Mandy Parnell

Chal Ravens

So, we are about to get an insight into one of the dark arts of music production, something that is crucial to making a great record but is perhaps a bit invisible to the end listener sometimes. So, I’m on the couch with one of the world’s most revered mastering engineers. Please welcome Mandy Parnell.

[applause]

Mandy Parnell

Hello.

Chal Ravens

Let’s just start with the basics, then. In a nutshell, what is mastering?

Mandy Parnell

Wow, in a nutshell.

Chal Ravens

Just in a very, very brief nutshell.

Mandy Parnell

Brief nutshell. An objective set of ears on the project. Objective set of ears. We’re the first set of ears to hear it when it comes out of the studio. So, often you’re in there for, anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. So, we’re the first sounding board really. That’s what it is for me, basically.

Chal Ravens

Why is it something that I can’t do at home? Why do I need to go and see you to get a record mastered?

Mandy Parnell

A mastering studio has full-range speakers. First and foremost, when you’re at home, you have a small to mid-range monitors, so you really have not got control of your bass. It’s possible that your room’s not set up very well. You’re going into a mastering studio, it’s going to be a very fine tuned room. So, it’s going to show us a lot of what’s going on. It’s possible in your rooms at home that you’ve got phase problems, and you’re not aware of it. Often that’s the case with stuff that comes in from bedroom productions. There can be phase issues and often sub bass issues, because you’re not hearing it. Often, I’ll have young producers, engineers that come in and they’re very shocked at what they hear in the mastering room, because they haven’t heard it on their mix. So, we’re often having to go back and remix or try and doctor stuff to make it work for when it goes out there.

Chal Ravens

So, it’s partly about the room itself, almost an architectural thing to take it somewhere else. So, you used to work at The Exchange and now you have your own studio at home called?

Mandy Parnell

Black Saloon Studios.

Chal Ravens

So, when did you build your own studio and why did you decide to take it into your house?

Mandy Parnell

OK. I left The Exchange. I was working at another studio in west London and helped build that up and redesign it and was working out of there. I got headhunted to go out to LA and worked for a big studio out there. So, for about a year while we were discussing it and doing contracts, and I was going and looking at houses out there, my house was for sale. I’d started working out of the studio in my house, which was set up more as a writing room, and then went into more of a room for me to explore my theories, because I was doing quite a crazy journey into theory of mastering at that time.

So, I started working on projects out of there, and then decided not to go to LA and stick around in London and started looking at renting studios. My acoustic engineer said, “Why are you moving? You’ve done some incredible records, some number one records out of the room.” All the artists and producers loved it, because it’s in my house and it’s a converted warehouse, and just a fun space. So, that’s why I’m still there.

Chal Ravens

I don’t want to get too scarily technical too quickly, but crazy theories? What sort of crazy theories?

Mandy Parnell

Just about theories of sound basically, and how to master. Exploring theories about gain structuring, exploring theories about signal flow, testing lots of different equipment, really going into a journey about digital audio and file formats, which I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with teams like Mastered for iTunes. [I] was involved with that team, with the MQA [Master Quality Authenticated] team, sort of beta testing. So, yeah, just exploring different theories and how we can get better sound and get the emotion across through these formats, basically.

Chal Ravens

What skills are needed to be a mastering engineer? Does it help to be a musician?

Mandy Parnell

No. I’m not a musician. I did my music at school, piano and guitar. Never wanted to play music, never wanted to be a musician. Always loved music, loved finished product. Of course when I was smaller it was all vinyl, so I had a portable record player when I was about this high, and I’d just play records and look at them and be fascinated by them. It’s not necessary. I mean, that’s more necessary I think if you’re in the recording studio and you’re tracking to have a knowledge of music and have a knowledge of pitch. Of course when it gets to mastering it’s finished. I don’t need to worry about the auto-tune, that’s already been done. I think what you need to have is a passion for sound.

Chal Ravens

Tell us a bit about your particular route into the job. How did you actually end up being a mastering engineer?

