December 2009

December already and Christmas is here again. We are very organised and like to get our cards and presents bought in plenty of time. Cards were posted on December 1st, and presents have been wrapped and sitting under the tree awaiting the big day. Our self catering cottage has had another busy year. The couple in for this Christmas week are on their third visit, and we have four people from Texas arriving on Monday for the New Year week. A few weeks ago we had a couple from Sydney, Australia, so word is spreading around the globe about our cosy hideaway. We even had three Scottish folk musicians staying last week rehearsing new songs for their performance at the excellent Celtic Connections in January. One of them has been here before and thought it would be the perfect place for them and not get disturbed.

Mastering has continued to be busy for me. An increasing amount of clients from far away places have been using me for their projects. The internet has opened up the planet, so I'm now getting work from Argentina, Japan, Norway, Iceland, Spain, Slovenia, Australia etc, as well as my usual flow of work from London and the rest of Britain. I get a wide variety of musical styles, so every day has something interesting and different to master.

This year is my 40th anniversary of music mastering. I left school in 1967 and was a silk screen printer for a couple of years before getting my first mastering job in 1969 at the wonderful IBC Studios in central London. I don't think I ever thought I wouldn't still be mastering 40 years later, as I loved the job from day one. I was born to be a mastering engineer, as simple as that, and I still love it.  I've looked after my ears by never listening at high volume, and now have my own facility here on Skye with a wonderful view as I work. We live in a quiet location, so I can master with the window open allowing our wonderful fresh to fill my lungs instead of the need for any air-conditioning.

I must give a big thank you to the late Mike Claydon for giving me the job at IBC in 1969. Mike was chief engineer and studio manager, a really nice person who engineered some wonderful music in his time. I must also say a big thanks to Brian Carroll who taught me how to be a disc cutting engineer. Brian was always full of life, a great laugh, and didn't we fun. Apart from cutting, we'd go up to studio 2 making all sorts of odd music for our own amusement. I still have them Brian!

September took us to Wales for a few days. North Wales was great, always is. We like narrow gauge steam railways, none on Skye, but there are some excellent ones to go on in north Wales. One disappointment was not getting up Mount Snowdon to see the new visitor centre at the top. The Snowdon Mountain Railway was booked solid all three days we were in the area. There's obviously a lot of interest to see the new building, so we'll make sure we book our seats in advance the next time we're there. We then travelled south to a lovely farm B&B on the outskirts of St David's. Some coast path walking and visiting some towns and villages we hadn't been before filled another three days before we headed home.

In October the Prism Sound and Sadie companies asked me to give a talk on mastering at Edinburgh University as part of their country wide tour. They put us up at the wonderful Prestonfield House which was such a lovely, relaxing place, we stayed an extra night. We like it so much we are going back for a few more days soon. There several lovely lounges to relax in, 20 acres of ground to wander around, superb food and lovely rooms or suites. Perfect for a special few days.

November took us on a family visit down south followed by a short flight to Prague for a few days. We've wanted to visit Prague for ages, so finally made it. A lovely city with some beautiful architecture. Split by a river and several bridges including the pedestrian only and picturesque Charles Bridge. We walked around for three days which was quite tiring, but we recuperated every lunchtime having a couple of beers and some food in the old town square; sitting for an hour so people watching.

Sounds like we've been away all the time, but that's not the case, it's been a very busy year. I still enjoy co-presenting a Saturday radio programme, and I'm starting a new weekly rock show Tuesday January 5th 7-8pm (see August 2009 for the links). Gets me out of my mastering room, and allows me to play music I like from my personal collection.

August 2009

I can't believe it's nine months since I updated this page; the months have flown by so fast. I remember people saying to me when I was younger that the older you get the faster the time goes by - so true!

2009 has been excellent for mastering. There was a slow start to the year, I think many people were a little dubious about spending money as the recession took hold; but it didn't take long for clients needing to release product, so the work continued to flood in. It's been more or less non-stop ever since, with a good mixture of regular and new clients. There has also been an increase in mastering for clients in countries around the world. With easy uploading of mixes, and downloading of reference files, having a client in Japan is as convenient as a local. Unfortunately, manufacturers seem to be slow at providing an upload service for the masters. There are still many plants that only accept masters by post, which slows down the whole process; hopefully another year will see most manufacturers having this facility, making it much easier to deliver masters.

