Audio Mastering ― The Artists - Discussions from Pre-production to Mastering

Audio Mastering: The Artists collects more than twenty interviews, drawn from more than 60 hours of discussions, with many of the world’s leading mastering engineers. In these exclusive and often intimate interviews, engineers consider the audio mastering process as they, themselves, experience and shape it as the leading artists in their field. Each interview covers how engineers got started in the recording industry, what prompted them to pursue mastering, how they learned about the process, which tools and techniques they routinely use when they work, and a host of other particulars of their crafts. We also spoke with mix engineers, and craftsmen responsible for some of the more iconic mastering tools now on the market, to gain a broader perspective on their work.

This book is the first to provide such a comprehensive overview of the audio mastering process told from the point-of-view of the artists who engage in it. In so doing, it pulls the curtain back on a crucial, but seldom heard from, agency in record production at large.

Russ Hepworth-Sawyer started life once as a sound engineer and occasional producer with over two decades’ experience of all things audio. Russ is a member of the Audio Engineering Society and co-founder of the UK Mastering Section there. A former board member of Music Producers Guild, Russ helped form their Mastering Group. Through MOTTOsound (www.mottosound.co.uk), Russ now works freelance in the industry as a mastering engineer, writer and consultant. Russ currently lectures part-time for York St John University and has taught extensively in Higher Education at institutions including Leeds College of Music, London College of Music and Rose Bruford College. He contributes from time to time in magazines such as MusicTech, Pro Sound News Europe, Sound On Sound plus has written many titles for Focal Press & Routledge. Russ is also the co-founder of the Innovation In Music conference series (www.musicinnovation.co.uk) and also the co-founder of the Perspectives On Music Production series of academic books.

Dr. Jay Hodgson is on faculty at Western University, where he primarily teaches courses on songwriting and project paradigm record production. He is also one of two mastering engineers at MOTTOsound, a boutique audio services house situated in England. In the last few years, Dr. Hodgson's masters have twice been nominated for Juno Awards, topped Beatport’s global techno and house charts, and he has contributed music to films recognized by the likes of Rolling Stone Magazine, and which screened at the United Nations General Assembly. He was awarded a Governor General’s academic medal in 2006, primarily in recognition of his research on audio recording; and his second book, Understanding Records (2010), was recently acquired by the Reading Room of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has other books published, and forthcoming, from Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury, Continuum, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Focal Press and Routledge.