Mandy Parnell

One of my best friends was a housekeeper at the Manor Studios, which was Richard Branson’s residential studio. I was about 15, 16. She invited me down there for the weekend to get drunk and swim in the pool, and just hang out in this rock & roll studio. [laughs] So, on the Sunday before I was heading back to London, the assistant engineer said to me, “Do you want to see the studio?” I was like, “Sure, that’d be great.” I literally walked in there – I have a picture of her with the assistant engineer behind the board. It was like that. [snaps fingers] It really was like that. I was just like, “Wow, how do you do it? How’s it work? What do you do?” Just asked him 100 questions. Came back to London. We had three music production courses in the UK at the time. One was the Tonmeister, which I wouldn’t have got on. I was too young and was a dropout from education. We had one called Gateway, which was in south London, and that was a long way from me, and SAE had just set up, I think it was their second year in London. So, I was very blessed because I was taught at SAE by the people that wrote the course, which I think really helped. Then, I left there, and we did a very big mastering module. Of course when I came into the industry it was very much about reel-to-reel tape to vinyl. There was no digital. It was just at the beginning, really, of CDs coming into it. Still, the preferred format was vinyl.

So, I worked as an assistant in different studios and then ended up at The Exchange as a trainee mastering engineer. To train as a mastering engineer is a five-year learning, and then five years to really start perfecting your skills with people still holding your hand. So, it’s a very long process, very long. It’s not a quick thing to be a mastering engineer, in my opinion, from how I was trained.

Chal Ravens

I’m guessing that you were one of the only women doing that job at the time.

Mandy Parnell

There wasn’t many. There was a woman that was at Sony Studios called Beryl. She was a production cutting engineer. I didn’t meet her until about four or five years into my career. We did have another female at The Exchange [who] was CD editing, sort of digital editing, [who] helped train me in the copy room, but she left, she didn’t want to do it anymore. She actually went into the reception area and became the studio manager, which was sad. [laughs]

Chal Ravens

How different is it now?

Mandy Parnell

It’s not much different. We do have a few more females coming out, but it’s taken a long time. It’s been very active behind the scenes work for some of my generation of female producers and engineers around the world to encourage and mentor females into the industry. People often say, “Why don’t women want to come into the industry?” It’s not just about sound, it’s actually about science in general and physics. We do have a lack, especially in the UK, of young girls wanting to study sciences. So, I’m involved with the Scientific Instrument Maintenance. I’ve done a couple of things for them where we go into schools and encourage girls at a younger age to get into really cool scientific jobs. Working for NASA or whatever, coming into sound. There are some interesting in programs in some of the Nordic countries where they’re actually going in at seven [years old] and taking instruments and recording devices, and encouraging both boys and girls to get involved in it. But it is sort of aimed to show the girls that they could do this.

Chal Ravens

Did you ever find it in any way intimidating or daunting when you’re starting out?

Mandy Parnell

Yeah, very much so. You know, I was quite punk rock. I had a mother that had worked in a male industry, so she showed me the way. I was quite punk rock, just through my life and younger years, living in squats, and happened to be quite feisty. Taught me to put my shoulders back and not take it on board. To put on a mask, in a sense. But, yeah, it was tough, especially at The Exchange. We were renowned for electronic music and cutting really loud records. I’d often get challenged: “Well, do you know how to cut a loud record?” I’d have to be, “Can you see where I’m working? Do you really think they’d have me working here if I didn’t know what I was doing?” It’s a bit ridiculous.

Chal Ravens

Now, looking through the records that you’ve worked on... So there’s over a thousand on Discogs, but you did say to me that there are actually more. I’m struck by how different they are in terms of genre. Just going to list a few here. More recently, Mount Kimbie, Bing & Ruth, Jamie XX, The Knife, Frightened Rabbit, Sons of Kemet, Nils Frahm, Chilly Gonzales. Going back to the ’90s, all kinds of things, indie like Super Furries [Super Furry Animals], some very weird experimental stuff like Merzbow and Diamanda Galás.

