I am writing this surrounded by boxes of reel-to-reel tapes, LPs, 45s, cassettes, DATs and one MiniDisc. It’s organizing day, and I am packing up some items to return to their owners. I always enjoy the physical stuff - the smell, the feel, the look. I assume most mastering engineers are hyper-sensitive to sensory input (aren’t we??), and I definitely FEEL the aura of physical recording media when I’m working on it. I feel useful, informative stuff, like when a tape’s tension isn’t right, or when an LP might benefit from a tonearm adjustment for a better quality transfer. But I also feel the spirit of the recording, the people who gathered in a room and loaded up a tape and hit record. I don’t mean to get all spiritual with you. To be honest, this is coming stream of consciousness. But as we are all sequestered in our homes during the COVID-19 shutdown, it seems relevant to talk about our relationship to the STUFF we work on and how it informs our practice.

All of which is to say, I love the stuff. I love working with physical media and immersing myself in the full sensory experience. And I am grateful to be able to continue my work in my home studio, with my trusty ATR-102 and my loyal dog by my side.

A few recent mastering projects:

I have been working with producer/engineer Reto Peter and Flipsyde, and the songs they are creating together are so powerful! Full album coming soon…

Erroll Garner’s Gemini was selected to be Vinyl Me Please’s Classic Record of the Month for May. You can read more about the digitizing and remastering process in this article, which highlights the brilliant work done by Jamie Howarth and John Chester of Plangent Processes. I adore working with them and with producer Peter Lockhart on the Erroll Garner Reissue series out on Mack Avenue. Total dream team!

If you need to be transported to a sunnier place, please dig into this sunny reissue by Liz Damon’s Orient Express, out on Aloha Got Soul. I got to restored and remaster this one from original vinyl, and you know it had me out of my seat and dancing in the studio.

Equally transporting, Peter Davison’s 1980 debut album Music On The Way, which I lovingly restored from original tapes, and which was released by Light In The Attic. Peter and I also share a love of classic cars, it turns out!

I have to give a massive shoutout to the talented Matthew McNeal, who endured a hell of a year and transformed it into his deeply personal, emotionally moving album, Good Grief. Ted Young produced, engineered and mixed, and we all worked so well together I can’t wait to do it again!

Outside the studio (back when there was an outside the studio), I’m still rolling tapes for the Harry Oster collection at the Arhoolie Foundation (miss you guys!) and helping radio producers The Kitchen Sisters prepare their audio collection (over 10,000 items and counting!) for digitization and preservation. I had a blast teaching Mastering and Media Preparation at SAE this spring, even when we had to move our classes online. And, most recently, I’ve got something fun cooking with the Great 78 Project at the Internet Archive. More on that soon…

Finally, I am honored to have been elected as President of the San Francisco Chapter of the Recording Academy. My term begins in June, and I am genuinely looking forward to leading our chapter. MusiCares has been mobilizing to help musicians and music creators impacted by COVID-19, so if you are in need, contact them, and if you can donate to help replenish their funds, please do.

As always, be well and stay in touch!

I’ve been mastering, digitizing, restoring, traveling, speaking, educating. And I got a dog! Welcome my new studio pal, the very chill beagle-chihuahua-dachshund-who know’s what else rescue pup, Eddie Thompson.

October means AES in NYC. This was my second year chairing the Archiving & Restoration track, and I was completely thrilled by how the programming came together. I moderated a marquis panel on Long Term Preservation of Audio Assets, with the goal of pushing this conversation beyond well-established best practices and the usual complaints about lack of time and lack of money. We talked about everything from more favorable licensing deals for small labels to AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language). Props to Cheryl Pawelski (Omnivore Recordings) for summing it up thusly: Preservation through Proliferation. Support your favorite reissue label. They are often the ones facilitating and paying for the preservation work.

I also spoke about the importance of incorporating history into audio education, a true passion of mine. Is it possible to get a degree in fine arts without taking an art history class? Then why are we graduating audio engineers with no exposure to the history of recording and recorded sound?

Thanks to all the contributors who helped put together such excellent panels and talks! We covered metadata, preserving podcasts, multi-tracks, funding options, early digital formats, and more. Truly an educational and entertaining and exhausting-but-worth-it week!

