Beyond Mastering: A Conceptual Guide

Praise for Beyond Mastering

"Beyond Mastering is a fascinating book, especially in the ‘Beyond’ category. Steve Turnidge has indeed mastered the delicate balance between reaching out to universal abstract concepts and presenting practical information in a language accessible to most folks. This is the perfect trail guide for musicians, engineers, and anyone else interested in how the universe of sound operates."

—Jovino Santos Neto, Brazilian American jazz pianist, flutist, composer, arranger, educator, and producer

"In Desktop Mastering, Steve Turnidge shared his mastering wizardry. In Beyond Mastering, you get so much more than that—read it and not only will your music sound better, but you’ll also become a smarter and (hopefully) happier person. All the tools are there for the taking."

—Alan Heaton, Co-founder and President, Burning Sky Records

"Audio mastering as an arcane professional discipline has been around for decades. But it is only recently that personal computers have become powerful enough that any individual with an interest in audio fidelity can access a wide range of sophisticated tools expressly designed for the management of complex vibratory phenomena. With these tools, chaos is tamed so that harmony rings through. Signals are separated from noise. Flaws are easily detected and repaired.

"Steve Turnidge is on the forefront of this movement and has written a definitive text on the use of these tools within the audio engineering profession. In Beyond Mastering, Steve goes a step further and shares the bigger lessons he’s learned about managing complex vibratory phenomena—not just the form that reaches our ears as smooth, clear, harmonic sound, but also the cycles and vibrations around us and within us that have the power to bring harmony or dissonance to our lives."

—John Beezer, Founder and CEO, Shared Media Licensing

"Steve Turnidge knows mastering and is the consummate explorer of life. In my work creating the music of Sage Run, Steve has been one of the essential fellow travelers who has been with me to help realize my vision. Beyond Mastering is Steve Turnidge at his core and is like nothing else on the market today in the world of mastering. Beyond Mastering is a work that moves past merely the technical aspects of mastering music to the deeper significance of creation and life’s journey. For the musician who creates alone in his own studio, for the mastering technician who feels the deep itch of wanting something more, and for the philosopher who searches the depths of meaning, Steve Turnidge provides a work that will not only make them more proficient in their crafts, but deeper in their souls. Richer. More alive. More connected to what is wider than themselves."

—David Stace-James, composer and musician (Sage Run)

Copyright © 2013 by Steve Turnidge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2013 by Hal Leonard Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Book design by UB Communications

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turnidge, Steve.

Beyond mastering : a conceptual guide / Steve Turnidge.

pages cm

Includes index.

1. Turnidge, Steve—Philosophy. 2. Sound engineers—United States. 3. Mastering (Sound recordings) I. Title.

ML429.T88B49 2013

781.49—dc23

2012049112

Print ISBN 978-1-4584-7451-3

epub ISBN 978-1-4803-6683-1

Kindle ISBN 978-1-4803-6684-8

www.halleonardbooks.com

To those who told me,

You should write a book.

Contents

Foreword by Frank Sheldon

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1

Audio Mastering and Beyond

1. Mastering Concepts

Parallax and Underlying Concepts for Context—Universal Truths and Identifying Repeating Patterns—Mastering In and Out of the Box—The Threefold Nature Is a Template for Universal Truth—A Survey of Threefold Natures—The Waveform—Circles—The Sine Wave—DC Offset—The Emotional Transform—Digital Audio—The Joy of Binary Counting—Sample Values and Resolution—Aliasing—Slew Rate—Multitrack Versus Mono Reaction to Stimuli and the Action Threshold

2. Audio Mastering Stages

The Stages of Music Production and Distribution Are Like Baking a Pie—Why Not Just Normalize?—Preparation for Mastering—Add the Start Noise—Listening to the Track the First Time Through—Understanding Equal-Loudness Contours—Premaster Levels—Clean Up the Bottom End—Mastering Steps—Quantization and Dither—Noise Shaping

3. Sequencing

First Step: Line Up the Tracks—The A&R Scan

4. Working with Other People

A Tale of a Challenging Client—Becoming a Verb—Studio (and Life) Etiquette—Listening for Work—Getting Paid—The Fibonacci Leap—The Talent Tarot as a Resume—Working with Groups—Northwest CyberArtists—MMTA (The Mostly Modular Trade Association)

5. Distribution and Beyond

Speak into the Microphone, Not the Loudspeaker—Agricultural Time Frames—The Sink and the Stopper—Music Distribution: The Rise and Fall of Shared Media Licensing—Burning Sky Records and the Ask Box—Project Bar-B-Q

Part 2

Beyond Mastering

6. Personal History

My Early Years—Rane Corporation—Pavo and Digital Harmony—The Audio Class—What Is Mastering?—Chuckie-Boy Records