Cassette seems to be rearing its head again. One of my clients is releasing certain product on a specific cassette only label, and another client requested cassette master for a new release. The main manufacturing problem at the moment is getting the cases and the tape, but if the format continues to grow, then I guess manufacturers may start making the parts again. Vinyl is still strong, so maybe cassette will return - only time will tell.

Since last December I co-present a radio programme here on Skye every Saturday 1-3pm. It's broadcast in the usual way on FM, but also available online, so we get people all over world tuning in. The station is called Cuillin FM, named after our mountain range, and if you fancied tuning in, go to the station's home page and click on the Listen Live button in the middle of the page. You can also email while were on at studio@cuillinfm.co.uk

After several long haul holidays in recent years, we haven't been out of the country so far in 2009. Fed up with long flights, we decided to stay local. We had a New Year week at our friends Peter and Gwen's in the Scottish borders. They had a fancy dress party on New Year's eve, so we were all in Medieval costumes. Part of my outfit required wearing tights - the first time I've ever experienced those, and hopefully the last!  In February we celebrated our wedding anniversary by retracing our  honeymoon. We drove over to Applecross and stayed at the Applecross Inn which is always a great place to go to. The BBC had made a documentary there the previous summer about a guy learning to live off the land. It was a good series and showed some of the spectacular scenery we have here. From Applecross we drove to Ullapool and stayed a few days at the Ceilidh Place  We love staying there as it's so relaxing, serves great food, great cask ale, and the north west coast is wonderful. Also our friend and artist James Hawkins lives a few miles up the road in Rhue. James and wife Flick have a beautiful home there, and a great place for James to paint. He's a drummer too, and has a kit set up in the corner of his studio, so he can play along with the music he's blasting out on his sound system when he feels like a break.

We made our usual trip down south in May to see the families. While in London, we had lunch with Werner Wahl, Carlos Olms and their wives. Werner used to maintain Neumann disc cutting equipment and Studer tape machines. Werner and I share the same birthday, but a few years apart. Carlos used to be head of Polydor Studios, and both were very well known in the music industry. We also made time to visit fellow mastering engineer and friend Ray Staff who had just opened his new mastering facility at Air Studio.

My uncle was over from Hong Kong, so we met up with him, his then soon to be wife Ngai Lai, and some of my relatives in New Brighton, which is the other side of the River Mersey and Liverpool. Meeting up with my auntie Joyce, cousins Val, Paul, Angela and their other halves was a joy, as I hadn't seen Val and Angela for about 35 years!

In June we went back to Peter and Gwen's for a few days to celebrate Peter's 60th birthday. It's a very quiet and relaxing place to stay, and Peter and Gwen are so easy to be with. Peter used to be one of the technical boffins at IBC Studio when I was there in the late 1960's and early 70's, and we're still great friends forty years later. The only problem staying with them is Gwen loves cooking, so we're all incredibly well fed, and I always come away a few pounds heavier. While we were there, we went for a ride on the Alston narrow gauge steam railway, which Rose and I have been on before but Peter hadn't; we all love the old railways, especially narrow gauge. The following day Peter and I went to the Solway Aviation Museum, at Carlisle Airport. They have a great museum, and a small but fine collection of planes that you can climb into and get that hands -on feel. The highlight was a Vulcan bomber which we thought we'd just wander around the outside of, but no, we climbed up into the aircraft and had a great chat with the plane's keeper. Sitting in the cockpit of such a machine was a wonderful experience, and made a good birthday present for Peter - along with the remote controlled indoor helicopter we got him - shredded curtains and damaged ornaments were bound to follow!

