Welcome to 1979 Archives - Recording Studio Rockstars

Tag Archives for " Welcome to 1979 "

RSR035 – Cameron Henry – Vinyl Mastering

(Press play on the green strip above or listen on iTunes with the link below)

RSR007 - David Glenn - The Mix Academy

If you dig the show I would be honored if you would subscribe, and leave a rating, & review in iTunes.

RSR035 - Cameron Henry - Vinyl Mastering Engineer

My guest today is Cameron Henry a mastering engineer at Welcome to 1979 Studio specializing in vinyl mastering. He has mastered over two-thousand LP & 45-single releases, including Bela Fleck, John Mayer, Sturgill Simpson, Bonnie Raitt, JD McPherson, Spiritualized, Steve Earle, Dinosaur Jr., John Prine, The Rolling Stones, Whitney Houston, and many others.


And since Cameron's mastering room is located in a full-on recording studio, Cameron & studio owner Chris Mara have been able to record direct-to-disk releases for artists such as Pete Townshend, Josh Hoyer, and a handful of others.


One of the very cool things that Cameron also does here is to host a "vinyl camp" at Welcome To 1979 Studio, which is focused on teaching the basics of disk cutting, with hands-on demonstrations, using attendee's music, & a chance to participate in an actual direct-to-disk recording session. The goal of the camp is to provide knowledge to mixing engineers & producers so they can have the foresight to properly prepare an album for a vinyl release.

“Vinyl is heavy, bulky, & takes a lot to manufacture, but it has seen the birth and death of every format that was intended to replace it.” 

Click to Tweet

The Process of Creating Vinyl Records

Neumann VMS70 Cutting Lathe

In the room I have a Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe which is a giant spaceship looking machine which cuts a lacquer and that's the first record. The process of making a vinyl record starts with a machine like mine. The music is pumped into the amplifiers of the machine it vibrates the cutting stylus on the cutter head and it just literally, in real time, cuts the groove onto a lacquer.

The cutting stylus on the lathe cuts the groove and is vibrated by the music so that when you put the playback needle on your turntable into that groove it vibrates the same way. A record is cut in a midside fashion where all of your center information is causing a lateral, horizontal groove to be cut on the record. And anything stereo is happening vertically.

A lacquer looks a lot like a record. It’s an aluminum disc with a coating of like nail polish on it. That gets sent to a manufacturing plant where it gets nickel plated. When they peel off the nickel from the record that has grooves on it the metal part has ridges on it, it’s the opposite of a record. That goes into the press which is a complicated looking waffle iron and hot plastic sits between the two stampers and just presses out every copy. So whatever record I cut in here is going to be identical to every record copy that's out on the market.

Record Pressing 

When a record is pressed, there’s a hot hockey puck sized piece of plastic that goes between the two stampers. The stampers push down with a bunch of pressure and the plastic spreads outward, much like waffle batter.

How should you Mix and Master for Vinyl?

Basics - Make sure your music sounds good. If you’re music sounds good, it’s probably going to translate well to vinyl. Listen to the low end and make sure its in phase and actually in the middle, also listen to the sibilance. Those are two frequency ranges that cause the most trouble in a record. 

Mastering for vinyl is completely different then it is for digital. Mastering has a chain with a starting point and an end point. The end point is whatever format it’s going to be so if it's a cd it's making a cd. There’s a point maybe three quarters of the way through the mastering process where vinyl could take a completely different path from digital and a lot of that has to do with dynamics and overall volume. Digital music is way louder than vinyl it’s a totally different reference point.

Dynamic music fits on a record better. The physicality of how a record works is you have a disc and there’s a spiral going around and around. The more that groove deviates and moves around then the more space of each groove is required so you can only fit so much time. So, the louder the music is the more space the groove is going to use up. The quieter it is, the less space. When you have dynamic music, in the quieter moments you can cram the grooves together. So over time with the less compressed master you have an overall higher volume output.

“A vinyl master and a digital master aren’t optimized in the same way” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Check Out Cameron's Vinyl Record Label 

Jam Session 

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - One of my biggest things was thinking that if only I had the ability to go into a real studio to make a record I would totally do that. I grew up in Toledo, OH and had a port-a-studio and two mics and would make records on that thing. At the time I didn’t realize that what I was doing was super awesome and important to understanding how recording works, by just working with semi-pro equipment. There were times where I thought we could do this song, but we might need this other piece of gear to do it, and that’s the wrong attitude to have.

