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Back in the Spring I recorded a brass trio CD with ASU colleagues Douglas Yeo and Deanna Swoboda. After editing the project thoroughly (more here) the next step is mastering.
The last project I was involved with mastering was my Canto CD back in 2005. My main take-away from mastering that and my other solo CD Les Adieux (2003) was that many recordings that I used to enjoy I realized either were not mastered or were not mastered very well. It makes a huge difference in the quality of the final product, a difference you really hear when you know well the audio quality before audio mastering and after.
What is Mastering?
So then you might ask, what is this “mastering” you speak of? It involves in simplest terms processing the sound. The mastering engineer uses different programs and tools than the recording engineer that open up the sound generally and can address other specific problems, such as equalizing the sound of tracks recorded at slightly different times and eliminating noises that originated in the production of the CD.
There is more to it than that but this was in fact something I was really looking forward to. This photo is from the end of the session, the engineer being David Shirk of Sonorous Mastering. You get some sense of his setup, and we are extremely happy to have had his experience in the field contribute to the quality of the final product, which will go to production soon!
The end result is I believe this project will be one of the very best brass trio recordings ever made! It will be in the hands of Summit Records soon; be watching for more as Table for Three is released.
UPDATE: The CD is out now, more here.