At the beginning as well, lots of dance 12"s. There’s an early Adam Beyer record on Drumcode. Skint. There’s a So Solid Crew career record. Yeah. Suburban Base record. I was curious about whether you were involved in the dance scene in the early ‘90s or what your relationship was around then?

Mandy Parnell

I was living in New Orleans, getting my love back. What happened was [that] I was working at The Exchange, and it was during the first recession. They’d taken on some more trainees, which would push me up the ladder. They’d expanded very quick, and they had to eventually meet these new trainees that we trained, and some of them are still mastering and got their own studios, which is great, because we had to train them. But they got rid of them, which pushed me back into the copy room, which I didn’t really like. I’m very hyperactive, get bored really quickly. I’d learned the computer system and taught all my senior engineers how to use it. It was one of the first DAWs to come into England for mastering called Sonic Solutions. So, I taught them all how to use that. I was bored.

So, I went to New Orleans and ended up getting married and having a son. So I missed that [dance] scene. But, at the point I went, I had become so clinical about sound. I was going to see people play at incredible halls like Royal Festival Hall and just sitting there and being really picky about sound. I wasn’t enjoying music anymore. So, I went to New Orleans and listened to the most incredible musicians that were pouring their heart out on the worst systems that you’ve ever heard. This is what taught me, or reminded me, I wouldn’t say it taught me, but actually made me look into myself about how music is pure emotion, and that we need to follow the emotion, not become so analytical about sound.

It really taught me a lot going back there. So, I missed all the rave scene, which was probably a good thing, because I probably, knowing me, would have got into a lot of trouble through that time, with my character. Came back to The Exchange right in the middle of it, I suppose. But, it was really fun because I started to work with a lot of very, very cool artists. I always remember Talvin Singh, for instance, and working with him on his first album. He was DJing and just starting to work with Björk, and we’d go to these clubs where these guys were DJing, and it was underground clubs. It was just like the coolest thing. His music was so fresh and interesting. Everyone dancing and hanging out. It was just a beautiful time. I’m glad I missed the rave scene.

Chal Ravens

You did some quite big crossover dance albums as well. Did a very big Fatboy Slim album, for instance. So you saw that side of it, too.

Mandy Parnell

Yeah. We did a lot of the Skint stuff, worked on all the projects with him. That’s really fun, to work on them tunes and be able to go out and hear them. I just remember few years ago being at Glastonbury and Fatboy Slim was DJing. It was late at night, and we were walking across the bridge, and he was just coming on. He dropped one of the tunes and the whole place went crazy, and it was just so cool to think, “Yeah, I was part of that tune,” and just watch that emotion sort of wave through.

Chal Ravens

You mentioned that The Exchange was famous for mastering all kinds of loud records. In the late ’90s and early ’00s there were a lot of technical developments in terms of volume, I guess. That period is sometimes referred to as the loudness wars.

Mandy Parnell

We’re still in it.

Chal Ravens

So, obviously you’ve fought in the loudness wars in some capacity. Can you explain a bit about what that means from a technical perspective and where you stand on it now?

Mandy Parnell

The thing is, my role is to follow what the producer wants. I can advise on what I think they should do, but it is very much my role to do what the producer wants. Back in the ’90s, especially with CD mastering, the technology was still being developed a lot and there was lots of constraints. You’ve got to remember it was 16 bit, for instance, 44.1 [kHz], and it was really hard to get the energy that we were used to coming off vinyl through the CD mastering chain. What we discovered, because we had these standards we were supposed to adhere to, was that actually pushing it a bit more and pushing the converters into clip mode – so, this was before we had brick wall limiting, some of the tools we have now – but pushing the converters into a clipping mode, which still happens constantly, made the stuff sound more energetic, more emotionally what we were used to with the vinyl.

So, that’s where it really started. I remember one of my bosses, one of my teachers, Graeme Durham, working on a Bomb the Bass record. I was in a CD editing suite, and it used to be on a big video tape, a CD master, to go to a factory, was this big tape called a U-Matic. So, we’d have to analyze U-Matic and check for errors and stuff. If there was any overs, it would come out on the printer. I ended up with a stack of paper like this [raises hand] from this Bomb the Bass [record], because it was just all overs, and I was just going nuts because the paper was just feeding out the printer. [laughs] I was just like, “What the fuck’s going on?”