The warm summer weather has brought us several visitors. A client Hywell Griff dropped by whilst holidaying in the Highlands. Our friend Alison came up from Middlesbrough for a few days. Our friend Jane made her yearly visit. Jane has a lovely seven room B&B in Camberley, Surrey, so we always stay with her when we visit our families. Then in August, Rose's brother Matt, his wife Dawn, and Chris (one of their three boys) came to stay. It was their first visit to Skye, the weather was fine, and we all had a great few days taking them round the Isle of Skye. We couldn't fit everything in, so we hope they'll be back for more. Rose cooked some great food, plus we had some great lunches out.

December 2008

December already! and almost Christmas again. I can still remember last years mainly spent in our then new conservatory. A year on and the conservatory is a great addition to our home here on Skye.  Beautiful views out to sea and across the hills.  Today, the far hills and the Outer Hebrides across the sea are snow capped; a pretty sight.  We have a lovely wood burner in there, so it's really cosy through the winter when the logs are blazing.

We've just spent the day (Nov 30th), putting up our Christmas lights and decorations ready to switch them on tomorrow evening. We've also written out our Christmas cards and stamped them ready to posting. Last weekend we were in Glasgow doing our Christmas shopping. The Christmas lights and shop decorations looked lovely with a small funfair and Ice Rink in the main square making it all really festive.  Whilst in Glasgow we saw Martyn Joseph in concert. I've mastered Martyn's music since the early 90's and think he's a really talented guy; go and see him if he's ever playing near you.

Earlier in November we had a holiday in Hong Kong. My uncle lives there so he took us around most of the time which was great. His lovely Chinese wife of 56 years sadly died in April, so we went out see him and have a holiday. Hong Kong has an excellent transport system comprising the metro, buses, trams and ferries. They also have a card system you can purchase to use on all the services. You buy your Octopus card with whatever credit limit you want, and every time you go through a ticket barrier or machine it deducts your fare; when it gets low, you just go to a top-up booth and put more credit on it.  Hong Kong is full of skyscrapers so you need to look up at a sharp angle to see the sky. At night there are so many lights I think it must be one of the brightest areas seen from space. They have a harbour light show every evening at 8pm. 15 minutes of music and light show where some of the harbour side skyscrapers light up in time to the music. You get a ferry to the other side of the bay for a spectacular view. It's very popular, so get there early for a good spot to see it. It was also Rose's birthday while we were there so we had a lovely meal with my Uncle and Chinese side of the family.

December 2006

Another year is at an end, 2006 has flown by and each year seems to come and go faster than the previous one; if you've ever seen the original 1960 HG Wells 'The Time Machine' film where George (Rod Taylor) sets off in his machine and is watching the days, then years go by with ever accelerating speed; well that's what I'm feeling right now; the previous months are almost a blur.  Rose and I thought we'd slow down up here on Skye but we're as busy as we were down south.  I may be as busy but the pace of life on Skye is much calmer so our days are still a lot less fraught than before.

Downloading and uploading music files is getting more popular, a trend which will be the norm in a year or so.  Someone can finish a track and send it to me via the internet in the morning, I can master it and upload the file back to them by the end of the day.  For those of you who only use your computers for general things, email and a bit of web surfing, it may be hard to understand how we can send professional quality music around the world in minutes, but we do; the technology is improving; it will get faster, easier and save us a lot of time making sure everything is right.

It only seems a while ago that DAT (Digital Audio Tape) became a new and much used medium for recording a master mix to; twenty years later and it's virtually extinct.  Recording engineers started putting their mixes onto CD-R as the medium improved and became cheaper; now CD-R is also dying as DVD-R and hard drives are much cheaper; and as mentioned earlier, I can receive a mix in computer data file format into my mastering system over the internet from the mix engineers computer with no hard copy in existence.  A frightening thought really considering how easy it is to lose that data, but I'm sure hard copies are stored as backups in case of a problem.  Consumer downloads and iPods are killing CD quicker than we thought too; these inventions that were born in the early 1980's will be dead in the next few years, but the humble vinyl disc which many thought would be dead by now lives on, as does analogue recording tape; I mastered two albums in November that were mixed to half inch analogue tape, so I'm pleased I have an excellent Studer A820 quarter and half inch analogue tape machine as a well recorded analogue mix does sound very good.  One of the most asked questions from people asking me to master their music is "can you make it feel more analogue?".  Fortunately I have a lovely Manley Valve compressor/limiter which does warm things up in a very musical way and helps me satisfy my clients request.

