Activist Mastering

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"You're the only mastering engineer who's ever adjusted an EQ and I've thought, 'I like that!'" — Gordon Raphael (producer: The Strokes, Regina Spektor)

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Hi! My name is Jamie. Thanks for visiting my mastering page.

I've been mastering records on a word-of-mouth basis since 2011; after nine years, I thought maybe I should finally make it official, and so I launched this mastering service in March 2020. I've mastered dozens of records since 2011, in a wide variety of genres, for artists from North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. 

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"First, do no harm." — Hippocrates

First, a confession: I am not primarily a mastering engineer. I came to mastering via producing and mixing records, which I've been doing for 25 years. I taught myself how to master records because, honestly, I was frustrated. 

It seems like, a lot of the time, somehow the intentionality of a production can get warped in the mastering process. It's like either the person isn't spending enough time to really get to understand the material, or they're making EQ choices against an abstract 'ideal' sonic footprint, without taking into account the effect on the song's emotional impact, or they're compressing something the wrong way and screwing up your carefully-crafted dynamics. You're so excited to get your record back from mastering, and it just sounds ... slightly wrong? Perhaps "technically" more correct, but missing some undefinable aspect of the essential magic and soul that you worked so hard to put into it? That's the worst feeling in the world. 

I used to get that feeling a lot. That feeling that my intentions weren't being preserved through the mastering process. And so I learned how to master records, at first, simply so that I could make sure that the records I was so carefully making weren't getting randomly screwed up at the very end of the process. That was a great starting point; very empowering. And then I kept at it for the better part of a decade! And I started learning some things, and buying some gear. And then I started learning some really esoteric things, and buying some really esoteric gear. And, twelve years later, here we are. I've mastered a ton of records, I have best-in-class tools, and I'm ready to help you make your record awesome.

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While I love working on records that were made in higher-end studio environments, I have a soft spot for independent music, and particularly I love working on records that might be better described as labors of love. Improbable records. Bedroom records. Weird records. Headphone records. Live records. Lo-fi records. Self-produced records. GarageBand records. Records by people with day jobs. The records that people make because they can't keep them inside.

With one exception, every audio example below was recorded in a home studio. A number of them were made on laptops. One song was recorded on a Tascam 8-track. One song was recorded with a Zoom recorder outdoors; you can hear a plane over the cicadas at one point. I love music like this. I think that independent and homemade music deserves to sound good enough to compete with music that was made on bigger budgets. And I can help with that.

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I think of what I do as 'Activist Mastering.' And what I mean by this is, I don't aim necessarily to be transparent in my work. Because I am an artist myself, and a producer, I approach mastering from that point of view. My goal with each project I touch is to enhance it in a creative way that showcases your point of view as an artist, from my perspective as a producer and mixer. I work to do this at the individual song level, and I also work to do this in terms of the narrative arc of the album or EP the songs are on.

First and foremost, as discussed above, my value is to preserve your vision, on an emotional and artistic level. I don’t go in and arbitrarily or accidentally change the intentions of things; I take the time to learn what your intentions are, and then I focus on enhancing and amplifying your intentions. Sometimes dramatically! 

Or, to put this all another way: my goal is to serve as your creative partner, to significantly signal-boost what you're working to communicate – and to help you finish making a record that you'll be deeply proud of for the long term.

SOME EXAMPLES OF MY WORK:

The best way to show you what I do is to let you listen to my work. So, to that end, below you'll find a whole bunch of "before and after" examples of my work in different genres. As you'll hear, some songs are "light touch" in terms of the mastering approach, because that's what served the material the best. And then some of it is more like restoring an old painting, finding the colors beneath the grime.

Mastering records that were made in good studios is relatively easy; there's not typically as much that needs doing. I purposefully chose my audio examples from records that were recorded mostly in less-than-ideal situations. When I can help a homemade recording shine, it's genuinely exciting for me.

The way I've organized these listening samples is in pairs; the first player is the master, and the second player is the unmastered song as it came to me. (I've level-matched the song pairs to some degree, to facilitate meaningful comparisons; the unmastered versions generally came in to me much quieter.) 

Also, I've transcribed the notes that I took when I was listening to the songs before I started making changes. Hopefully this will be informative as you listen. Mastering isn't a black art; it's a series of choices made about music, hopefully from an empathetic and heart-forward point of view. I can help make these sorts of choices about your music, too.

(Starting one player will stop any other active player. Left + right arrows = forward / back 10 seconds. You can click or tap in the waveform to navigate around the song.)

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