So, I went into Graeme and I was like, “I’ve got this big issue,” because you were allowed one or two according to standards. He went to me, “Just cut it out and sellotape it together and send it to a factory. It’s how we want it and just let it go.” That was the start of loud mastering at The Exchange [with] digital. With vinyl it was always a question of producers would want to come in and they wanted the record louder than the next. That was always a challenge of how we going to get this drum & bass or techno record to be louder than this one. I mean, we really had fun. We were all young engineers and all out and about on the scene and all loved music. So, we’d spend half the night listening to other people’s records, comparing stuff, talking about how it worked, how they managed to do that, experimenting on how we were going to do that. So, that’s how we did the journey.

Chal Ravens

Could you explain how you make a vinyl record louder, how that works?

Mandy Parnell

So, of course, it’s level. There’s a lot to do with the mix, with the mid-range. I don’t know whether you’re aware when it comes to vinyl, don’t use phase on your bass, make sure it’s very minor. Really be careful of extreme high tops. Really be careful of sibilance on vocals. If there’s too much there, you have to remember, for us, we can only work on the stereo track. So, if we need to DS stuff, we’re going to have to DS everything in your top range, making sure things are very well looked after. If you analyze some of the hip-hop records, especially the stuff that would come out of America, and we do that, they’d be very mono. Actually, the whole mix will be quite mono, and people going... The English guys will be like, “How can we get our records to sound like that?” The biggest key was actually looking at what they were doing in the stereo field.

I think it is true when they say your mastering is going to be as good as your mix. The less we have to do to fix your mix, the easier it’s going to be for us to get a great sounding, loud, fat record, if that makes sense. But it’s just gain. Lots of experimenting with the equipment, with the constraints of the lathe and the amps and what you can do. I mean, there’s things that technically you should do, that at The Exchange we wouldn’t do, because it wouldn’t sound very good, and I think that’s why we were renowned for our cuts and what they sounded like, because we threw away a lot of the theories that people had about cutting records.

Chal Ravens

Has that changed then, this desire for loudness, are people going in a different direction?

Mandy Parnell

I wish. I mean, we should be. In theory, with all the different platforms they’re doing like Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, with the loudness normalization. The issue that we have in the industry is the odd tendency to work to a different figure. We’ve got, I don’t know, anywhere between six to eight dBs of difference across these platforms. Well, that’s really hard. Any of us know that are working with staff. I mean, I hear 0.1 of a dB change in level, let alone eight dBs, six dBs.

So, it’s quite hard at the moment. There is no norm. We have no standard. We’re trying to discuss it with businesses that don’t want the competition to know what they’re doing. So, it’s very hard to get in and really find out what’s going on. But, I think we’re still in this age that everyone wants it loud. I mean, it’s just getting louder. I did a record the other day and the listening references we’re going to -2 RMS. Hello, that’s pure distortion. People still want it loud. I think this thing of some of these speaker systems – and I’m not going to name them or I’ll get in trouble, I have to bleep it out. But they’re selling them to the public, but what the public don’t realize, they’re actually mono speakers, and they’re not selling them as mono speakers.

I’ve had issues with clients who are saying... I’ve had one of the top mix engineer’s tracks in, sounded incredible in my room, and the A&R guy in America said it sounds like a demo. I called him up, “What you playing it on?” He told me. I went out and bought one that weekend, brought it back, listened to it and realized, well, yes, mono. So, we’re back to mono. So, really thinking about that from your point of view is checking your mixes in mono. That’s my mantra over the past couple of years to everyone is, “Make sure.” We’re back to old school. Because, years ago you had to check it in mono because of radio, because of what was going to go onto vinyl. So, really the mono button is a big, use it constantly when you’re mixing.