As I said the year has flown by and much is a distant memory; however there are a few things worth a mention.  My daughter Sarah (25) and her partner Luke had a baby in February; his name is Noah and he's a lovely little chap who is now walking and getting into everything. Guess what...she's expecting her second baby this coming March!  My son Sam is doing well, he's 21 now, presently still single and enjoying life.  Sam Sarah and Luke came up to see us for a few days back in January, and Sam and his Mum came up again in the autumn.

We were down south in May seeing our families and spending a few days by ourselves in Devon and Cornwall.  Noah was growing rapidly and was wearing a little outfit we'd bought him in 2005 when were in Japan.  While we were in Devon we called in on Simon Heyworth who has a superb surround mastering facility in an out-building on their farm.  Simon engineered the original Tubular Bells album for Mike Oldfield but now concentrates on mastering; primarily SACD and 5.1 surround, many of which I have in my personal collection.  We also managed to see Shawn Joseph who worked with me a Porky's Mastering.  Shawn now has his own mastering facility in Bristol called Optimum Mastering and rapidly earning a fine reputation for CD mastering and vinyl cutting.  Apart from seeing some mastering friends we had a few days in Torcross, a favourite place of ours on the south east Devon coastline.  We always stay at Angie and Paul Lansdale's B&B, right on the sea front and they're lovely people to stay with.  A few more days were spent at the Cottage Tea Rooms in Tintagel, Cornwall, another gem of a B&B; Sandy and Vic really look after people well, and you certainly don't go hungry.  Whilst in Cornwall we went to Dingles Steam Village, which is home to a magnificent collection of steam powered memorabilia; soon to be extended with a fully working steam funfair housed inside a huge hangar; everything at Dingles is inside so somewhere to go on a rainy day.

We went down again in October seeing some clients and catching up with family and friends.  We stayed with Julian and Maureen for a couple of days; met them on our Japan trip last year and have kept in touch; they rented our cottage for a week back in the spring and enjoyed their stay on the Isle of Skye.  While we were with them we all had a day trip to France using EuroTunnel; a very efficient and easy service making a visit to France very easy indeed.  We did a little shopping and had a leisurely meal at a lovely family run restaurant in Sangatte which is just a few miles away form the hustle and bustle of the duty free shops.

I was invited to give a talk on Mastering at York University of Music on October 21st which was part of a regular annual 3 day event called Sightsonic.  The 2006 event focused on TOUCH, a label I master for; Philip Marshall gave a talk on web design, Jon Wosencroft and Mike Harding talked about Touch and related topics and Mike chatted with me about mastering for Touch. Several artists performed each day: Rosy Parlane, Marcus Davidson, Philip Jeck, BJ Nisen, Christian Fennesz, Biosphere and Ryoji Ikeda.  it was a great event and I wish to thank the organisers and Touch for allowing me to be part of it.  The people at York liked my piece and are thinking of having me there again; yes please!  I gave a similar mastering talk earlier in October at the music department of the high school in Plockton, which is just off the southern end of Skye.

One delight was meeting up with my old mastering friend Geoff Pesche. Geoff used to be our bike messenger in the early days of Tape One; Geoff decided he'd had enough of delivering tapes round London and wanted to come inside.  I helped train him to be a disc cutting engineer and twenty six years later he is now top of the tree working at Abbey Road Studios mastering some of the best music available.  We met up with Geoff had lunch in the canteen and a brief tour of the place; I've been there many times but it was a first for Rose. Unfortunately all the studios were in record mode so we couldn't go in, but Rose did get a look into the huge number one studio from a viewing hatch up in its roof.  Geoff took over from Chris Blair who sadly died in late 2005; Geoff now has the mastering room set up just how he wants it, and I think he's the happiest he's ever been.  I feel very proud of his achievement had I am so pleased to have helped him from the start of his mastering career.

