Zerohardwarez1

Hardware

Master of Puppets Mike Showell is master engineer at Metropolis. Based in West London, the media group have 5 recording and mixing studios and 5 production rooms and is the largest independent recording facility in Europe. Providing facilities for music video, documentary and multi-camera concert production, we thought it would be cool to see just what goes on behind the scenes in a studio – after all, what you normally get to see is random footage of a guy behind a desk either tweaking knobs or playing air drums.

So Mike, bring it on brother:

When, how and why did you get mixed up in becoming a mastering engineer?

That was an amazing piece of luck. I was 18 and had just finished school, couldn’t find a job so was (reluctantly) going to go to college to do electronic engineering.

However, in typical youthful arrogance, I was sick of learning stuff (like most 18 year olds I thought I knew everything) and I was less than thrilled about studying how to mend broken televisions. At the time my father owned a record shop, and one Wednesday in mid August 1984 we popped in to pick up the trade magazine (Music Week). In the classifieds was an ad that ran: Utopia Studios require a trainee disc cutter / tape copier. I knew I did not want to be a studio-recording engineer as I didn’t fancy the hours but disc cutting (as mastering was then known) seemed far more civilised.

Fortunately for me I was very interested in hi-fi so I had read quite a lot about cutting in the hi-fi mags of the day, so I at least knew the basics of what they were doing.

Anyway, I called them, they said I was the first person to call, I decided I should be the first person they should interview hoping that I would be easily remembered.

So the next morning I was there (very overdressed in a suit which was the source of much piss taking later, but I didn’t want to seem too over casual). Once I had one look at the place I knew this was for me and went all out to sell myself. I managed to convince them that I was familiar with reel to reel tape machines as the hospital radio station that I worked on had one (somehow I forgot to mention that the machine had died just before I started and in reality all I had ever done was look at a broken machine). In all they had 48 applicants; these were immediately whittled down to four, then down to two.

As no one could decide who was best, a coin was tossed and I was the lucky one.

So my whole career started with a series of lucky chances and the toss of a coin.

I learned the basics of mastering in the five years I worked at Utopia, and I consider myself to be fortunate that analogue tape machines and techniques reigned supreme at that time; as I acquired a solid analogue foundation upon which to build digital mastering techniques. Many of the younger engineers who are coming up do not get the this luxury and I have heard many stories of young engineers just using the DAT copy because they were scared of or did not know how to use the analogue tape machine. Despite the advances in digital recording, a wellmaintained analogue machine will very often beat its digital counterpart (even if technically it may not be as good, it will probably ‘sound’ better). So if there is a choice of sources, it is really important to audition them all before starting.

After leaving Utopia I worked for eight

120 | ZERO MAGAZINE | www.zeromag.co.uk

01 Hardware.indd 120

21/7/05 10:08:53

years at Masterpiece before being invited to join the team at Metropolis in 1997.

Where do you see your skills in the overall scheme of things in making a record and how does it affect the overall quality of sound etc, do you have any particular theory behind what you do?

Mastering is the final part of the recording process. It’s the last chance there is to manipulate the overall sound of a record (think of it as a glorified graphic equaliser all over the record, it is more involved than that but it will give you a good idea). Once the mastering is done and the CD (or vinyl) master has been made it goes off to the factory and is mass produced, so it is important to get it right as there is no going back once you are at the manufacturers.

Quite often, when an album is being assembled, the first time it is heard properly sequenced is in the mastering studio. This is fine if the same engineer at the same studio recorded all the songs in the same way. However, very few records are made that way. Almost always, an album will be complied of tapes from several different producers and will all sound different. It’s the job of the mastering engineer to assemble the album so that all the songs sound as if they are part of a whole. In a nutshell what I can do is add all sorts of equalisation (EQ) and compression (level control). I have 6 different equalisers to hand in the studio, they all have their own individual character, and the skill is to use the one that will suit both the music and the performance best.