Chal Ravens

Let’s just hear a track, shall we? You have done Aphex Twin’s recent album Syro?

Mandy Parnell

Yes.

Chal Ravens

Yeah. Did you do the new Collapse EP that just came out as well?

Mandy Parnell

No.

Chal Ravens

No. OK.

Mandy Parnell

Well, I don’t know. Because when I did Syro, we mastered a phenomenal amount of tracks. It wasn’t just them ones. So, I don’t know what he’s been using. But, yeah, I did that one. The most talked about record I think I’ve worked on, maybe. I don’t know.

Chal Ravens

It was a bit of a marketing campaign for that one, wasn’t it?

Mandy Parnell

I think with geek people, the most talked about one, if that makes sense.

Chal Ravens

Well, here we are. Alright. Let’s hear “minipops” then. See how loud it is.

(music: Aphex Twin – “minipops 67 (source field mix)” / applause)

Chal Ravens

You won a Grammy for that.

[cheers from the audience]

Were you already an Aphex Twin fan in any way?

Mandy Parnell

No.

Chal Ravens

What did you know about him?

Mandy Parnell

Richard used to come to The Exchange all the time to cut his 12"s, and I’d always, at different times, pop into the other studios and maybe offer to make a cup of tea. If any of us were making tea, we’d just make it for the whole studio. You know how it is.

So often I’d pop in and make him a cup of tea and have a little chat, say, “Hi, how’s it going?” Listen to a bit of the music and off I’d go. And one of Richard’s friends is an incredible producer called Leila Arab, I don’t know whether any of you know her stuff, really worth checking her out, absolutely. I think one of the most incredible producers out there. And I’d go round and sort of hang out a bit at her house and met Richard there a couple of times. We’d have geek outs because he loves gear, and I remember one time I just got back from the Audio Engineering Society and went around there and we were talking – years ago – talking about different file formats and gear and stuff.

So I had the pleasure, very humbling really, to work with Björk on her Biophilia album and actually worked with her on the film, the Biophilia live film that she did. And she recorded it at Ally Pally, and she invited me along to the concert and had an incredible after-show party, at a members’ club. And I ended up in the sort of smoking area and Richard was there and we... Lots of people were there. We had quite an interesting geek out evening. And I was only going to stay an hour because I had a session the next day and I think we walked out and it was light and it was like six o’clock in the morning. But had an incredible evening. A few weeks later he emailed me and said, “I’d really like to maybe collaborate with you on my album.” So that was the start of the journey mastering his album. So when I was involved with the Björk film, I really didn’t know who he was. My partner, Martin, said to me, “Have you seen any of his videos?” So I was like, “No,” and I’d already mastered the album. And I’d really sort of gone in this whole funk area. What had happened when I mastered it, I kept getting up in the morning and pressing play and just wouldn’t really get it. I’d walk away and be a bit like, “I don’t know.” And I’d walk around and just couldn’t sort of sit down and master it. And I’d worked with this indie band one day and the whole band had come in, and I’d felt really claustrophobic. And it was a really intense session with them, really sort of asking me lots of questions, really sort of not particularly great mixes. And sometimes when you’re working on a particular genre, it needs to fit into a bit of a sonic box, if that makes sense. That’s the best way I can describe it. So I had to work really hard. And I had an assistant and an intern and I said to my intern, “Do you fancy pulling an all-nighter with me?” And he went, “Why?” And I went, “Because I think I’m going master the Aphex album.” So that’s what I did. I went in and I dimmed all the lights and just had the best time. Played it, mastered it, had my own little rave, was dancing around and off I went. And that’s how I mastered the album. But I really had no idea. I had gone on this whole sort of funky...

So my partner Martin played me the videos at three o’clock in the morning when I was in the middle of Björk’s Biophilia surround sound film extravaganza that we were doing. That was just an incredible journey. And I just sat there so shocked, just like, “Hey, I really didn’t see it like this.” Anyway, yeah, I was shocked. I just live in my own bubble. I just see the artists that come and work with me. It’s really humbling to work on their art, but nobody’s any different to anyone else, if that makes sense. Some is incredible art, some they’re still on their journey of making it into incredible art. His art is incredible, just like Björk, just like Leila’s. It’s very humbling that I’ve worked with them.