7. Moving Forward

Making a Change: The Rut—The Treasure Box—Plato’s Cave—Gravity Wells—The Three Stages of Entering Gravity Wells—Accept Reality, Choose Independence, Take Action (ACT)—A Deck of Cards—The Collapse Theory

8. Physics and Philosophy

Dimensions—Flatland—Four Dimensions—Visualizing Four Dimensions—A. Square, Flip-Book Character—Time—Paper Trails—The Life Circle—Concrete—The Speed of Light—The Long Universe—Driving the Long Body—The Present Moment—Reality Surfing—How to Surf—Motion and Attention—Thoughts on Dimensional Expansion—A Can of Worms—The End of Time—Future Echoes—Discovering Your Heart’s Desire

Part 3

Beyond Consciousness

9. Template Visions and Dreams

Lucid Dreaming and the Big Room—The Smart Bomb—The Chaser and the Chased—Whiter Than White—The Arc of a Dream—My Awakening Experience—Universal Truth and Metaphors—The Cauldron—The Eye

10. The Ship of Fools and Your Internal Ecosystem

The Observer—The Body—The Memory Mansion and Unrealized Assets—The Candle in the Head—The Pencil Your Life Is Written With—The Parable of the Carriage—The Leadership Pyramid—Masking—The Singularity—Sneezing—Parallax

11. The Social-Digital Ecosystem and the Emerging Global Consciousness

Practical Personal Enhancement—The Talent Pool and the Ocean of Data—Solid State to Liquid State—The New Normal—The New Body and the Emerging Global Consciousness—Practical Social Networking Tips

12. The Helical Nature of Time

Definition of Terms

Recommended Reading

Foreword

Nuts-and-bolts manuals can be invaluable, of course, and Steve Turnidge’s first book, Desktop Mastering, covered the essentials of that subject well. Yet, it went further than books like this usually do, and gave us some tantalizing glimpses through a veil not so easily pierced. Beyond Mastering fulfills that early promise by illuminating what is often lost in nuts-and-bolts books: a broad perspective that reveals the forest as well as the trees. It then steps us back far enough so that not only can the forest in its entirety be seen, but the world around that forest opens up until the whole ecosystem becomes apparent. As a result, we can begin to understand how we might thrive in any part of it.

When I first came across Steve’s approach to life and work in person, and later in his highly accessible writing, it was obvious to me that the value in what he has to say extends far beyond his profession. It applies to all of us. Indeed, this is probably the time to confess that I have only a peripheral connection with the world of music and managed sound, yet I had no trouble finding something of value on every page. I was always able to find a correspondence to what I am more familiar with from my own life and work. The mix of telling anecdotes, analogies, and metaphors certainly helped, especially when they were seasoned with Steve’s dry yet cheerful wit.

Anyone wishing to have the work they must do become a great work that they take joy in doing will find pearls of great price in Beyond Mastering. One of the open secrets that Steve shares, for instance, is that for our work to become joyful and productive, it needs to become fully integrated with the rest of our lives. Family and social. Business and service. Inner and outer. Everything. Sure, anyone can say this, but I know Steve. He lives what he says and achieves a harmony between living and working on a level I have seldom witnessed. It is evident to me that he has found a way to make his own place in the world and on his own terms. He has made a commitment to mastering his own life. Along the way, he has seen that it is in his own best interest to be of service to others, yet he seems to get more done in a day than many people do in a week. In spite of his impressive productivity, he seems to still have enough of that most precious of commodities: time.

Essential to a book as ambitious as this one is clarity. Steve is an excellent communicator able to put in a few words some rather profound concepts. There is something about the way he writes that invokes our own sense of pondering. We become active participants in an unfolding narrative. This, in my opinion, is crucial. The value in a word-generated field of information benefits us most when we are active enough to integrate the signal those words produce. The value in this book can become available to us if we take to heart one fundamental principle that Steve began to master at an early age: We make something our own by testing it and then practicing it. Then we have the choice to accept what our experience now tells us, even if it conflicts with what we believed we already knew or were told. We can then make it our own, or let it go and move on. Repeat often.

In dealing with some challenging concepts that could be daunting, Beyond Mastering brings them alive with incisive feet-on-the ground observations illustrated by many anecdotes from Steve’s interesting life and work. Concepts that might be obtuse are made clear by lucid metaphors that stick with us because of their rich imagery. Then, too, there are the longer accounts that will give anyone a sense of Steve’s passionate connection with music and, importantly, how one protects that passion in the business of music. One thing has always been clear to me about Steve: the music and everyone who is part of that creative process always come first.