Q- What was some of the best advice you got early on?

A- Since I worked on the port-a-studios it would be me recording in my garage, I’d be focused on how close do I get the mic to the guitar or this or that, and somebody told me once, why don’t you just sound good in the space you’re in and put a microphone in the space and it should sound good. Don’t worry about where I’m going to put the mic first, worry about what’s happening musically sound good in the space that it’s in.

“I think opportunities are born out of failures” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.

A - I give this tip to a lot of people who ask me, ‘I’m mixing for vinyl what should I do?’ Once you think you’re mix is good put an EQ on your mix bus and put a high pass filter at like 60 or 70 hertz and a low pass filter at like 13k. Take that away, walk away for 15 min and then go back and listen to it and does it still sound like music to you? If it does, you’re probably ok. Those frequencies are the ones that you’ll trick yourself into thinking are good. The sub sonics and ultrasonics are great for fidelity purposes, but you got to realize the song needs to stand alone even coming out of an earbud

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A- A fun hardware tool is actually a unit by Behringer called the Combinator. It’s this multi-band limiter, equalizer, compressor that was actually intended for live purposes so you could shape music to the room you’re in. It’s an awesome piece of gear.


“If you looked at a record groove under a microscope, it's a “V” shape” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - Share a favorite software tool for the studio

A - I really like BrainWorks plugins. I use their BX control which is a mid-size “mastering” console. It’s got a great device called a monomaker on it which is emulated off of a elliptic equalizer that was intended for cutting discs. Its got a threshold point where everything below is subbed to mono everything about it in stereo. 

Q - Share with us a tip for the business side of the recording studio

A - Having a good invoicing software. I use this company called invoice-to-go. I can easier and daily download the whole backlog and it generates reports in real time so I can easily say how much did I make? Who hasn’t paid me? Who has paid me? Etc.. It’s great to just keep track of all that, and I can do that no matter where I am.

“Don’t use a turntable that’s plastic” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - If you had to start over what gear would you need? How would you find people to record? And how would you make ends meet while you got started?

A - I would find the bars musicians are playing in and start hanging out and got to know them personally by being there all the time. Over time they’d find out I’m a recording engineer and we’d starting talking about making records. Find if there’s people to record and cater to that. 


“Vinyl is a really weird medium because there’s no definition of what anything is” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - What is the single most important thing a listener can do to become a rockstar of the recording studio?

A - Record things. Everybody’s bad at one point. Best way to get good at recording is to record things.

Contact: 
Welcome to 1979 Facebook

Welcome to 1979 - Vinyl​
Email: mastering@welcometo1979.com

Big Thanks to Tyler Cuidon & Merissa Marx for this week's episode!!

Chris Mara

RSR027 – Chris Mara – Welcome to 1979

(Press play on the green strip above or listen on iTunes with the link below)

RSR007 - David Glenn - The Mix Academy

If you dig the show I would be honored if you would subscribe, and leave a rating, & review in iTunes.

RSR027 - Chris Mara - Welcome to 1979

My guest today is Chris Mara owner of Nashville’s Welcome To 1979 recording studio, and owner of Mara Machines; the largest analog tape machine restoration company in the world.

Chris’s passion for recording led to founding the analog-centric Welcome To 1979; which has clients such as Pete Townshend, Eric Burdon, Brendan Benson, The Features, North Mississippi Allstars, The Protomen, John Oats, and Jack White’s Third Man Records among many.


Welcome To 1979

Chris shared the journey he took to start his own unique analog tracking facility. Located in an old record pressing plant, his control room is a whopping 1,200 sq ft featuring an MCI-428 built in 1987.

Welcome to 1979 Control Room 

“The epiphany was: The thing I don’t have will be my greatest asset” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Vinyl Mastering 

Welcome to 1979 also has a beautiful cutting lathe and vinyl mastering department, making masters for Sony Records, Warner Records, Compass Records and Concord Records, along with many independent artists. 

Chris learned from Hank Williams what the vinyl mastering process is and what a cutting lathe is. His studio now uses a Neumann VMS70 to master vinyls in real time. The masters are turned into metal and hot pressed into the vinyl record.