Chal Ravens

Thank you. It’s definitely one of the funkier Aphex records though for sure.

I’m kind of interested in how it’s possible then to master a record really well – clearly, to win awards for it – but without really having the context necessarily, not being in that genre world. Because it almost suggests that there are like hard and fast rules for how to do it, that you could just come at any genre and get it right.

Mandy Parnell

Yeah, why not? I think the key is, like I said, I spent this sort of time from when I went out to New Orleans, to really understand that music is about emotion. So if you can keep yourself connected with the emotion, then you can work on anything, surely. I often say to people, if you think about when you first started to emotionally connect with music, we didn’t care what we played it on. We didn’t care. I used to have a little mono cassette player, I had my little portable record player. I didn’t care what it sounded like because you were just listening to pure emotion.

If you think when you were young and the things that you first heard that just moved you inside, they moved you emotionally. When you’re making music and writing music, it’s pure emotion, it’s coming from your emotional side. So I think for me as an engineer, that’s what I tried to connect with, is the emotion behind the music. What is this piece of music emotionally supposed to do? Is it supposed to make me want to dance, is it supposed to make me want to cry, is it supposed to make me happy, is it supposed to make me go really deep and think it? What is it, what is the emotion it’s trying to tell me?

So I often, when I give talks, will play Bob Marley’s “Jammin’.” And it’s just really interesting, if you think about that song. You think how many times you’ve heard that song and on what systems, from good to bad. It makes you do the same thing, you just start... [bobs her head] Everyone does it. If we played it, all of you would just start [bobs her head]. If I hadn’t told you that, we’d all just start going [bobs her head]. It does what it’s intended to do, it doesn’t matter what we play it on.

Chal Ravens

As you mentioned, you’ve developed quite a close working relationship with Björk over the years. When did you first work with her?

Mandy Parnell

During the Biophilia project.

Chal Ravens

Particularly on her recent album, she’s made some quite specific like audio innovations with apps and virtual reality and all kinds of different ways of... things that have required you to learn how to master differently, like multiple formats and so on. We’re going to hear a track in a second. Could you just talk a bit about Biophilia because that record is also an app, and it required you to create lots of different versions of the tracks I think.

Mandy Parnell

I didn’t really get too involved with the app side. I walked in on the album. It was a fun journey. First of all, I was just going to recut the vinyl, because she wasn’t happy with the vinyl and then it was like, “Can you remaster the album?” Because she wasn’t happy with that. Then it was like, “Can we fly you to Iceland for playback with Björk? Actually can you take a mobile rig with you?” Which was quite challenging.

But I did take a rig out there, and Iceland is the most incredible place artistically. All the artists that were there just send all the mastering equipment to the studio for me to have my pick, which was really cool. How cool is that? I mean it was just so cool. I walked there and there was just all this different equipment, sort of mastering spec equipment for me to work with.

So I arrived at the studio and I’m waiting for Björk and her assistant arrived. And he set up Pro Tools. I’ve taken my computer system up there, and I think Biophilia I did on CD. So I said, “Well, it’s Pro Tools, where’s the stereo?” He was like, “There is no stereo.” I’m like, “You don’t bounce the stereo?” He’s like, “No.” He was like, “The mixes aren’t finished. Björk wants to work with you to finish them.” And I was like, “Yeah, but I’m not a mix engineer.” [laughs] And he said, “No, you’ll go and work with Björk on finishing them.” So that’s what we did.

So I had to learn Pro Tools basically overnight. It was probably [one of] the most challenging experiences of my... at that point in my career, the most challenging. She pushes boundaries, and it’s great. I’m lucky I worked with a lot of artists that push me to push my boundaries. And she is definitely a producer that does that and quite an incredible producer to work with.

Chal Ravens

So in that situation you actually had the stems, basically, you were looking at the tracks.