As far as compression goes, this is a bit of a black art, it is a type of artificial level control, where you can make the quiet bits louder and the loud bits quieter, allowing you to offer up the whole track at peak or near peak level more of the time, thereby making everything appear louder. This is used extensively on commercial television

when the adverts sound louder than the programs. In reality they are not louder than the absolute peak of the program but they are at peak all the time whereas the programme will hit peak maybe only once or twice in the whole show. Having said all this, compressors are dangerous things, there is no one size fits all setting, and if you get the compression wrong, there is no undo button. It is really easy to overdo the compression and ruin a recording. Too much compression will sound immediately impressive, but will fatigue the listener pretty quickly (even though the listener may have no idea what compression is). The radio industry has discovered this (nearly all radio is pretty heavily compressed), for years they would fight each other to be the loudest on the dial, but some of the smarter stations discovered that when the compressor was backed off a bit their listener hours went up - basically people were less fatigued by the sound of the station and listened for longer.

Lots of people come to me and ask me to give them the loudest record possible, if they really want it I can do this, but all you will get at the end is a distorted unfocused mushy sounding record (a lot of American hip hop tracks sound this way, if you listen closely all the bass drums distort.) My approach is to make the recording as loud as possible but also clean. If I can hear the compressors and limiters working then it is too loud.

There’s a good reason all hi-fis have a volume control, if the listener wants it loud then they can always turn it up!

Most clients I explain this to are happy with this. But ultimately if the person who made the record and who pays the bill wants there album mastered at eleven (to quote Spinal Tap) then who am I to tell them otherwise.

When I am mastering a record, I tend to try and visualise the situation in which it is likely to be played and think about what I can do to make it sound better in that situation. For example if it is a dance track, it needs to have a good tight bass end and clear drums and percussion to make want to dance to it in a night club. If it is a rock song, it needs to be upfront and in your face with loud guitars and strong vocals. If it is an all out pop song it should have clean bright high frequencies and clear vocals. If it is a delicate acoustic track, it should sound warm, subtle and unforced so it can just wash over you.

A very important part of mastering is knowing when to do nothing; sometimes a tape will come in which will sound beautiful. The trick is to be a man and to say I can’t bring anything to the party here, so I will transfer this beautiful recording to the CD master in the most

transparent way possible. Luckily for me this does not occur too often, or else I wouldn’t have a job! …and Metropolis is the place to be?

It really is the best designed, equipped and maintained mastering facility in Europe, and easily a good rival to anything in America. Most people who are employed in mastering will at some point dream of working at Metropolis. There is a real passion here for the art, from the founding engineers through to the technical staff.

All of us strive to do things just that bit better than the guy down the road. Nearly all of the equipment here has either been built or designed in-house or modified by our technicians. The idea being that everything is just that tiny bit better, and all those tiny bits when added together will make for a better end result. To be a mastering engineer takes a curious mix of audio engineering, electronic engineering, anal retentiveness and being an old woman. You need to know what the equipment is doing, how it is doing it and be happy to play around with it even if nobody else knows why you are doing so, and, to always strive to find other and possibly better ways of doing what you do.

Thankfully anal is my middle name - not very nice of my parents, but there you are.

What famous or infamous acts have you worked with, dodgy moments etc, anonymity assured.

Famous acts: Dido, Mis-Teeq, White Stripes, Doves, Primal Scream, Underworld, Gabrielle, Queen, Everything But The Girl, Dean Walker, Travis, Morcheeba, Robbie Williams, Beth Orton, Moloko, Norman Cook, Pet Shop Boys, Craig David, Elton John, George Michael, Starsailor, Groove Armada, Faithless, Ash, The Libertines, Dodgy Moments: Aside from teasing the assistant engineers (can you go out and get me some black light bulbs, not too dark about 60 watts, or the Vinyl cutting lathe needs some more KY jelly, go off and get as much as you possibly can) this usually involves clients asking for the impossible.

Somebody once asked me if I could make their record more “Egg shaped” Another client came in and said this record is total shit, I don’t care what you do I’m off down the pub. One of my colleagues here was asked mid track if he would have sex with the client, he politely declined. More often than not people want me to make their record sound like Dido’s album, which is fine if you give me a pop record, but more difficult if it’s a rock album.

Michael Anthony Metropolis Group Limited 70, Chiswick High Road, London W4 1SY

www.zeromag.co.uk | ZERO MAGAZINE | 121

01 Hardware.indd 121

21/7/05 10:09:14