Hey, I also mastered some records. Here are a few highlights:

A sweet and lovely bluegrass record by mandolin player and vocalist Kate Prascher; an epic piano-centric album by composer / pianist Ross Avant, Running Across America, produced by Ted Young; more reissues from Awesome Tapes From Africa, including Antoinette Konan’s “eponymous 1986 electro-Baoulé blaster” and Nahawa Doumbia’s La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol 1, plus a new forthcoming album by Ethiopian composer / multi-instrumentalist keyboard genius Hailu Mergia, Yene Mircha, out March 27; Stephen Thirolle’s rich and rollicking The Sounds of This Life; a reissue of seminal shoegaze/punk/emo/none-of-the-above Pot Valiant’s Transaudio, out on Numero Group; a dreamy reissue of lofi post-punk, Gary Davenport’s Scattered Thoughts, also out on Numero Group; and so many more.

I’m still working with the Arhoolie Foundation on the Harry Oster Collection, and I’ve had the utter privilege and joy to revisit my public radio roots by consulting with the Kitchen Sisters on preserving their incredible collection of audio recordings. More on that in the coming months…

I know. It’s been a long time since I rapped at you. It’s been nothing but tapes and discs and WAVs and a steady downpour of albums, EPs, singles. A few highlights: I restored and remastered Yusef Lateef’s Hikima: Creativity from a pristine slab of vinyl. Lateef recorded this in Nigeria while on a fellowship to write and teach at Ahmadu Bello University in the early 1980s. Utterly transporting! And a real challenge to declick complex rhythmic music. Gratitude to Jonathan Sklute and Key Systems Recordings for entrusting this to me. I also got to work with the talents at Women’s Audio Mission on Versoul’s rich and vibrant debut Soulrise. Producer / mixer / engineer / all around talented gentleman Ted Young brought me Heavy Diamond Ring’s debut, helmed by Sarah Anderson and Paul DeHaven. Listen to lead single “Wild Things” and then dip into the whole album. I restored and remastered Barbara Howard’s On the Rise for Colemine Records, and ooh, the heat of album opener “Light My Fire”! I was pleased to stumble upon tracks from this record on the Danger Mouse Jukebox playlist on Tidal. Glad he’s digging it too! Buffalo, NY’s The Tins, oh my old pals The Tins! They never cease to amaze me with their creative output, this time “City Lies II,” an update of last year’s “City Lies.” I am patiently waiting for them to tour the West Coast. Last on this list (but only because I’m running out of time), two singles for International Dub Ambassadors, Ñam-Ñam and “Dos Amores,” which will slay your parties this summer. Check ‘em all out!

A few other work-related highlights of the past half a year:

I’m still working with the Arhoolie Foundation on the Harry Oster collection, funded by grants from the GRAMMY Museum and the National Recording Preservation Fund. Harry was a folklorist and ethnomusicologist, but he was also a decent recording engineer, so these 1/4” analog tapes sound far better than they might otherwise! I’ve been traveling back in time to Iowa and Louisiana in the 1950s and 1960s and eavesdropping on jam sessions, church services, dances, intimate performances. Much gratitude to the folks at Arhoolie for partnering with me on this project.

I was elected to serve as Vice President of the San Francisco Chapter of the Recording Academy. I’m looking forward to serving with President Camilo Landau, Secretary Kev Choice, our amazing Trustees Leslie Ann Jones, Michael Romanowski and Piper Payne, and the rest of our board of governors.

McKay Garner and I gave a presentation to students at SAE/Expression for GRAMMY U about the Producer & Engineers Wing Best Practices technical guidelines. Didn’t know these documents exist? Download and read! They offer invaluable tips and templates for data management, workflow, organization, and delivery of recorded music projects. Top tips: use folder hierarchies and file naming conventions, document credits, back up your data!

In May, I traveled to Portland to drink magnificent cups of coffee and eat at the many delicious food trucks, oh, and to give a pre-conference workshop on Digital Audio Workstation Basics for preservationists with Konrad Strauss at the Association for Recorded Sound Collection’s annual conference. Once again, I snuck my Coco Chanel quote into the slides. She famously said (or didn’t? who can verify?) “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” This is my modus operandi with audio restoration. Before you print, dial back one click. You rarely regret it, and you can always add more. Keeps me from being too heavy handed. The rest of the conference was an inspiration, and I got to hear Endpoint Audio’s magnificently digitized magnabelt recordings of Rod Serling and Spyros Skouras, learn about the history of KBOO community radio and grassroots work of XFR Collective, engage in a little FLAC vs WAV debate, and regret that I couldn’t be in two places at once to attend more panels. I also snuck out one night to play pinball. We all need a little balance.

This October, I will be back in New York City, my beloved home for so many years, for the Audio Engineering Society’s 147th convention. I am chairing the Archiving and Restoration track again and putting together some prime time programming around archival audio. No hints until the schedule comes out next month! Hope to see many of you there!