Mandy Parnell

I had the mix. Not even stems. Stems came when we did Vulnicura, we worked on stems. Going forward from there, actually, all the projects I’ve done, it’s been stems after Biophilia. But Biophilia is a mix and she wanted to sort change things, she added more beats and changed vocals. I’ve even got a mix credit on one of them, which I don’t normally ask. I don’t want to be known for mixing, it’s not what I do, but that was very humbling. I didn’t even know that she done that. I was very humbled by that.

Chal Ravens

What’s it like when you’re working with an artist who is that hands-on at that end of the process? Because I guess a lot of the time you may not even see them necessarily. You just get a message or whatever.

Mandy Parnell

I think the artists that people really, really respect are very hands-on all the way through. So it’s something that I would advise you, don’t let people convince you to let go of your project or give you bullshit. Hold on to it, it’s your baby, they need to be humbled to come along on the journey with you and take your baby and make it their baby. And if they’re not, then they shouldn’t be part of your team. If there’s any doubt then you shouldn’t be working with them. That’s how I feel.

Chal Ravens

What kind of directions did she give you when you were working together? How did she convey what she wanted?

Mandy Parnell

Björk sees things very visually with her sound, so she will explain things in visual manners. She comps [composites] all her own vocals, she’ll change lots inside the mix. I always joke, we’ll start and I’ll be at the controls and then within about an hour I’m over here and she’s at the controls and I’m sort of sitting at the side of her. [laughs] And then she’d finish what she wants to do and then she’ll get up and I can get back on the controls and then off we go again. I’ll go over there.

So she is very, very hands-on and very descriptive and understands sound very well, but won’t talk about it in frequencies, which is fine. Artists don’t need to do that. I don’t need her to do that. My job is to interpret what she’s describing and take it to where she wants it.

Chal Ravens

What kind of descriptions?

Mandy Parnell

I wish I could remember, but one of them she was like, “Imagine your ancestors at a rave around a campfire, dancing,” which is really descriptive. [Matthew] Herbert does the same, I remember Herbert saying to me, “Think [that] you’re at an R&B club that’s underwater, that’s what I want it to sound like.” It’s very descriptive. You totally get what sound they’re looking for. Just because they won’t describe it in the sense of what equipment to use and what frequency range, all of us can imagine what them sounds are like. So yeah, it’s quite fun to work with artists that give you these sort of visual guides.

Chal Ravens

Let’s hear a bit of a Biophilia track.

Mandy Parnell

It’s my favorite.

Chal Ravens

This is “Virus.”

(music: Björk – “Virus” / applause)

Mandy Parnell

Do you guys know the apps, have any of you explored the apps? You really should check them out. I mean it’s quite incredible what she’s done with that because it was about teaching music and nature. It’s quite an incredible journey. Some of the Nordic countries have actually made her apps the national curriculum for teaching music in primary schools.

And when she toured Biophilia, and she still does it, she has a whole mobile rig. In between gigs, they will go into schools and she will do workshops and get the kids to play with the apps and teach them. And it was a tool to actually teach music, and it’s quite incredible what she did with this project. I mean it was really such a gift for me to be involved with it. Check them out.

Chal Ravens

I could tell that you were enjoying listening to it again.

Mandy Parnell

It brought tears to my eyes. She brings tears to my eyes a lot working with her.

Chal Ravens

I was wondering if, in general, you find that after listening to the same tracks thousands of times in a row, that the albums that you work on you then can’t really listen to you afterwards.

Mandy Parnell

Some albums. It’s normally just two or three, maybe four months. The big one for me was the Sigur Rós album, the brackets one. I think that’s the first time I ever was nominated for a Grammy, but I didn’t find out during, I only found out a few years ago that it was nominated. [laughs] I mean I’m not really into all that side of things, a bit like Aphex, “What is a Grammy?” That album I really couldn’t listen to, that was the craziest journey of mastering. It was eight tracks, and we were in the mastering room for five days, overdubbed vocals, lots of editing, and they’d been somewhere else and mastered it and really didn’t like it.