For those who have Steve’s first book or have a fair sense of what is involved in mastering audio files, this book will prove invaluable, as it adds layers of depth and texture to that world, while panning out to reveal larger and more profound themes. As well as elaborating on the technical principles of mastering covered in Steve’s first book, Beyond Mastering goes further into what we need to know to be able to have success if this is to be our livelihood and, again, how this can be integrated into the rest of our lives. Be warned. Steve does not hold anything back. What we find in these pages is what he has found effective and valuable. It is a resource rich in principles and perceptions, balanced by practical strategies and recommendations. There is no expiration date. The words beyond this foreword have the potential to aid and inspire us for however long we wish. That part, as always, is up to us.

Although it can seem impossible at times, we can make peace with the demands of making a living and our passion. We can make a life that includes everything we really need. For those who are paying attention to the doors that are opening, rather than the one that just closed, this book may be the way in.

Frank Sheldon

Seattle

January 2013

Preface

It is an honor and a joy to have the opportunity to write another book for Hal Leonard Books. My first book, Desktop Mastering, detailed audio mastering techniques I’ve developed over the last couple of decades, but spoke very little about the internal state of mastering engineers themselves.

There are three parts to any given working endeavor:

1. The work.

2. The human being doing the work.

3. The tools and techniques to get the work done.

While Desktop Mastering covered item No. 3 (for the purpose of mastering in the box), this book is for item No. 2, the human being doing the work. Ideally, what you gain from this book should help with any type of work.

There are several continuums underlying our internal states. We can be calm or stressed out; we can have clear heads or be overcome by roof-brain chatter—all the different voices in our heads. Our minds can be overly rational like an arid desert or be devoid of reason like dark, wet swampland.

The detection, setting, and calibration of these internal states are primarily under our own control. In a similar fashion to mastering and learning to listen, we can gain awareness of these internal states, discover our own controls (or dials), and tune our lives toward a continuous moment of happiness and success.

Near the beginning of Desktop Mastering, I shared the three stages of acceptance, and they apply here as well. When you hear a new idea or concept, the natural instinct is to go through these three steps:

1. First, denial. You’re crazy, that won’t work. What are you wasting your time for? Be sensitive to the things that bother you. They provide the best clues to hidden issues.

2. I know that exists, but it doesn’t apply to me. And usually:

3. Of course that’s the way it is. What took you so long to get it? It’s obvious!

As a rule, information breakthroughs soon become mundane. Even now, parts of this book may strike some readers as unlikely, but I’m pretty sure that, soon enough, it becomes a book filled with the blatantly obvious.

This book is written for a few different audiences. First, it is for the potentially frustrated audio enthusiast who wants to get a better handle on deeper aspects of the art and craft of mastering. Second, it is for people who enjoy reading philosophical ideas that extend beyond routine education; and third, it is a message to my younger self, to inform him and those in similar circumstances of the results of several decades of thought so far.

In Beyond Mastering: A Conceptual Guide, I’ll share useful templates and visioning tools to contemplate, and make connections from them to the world of audio, frequency, and amplitude.

Acknowledgments

Beyond Mastering is every book I’ve ever wanted to write in my life. Over the years, it has taken several forms in my mind, from a small illustrated book, to a graphic novel, to a series of short essays. The universe had something different in mind, and I am infinitely grateful to my developmental editor, Bill Gibson; and publisher, John Cerullo, for their visions of what this book could be.

Many of the ideas shared in this book came from long, searching conversations with friends and acquaintances; each tale has another tale and person attached to it. Duane Foster gave me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Bryant Hansen helped me make the leap into the idea of the long body. A conversation with Laura Jaurequi was where the pencil your life is written with came into being. I am rich in friends, and wish I could name them all, but that would fill another book.

I do need to mention Ray Miller, who has been my best friend from the age of four, and who was instrumental in sparking my interests in science, technology, and electronics. Without his mentorship, I would have a very different life. Thank you, Ray.

There are also the people responsible for significant shifts in my awareness, many of whom are no longer with us and I have only met through their writings. The recommended reading list at the end of the book is an abridged assortment of these people; some of the most directly influential are still with us, and in the Guitar Craft crowd. I thank Robert Fripp for bringing these people together and generating a community with integrity, Frank Sheldon for being an invaluable foundation of support in getting this book written, and Steve Ball for being on the other side of the table during the most enlightening conversations. David Lutz helped add heart to sometimes overly intellectual writing.

To all my clients, past, present, and future, thank you for the opportunity to express my heart’s desire through realizing your heart’s desire. To my students—past, present, and future—thank you for driving me to find appropriate answers. Many people are mentioned in the book; if they are in there, assume they are in this list as well.

My highest gratitude is owed to the one person who is always at my side—infinitely patient and supportive—my wife, Julie.

Introduction

My first exposure to mastering was notable in the absence of hard information about it. The texts I would consult about audio typically skipped the topic of mastering, being detailed up to and after the mastering stage, but containing nothing practical or useful about mastering itself. Ultimately I discovered that the underlying process of mastering is to take something, make it better, and give it back. This process can also be directed inward to almost every aspect of our lives.

