out these bands, they're all super great guys for working with us, and I hope it's as exciting for them.

The record was cut!

Just sifting through the documentation now, but the record was cut, no major disasters, the weather was awesome, great turnout from friends and just people enjoying the day.... the bands were incredible, Animal Hospital's experimental dense layers of rel to reel and built up samples, Ashcan Orchestra's impressive anything goes percussion setup, bowed xylophones and welded metal gears, Tree Of Tenere's (members of Soccer Mom) instrumental rock and even getting Bobby from the Hussy to acoustic garage rock over the phone, that was a truly surreal moment in the lathe room.

Thanks to everyone that came out, and to Masterdisk, especially Alex DeTurk for working the lathe cutter. It's what I imagine Nasa missions were like. You're in a windowless room listening to audio, talking to people who may as well be a million miles away, placing mic's and adjusting levels, there's only one time to get this. You have one shot.

Really incredible job. Alex and James took the time out of a perfect Saturday to sit in there with us and try something hopefully totally new. We should have the audio rip of the disk us to preview at some point, and tons more pictures.

Death by Steamship on Whoa! Boat Records

This came 12" in from Whoa! Boat Records, a full length from Death By Steamship.

This is going to sound bad, I guess you have to be in the right mindset for this, and it's not just because these guys are from Seattle, but this reminds me so much of the movie Singles, and specifically Citizen Dick...the attitude of these tracks, the kind of 'growing-up-sucks', apathetic, beginning of slacker sound which is too nostalgic, but I get the feeling from these guys of a complete and total sincerity, which comes off as almost hardcore at times. There's no pretention from the songwriting, in the arrangements or in the photo of the band sitting at a coffee table in the middle of a bridge. I miss parts of the country like that. I think this sound has a place in that anti-scene, where a couple of guys can get together and just make music after work.

From track one on the A-Side, "Tangible Things" which is railing against the people bitching about technology, essentially, it isn't really helping to complain and you're old and just sound out of touch...it's a sentiment I think I definitely agree with and never would think to commit it to hard rock like this. I especially like "my ears are bleedin', baby / from listening to NPR", man, I've been there. It's all delivered with Jason's raw, hoarse vocals...he's been yelling for years. The band always works on a pretty classic, straight up, clean instrumentation: guitar, bass, drums...recorded analog (the insert says) and mastered by none other than Matt Shane at Masterdisk...crazy. There's something comforting in this sound, taking me back to a grunge '90s sound that's playing around with the edges of straight classic rock...some of the riffs are harder, some of the progressions get prog...the bass is even given a front seat on "Moorage Fees" with some experimental guitar feedback melody and the rest of the band joining in on the chorus.
On "Cuter Girls Ride Bikes", after some street samples, Jason continues to sound a little like Ian Svenonius or Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies, just solo bassline and his perpetually blown out vocals here, but what he's singing about is what I'm completely into...it's abstract, and so weirdly specific, probably autobiographical. I think what he's getting at on this track is this girl maybe has his car? She ended up taking his car, or got it in the divorce? Or she's just a crazy stalker he's trying to avoid, chanting the plate number in his head. It's not the kind of stuff that a great lovesong makes, but makes you god damn original that's for sure. This one has a slow rolling sludge rhythm that picks up into double kick metal. KEEP LOOKING AT THE PLATES! The lyric insert is essential.

Side B side starts with the track, "Hipster Holiday", I thought this was going to be another condemnation of williamsburg, but actually, if they're the characters here, they are gong surfing at night somewhere near Portland? Taking the amtrak train, drinking in the dining train? This sounds like the rain, as fast and agressive as they get, there's just an overall sort of surrender to a bigger melancholy. This gets really oppressive on Diablo Y Dinero, a ride cymbal rhythm keeps time for a slow dirge of distortion, that gigantic storm coming in just over the horizon on the cover. The minute of acoustic funk, where they lighten things up only let's you in on the monotony of career and lack of money. It's never an optimistic picture with these guys. The fact that it also sounds timeless and from that slacker '90s era, maybe is as telling as any other indicator about the state of things.

Basically a long EP at 45rpm, it's a completely consistent document from probably the most sincere thing on vinyl from a group of guys hanging out in the middle of a bridge in the woods. Bitching about technology, health insurance, mortgages, not having 401k's...put your feet up on that shitty coffee table, have another beer in a can. It's those kind of stabs at reality that are so fucking precious...you can sing about anything and these kind of very particular truths are Death By Steamship.

From Whoa! Boat Records.