We also dropped in on Ray Staff, another fine mastering engineer; I say dropped in but should really say 'went up to see him' as he's on the 29th floor of Centrepoint at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and New Oxford Street.  Ray used be the mastering engineer at the famous Trident Studios in the 1970's, then spent many years at CBS's Whitfield Street Studios, later owned by Sony.  Ray now does fine work at Alchemy Soho; he has a great sounding room designed by Sean Davies, another old friend; but apart from having a superb room, Ray also has one of the best views east across London and beyond.

We also caught up with David Tibet and his wife Dri at their new home.  They lived in my home town of Walthamstow for a while, then moved up to Glasgow but have now settled on the south coast. I master David's band Current 93 along with some other the other artists on their label.  Caroline Bonnett produces and compiles releases for Kingsway, a Christian Record label I've been mastering for since 1969. We met up with Caroline at Orange Room Music, a recording studio in Newhaven while she was overseeing the recording of an album by Nick Fletcher which was the first thing I had to master when we got back home.  We enjoy seeing people on our travels and we try and fit in around three different visits each day we're down but it is exhausting, and of course I generally come back to a load of mastering that's been patiently awaiting my return, so we then feel we need another holiday to get over the one we've just had!

A local band who I'm trying to point in the right direction is Stereoglo, a great 3 piece band from Skye. I've mastered two singles for them so far and I managed to get the main track of their latest release 'Can't Wait to Meet You' mixed by Jon Kelly, a great engineer and producer who has his own facility in London. After Jon had mixed the track I chopped the intro in half to tighten up the track into the vocal; I then speeded the track up slightly giving it a little more of a kick; and then to finish off I added some phasing in a couple of places to add a little psychedelic appeal which I think gives the track that little extra boost. The phasing I add was no cheap electronic gizmo, the effect is produced by playing the track twice on different machines at the same time with me vari-speeding one of the versions to create the phasing effect; these two signals are then blended together as a new track on a third machine; I then edited the bits I wanted into my original mastered version and the job was done.  As you see mastering can also be more than getting a good sound; sometimes I might hear something in a track, I talk this over with the artist or producer and we may do a little something extra to improve things.

I have been co-presenting a show on CuillinFM, Skye's local radio station;  I'm on once a month on Sundays between 10.30am and 1pm with Andy Mitchell.  We chat about all sorts and I play tracks that I like but also try to play things that aren't heard that often; it's great to come up with something good that's been forgotten along the way.  The show also gives me an opportunity to let people hear some of the new tracks I've been mastering, but I always get the artiste's permission first as sometimes what I'm involved with doesn't get released for several months and may need to be kept under wraps.  I've also made some one hour programmes at home which get repeat broadcasts from time to time. I made one about Stiff Records and another about the Immediate label; I am presently putting one together about the Fledg'ling Records label with an interview I recorded with its owner David Suff who we met up on our October trip; I speak with David frequently as I'm often mastering something he's involved with, but I haven't seen him since we moved to Skye so it was great to meet up again.  I also want to make a programme about Kirsty MacColl and was intending to meet up with Kirsty's brother Calum in October but he was away recording so we missed each other.  I master for Calum's label which is called MVine; they haven't been around long but are slowly building up a great roster of artists including Boo Hewerdine, Christie Hennessey, The Slides and Hafdis Huld, a great band from Iceland.

Teeny's Cottage our self catering holiday home here on Skye had a really good 2006; it's been full for 42 weeks which is great, and bookings for 2007 are starting to come in; we've had a few people back for second visits and we hope the good level of bookings continue.  In September I was best man at the wedding of my friend Peter Fautley to his lovely bride Gwen.  Peter was one of the technical staff at IBC Studios when I was there in the late 1960's and early 70's; we lost touch but found each other via the internet a few years back and now the four of us get together at regular intervals for lots of chat and yummy dinners.

We hope 2007 will be a good year for us and all of you...and I hope it won't take me another twelve months before I update this page again.