What does make something better mean? During a Guitar Craft course I attended with Robert Fripp, participants each had a fifteen-minute personal session with Robert. During my time, I told him that I wanted to make the world a better place. He sucked in his breath and said that this might not be the best aim to hold. He went on to relate a story of when he was a child and a bee was in his room. Wishing to make the world a better place for the bee, he opened his window to let it out. It flew right into a spider’s web and was consumed. The best intentions do not guarantee expected results. Different is not always better, and often mastering can result in some people finding the mastered track worse than the original, such as happens so often in the loudness wars.

I have noticed that people like to learn in one of two ways: internally directed and externally directed. This broad philosophical preference may be likened to the act of mastering inside and outside of the box (mastering in the computer workstation or sending the song file out into external equipment for processing). These different approaches to learning come with different tests. Those externally directed take information, digest it, and return it. Those internally directed take information, internally process it, and create new information from it, with intuitive leaps and breaking into unexplored territory.

I have, over the course of my life, been much more interested in the internal processing of information to come to an integrated understanding of my surroundings. In my upbringing, there was great value placed on the unquestioning acceptance of the validity of the external information that was delivered to me, often from those who had not internally processed the information themselves but were just passing it on.

I have also found that learning any given field or craft in depth, in a personal way, allows for the awareness of the similarities of many fields. For instance, besides working at my mastering career, I also am an electronics printed circuit-board designer. It has been very interesting to draw parallels between these fields, especially because my specialty is designing audio products. My mastering work and deeper relationship with music informs my design skills in the electronics field. These are just two of several strands of my life that I have found to have similarities at their cores, truths that are both similar and universal.

Beyond Mastering is my attempt to braid several of these strands together, including the understanding of aspects of audio and the act of mastering itself. In addition, I invite you to join me as I recount several critical times of my life, and the results of those times on my understanding of the world and my place in it. I’ll also share some difficult areas in which I have not succeeded, to the end that you may see my errors, or glean better ways of achieving the aims I have not achieved yet. Fortunately, the end result of my work is a successful independent career, and the lessons I have learned can lead to your success as well.

Some of these concepts may work better for you now, and others will be more important later. Put to use what you can now. You may find the other aspects helpful at exactly the right time, as they are needed. Along the way, I hope Beyond Mastering becomes a worthy companion and a benefit to you.

Part 1

Audio Mastering and Beyond

1

Mastering Concepts

Mastering is extremely rewarding. The emotional satisfaction of taking a raw, sometimes lifeless file and bringing it to life has few parallels. The underlying key to the mastering process is to take and accept the raw material as given and objectively listen to the work. Then neutralize the out-of-balance frequencies and amplitudes in preparation for the final stage of the look-ahead limiter, where everything becomes more. I have found many parallels between mastering music and mastering life, and in this section, I’ll explore several characteristics of audio and the underlying lessons that they hold for life’s journey.

Parallax and Underlying Concepts for Context

As I related in my earlier book, Desktop Mastering, I am blessed with interesting eyes. My left eye is farsighted—it has good focus beyond arm’s length. My right eye is nearsighted, with good focus inside of arm’s length. This provides good focus throughout my range of vision. I have one eye with always-good focus—and one not so good, which adds light to the vision but not clarity. I received my first pair of glasses at twenty-two years of age. Until the day I put them on, I didn’t know that I had been missing something. I could see everything in sharp focus, and I was impressed that television looked so much like real life.

When the glasses went on, I received the gift of parallax—and depth perception into three dimensions. The interesting thing is that nothing changed except for my perception. The outside world did not change (but I spent three months ogling the corners of the room, reveling in their relative distance). My eyes did not change, just the tools of perception and the awareness of a new dimension.

Beyond Mastering is an attempt to provide the reader with corrective lenses to see the world in a clearer, more detailed state, and to let you know there is an underlying aspect of reality to be perceived. Just as audio laid bare boils down to frequency and amplitude, there are underlying forms you can become aware of, and you can use that awareness to make appropriate decisions.

When you recognize these patterns inside and outside yourself, responsibility can be aided by reason and emotion connected to intuition, and acceptance of the physical becomes possible. This recognition requires no change of the inner or outer world; it is an opportunity, not an obligation. Pattern recognition is a value added to your life.

Universal Truths and Identifying Repeating Patterns

The universal truths I talk about in this book are true for a bounded area. They work if you are alive and reasonably healthy. They are applicable when your basic needs of shelter and security have been resolved. Just as a premastered audio file is the end result of long stretches of work involving learning to play instruments and gaining expertise in mixing, mastering your life begins at the stage after your essential needs have been met.

One of the most fundamental concepts in audio, mastering, and life is the