Masting is kind of a weird part of the record making process. It comes after mixing, and creates the templates that the final release is pressed or downloaded from. You can't change the different tracks at this point, but you can change the overall final mix in various ways, like a final sheen. I've attended a few mastering sessions over the years and it's very interesting to watch what they do and the difference it makes.

I thought it might be interesting for you subscribers to get a taste of this process with the new Folk Implosion single, which drops on Bandcamp on April 13th, on the Folk Implosion Bandcamp page. It was mastered by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering in Berlin. If you've never heard his electronic records under the moniker of Pole, I recommend them highly.

The first four tracks are the actual release. Two new songs written by me and Lou, and two remixes of those songs by Scott Solter, who engineered and co-produced the songs with us. Track 5 is from the first draft of the master for the first track. When we got it back, Solter made the following comment, which I never would have been able to articulate or perhaps even notice the need for:

"I have one little high frequency issue for Stefan to look at on Give It Away. Comparing the final mix and master, I'm hearing pretty strident high end on the master that I don't hear on the final mix. The stridency is quite audible in the vocal and the snare. Listening to the final mix, and the snare certainly does not have that stridency. The stridency is in the 7.6kHz area. Can you ask him to look at that? Like between 7 kHz and 7.7kHz."

Stefan redid that track, and Solter was pleased: "This is much better! I think what he did on the first master was reach down a little too far in trying to add some top end to the mix. It sounded like he was reaching down into the 7kish region and causing aspects of the voices, snare etc to sound strident. He's def solved the issue. I approve!"

Scott once referred to his job as "Quality control" and I'm glad he's around.

After the scrapped master, you'll find the four tracks from this release in their pre-mastering state - the final mixes before what Stefan did to them. Lou and I were very pleased with what he brought to the table. I thought it might be interesting to hear the difference. That's the inside scoop for this month.

If you are a subscriber at the $10 / month level and didn't get a copy of the CD, email me at jodaemail@gmail.com. I can't give out copies of the limited edition cassette or vinyl, which will take many months to appear, because it's a band project rather than a solo thing and those were expensive to make. (Even the cassettes.) Lou and I think the CD sounds best of the three formats anyway, and wish that format was more popular as it is so much cheaper to make. We're selling it via Bandcamp for only $5 so tell a friend to pick it up there!