Neumann VMS70

Vinyl master your album at 1979

YOU can send WAV files or tapes to Welcome to 1979, and they’ll send the lacquer master off for metal stamper for you to send to a vinyl pressing plant of your choosing.​

“We’re the only place in the country that you can send a WAV file to and we can ship a metal stamper to a pressing plant of your choice” 

Click to Tweet

Mara Machines restores analog MCI tape machines in use all over the world: Canada, Mexico, Greece, Vietnam, England, Brazil and of course, the United States. Mara Machines clients include Pete Townshend, Arcade Fire, Live, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Ryan Freeland, Greg Wells & Justin Niebank.

“I think the coolest thing about a tape machine, is it changes your workflow” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Recording Summit 

Rockstars this is something really cool that you will want to know about. Welcome To 1979 is also ground zero for a yearly Recording Summit inviting you to meet panels of experts that have included inspiring producers like Vance Powell, Richard Dodd, Mitch Easter, Gary Paczosa, Larry Crane, and mastering engineer Hank Williams during previous years.

Chris wanted to bring "AES" and "Potluck" to a more intimate level. His summit has 60 spots consisting of business and music panels, that talks a lot about day to day challenges such as  “the art of production and taxes."

“I decided to have a small, yet high impact summit here” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Tape Camp

Chris also hosts a regular event called Tape Camp where you can spend a weekend in the studio learning all about analog tape, from aligning the machines right through recording a session. He shares how people would email him asking to learn more about tape machines, so he started a camp twice a year where they invite ten people the weekend to come get hands on learning experience recording to tape. A special third day set aside for tape alignment. 

Student at Tape Camp

“My dad taught me, when you’re fixing something, don’t look at your tool box for 10 minutes. Take a look and see what’s going on” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet


Jam Session 

Q - What was holding you back at the start?
A - I’d say Wisconsin. Being 7 hours North of Chicago, there was no industry or connections, so I moved here (to Nashville).

Q- What was some of the best advice you got early on?
A -Larry Crane is a good friend of mine, and in one of his issues of Tape Op he talks about photography which is a hobby of mine. He had this saying, “if there’s something cool happening, don’t go back to your car to get the better camera, because when you get back the elk is done doing what it’s doing.” So it’s kind of like shooting the shot with what you have. That has helped me very well. If someone is singing and jamming, throw the mic up and go.

“You can’t unring a bell” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.

A - So a friend of mine who attended tape camp, we both have a BlueStripe 1176. I went to his studio and he’s like check this out. If you turn this attack knob, it clicks off, and it’ll distort. The very next week Eric Burdon comes here and the producer's like, “man we need a little hair on this” and I had just the right thing. Dare I say the student became the teacher.

Q - Share a favorite hardware tool for the studio
A-
I rarely record without a DBX 160. They make sense to me. I love to use them on kick, snare, guitars vocals, bass, background vocals. Lately I’ve been putting one behind another compressor as a limiter on a vocal especially. When I first started recording, I just became fond of the sound.

Q - Share a favorite software tool for the studio

A - The Sans Amp has pulled me out of a lot of fires. Echoboy... I started mixing in the box once I found Echoboy. 

“If you’re seeking out instant gratification, you're in the wrong business” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - Share with us a tip for the business side of the recording studio

A - Yoli, my wife, runs the business side. She’s brilliantly smart and financially conservative. She's the one that grew Mara Machines. I just backed into being a business owner. I’ve got a lot of friends and neighbors that are a lot smarter than me. We sit and drink wine and I play golf with them and they teach me things on their business and how they think of things.

“Get to the point, whatever your career is, to be able to choose your tools” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q- How do you find a great business partner? What should you look out for?

A - Flashy is not the answer. Everyone that I look up to is very unassuming. The best engineers won't tell you what they worked on, you have to pull it out of them.

“If you’re motivated and you can hustle, you can make money” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - If you had to start over what gear would you need? How would you find people to record? And how would you make ends meet while you got started?

A - I think what I would do is find bands and retain a good vocal chain something that I could use on guitars and vocals. 

Q - What if somebody wanted to start with an all analog setup?

A - I would say a one-inch 8 track machine and a small console like a Machey 16 channel, and a 8 channel one for return and a slew of 57’s


“Especially in the studio, listen more than you talk” @Welcometo1979

Click to Tweet

Q - What is the single most important thing a listener can do to become a rockstar of the recording studio?

A - Be nice, work hard. Especially in the studio, listen more than you talk

Contact:
welcometo1979.com

maramachines.com

@Welcometo1979