And so when they came to The Exchange to work with me on it, everyone was very, very tense. It was a big album. They knew it was going to be a big album. We had the record company from the UK, the record company from America, managers, producer, the whole band. I mean it was an intense session. All from reel-to-reel tape. The tape was not particularly stable when it came to the lineup of the tones. So I was having to do a lot of stuff by ear.

And every change, if I changed one EQ, one thing, because they was so worried about it, and they knew we had to get it right, I would have to rewind back to the beginning of the track and we’d have to listen to the whole track again. And you know how long the tracks are. It was a very, very intense session.

So that album I really couldn’t listen to for, I’d say best part of 10 years. It really messed with my psychology and my head of taking me back to that sort of stress and having to sort of keep control. Because it’s hard. If you imagine all them people coming in and out of the room, and you’ve got to focus, and you’re having to listen to one change and keep [that] thought about where I emotionally intended to go with the track, but wasn’t able just to free flow and do my thing. It was quite a quite an experience.

But [it’s an] incredible album, I love it. But they were so, so cool. We just wanted to tweak one song on the album, so eight tracks, just wanted to go back and tweak one song. And if you know the album there’s a 30 second gap in between A and B side, which I argued very hard and they were like, “No, that’s how it’s going to be.” Now when I listen to it, it works but at the time I thought this was crazy because of course we were in [a] DJ-tastic [era] of no gaps and crossfades and whatever.

So they went off to Camden while I set the reel-to-reel back up in the morning, and they came back, and some of you might have read, if you geeked out on me, I mean I don’t talk about it a lot, but I am quite crazy with some of the stuff I do. And I work with crystals sometimes in the room with me.

So they went out and said that my crystals were very feminine, and they bought me a crystal that was very masculine, that I still work with in my studio, and then yeah, we remastered that track. But yeah, that’s my crazy other science, and when we talk about me exploring theories, I did a lot of exploring of crystals and resonant frequencies. And when I did the Sigur Rós album, the producer kept joking with me about the crystal thing and I was getting a bit... “Why is he like this with me?” I was getting touchy about it. And then when we did the playback session with everyone in there and we were all going around on the floor he said to me, “I’ve recorded a whole album of resonant frequencies of crystals.” I said, “Cool. See you.”

Chal Ravens

There is sometimes a lot of confusion about what can and can’t actually be done in the mastering studio, for instance, I’ve heard that it’s not possible to cut bass in stereo. That set off a discussion yesterday outside. What are some of the common misconceptions about the possibilities? What are the real rules?

Mandy Parnell

You can cut bass [in stereo], but we have to mono part of it and the cut will be quiet. So you’re compromising level for some of the things that you do. Phase is a problem, what happens is you’re asking the cutterhead, which is a physical thing and it’s got one stylus, so you imagine it’s cutting left and right, so it’s pushing down on the stylus to make the left-right groove and it’s on the vertical. So what happens is it causes a sausaging effect, the phase, because you’re asking this thing to do something very extreme. So it will cause a jumping record. It’s quite a simple thing if you think about what it is trying to do. If we look on a record, bass is the sort of big swell groove if you just look on a record with your naked eye. If you just look on a record with your naked eye. Top end and mid-range is more... top end will be the very short little grooves. So it’s very much like what we study with sound. Snare drums, if they’re very sharp will cause a kinky groove which could cut, so if it’s very extreme and not compressed very well it could cause a jumping record if we’re trying to cut now.

So it’s just thinking about what physically is going on. So it’s not that we can’t cut it, it just means you might not get a banging 12" out of it. If that’s what you’re trying to do, you want a banging 12", then don’t put phase on your bass because you’re not going to get it. And even though we can mono it, you can imagine what’s going to happen. It’s going to cancel out. You’re going to lose some of your frequency response.

Yeah. Check things, mono. The mono button is your best friend. It’s my best friend. It’s your best friend.

Chal Ravens

I think maybe later on, there will be an opportunity to ask some more specific questions about how to get your records ready for mastering, that kind of thing. I just wanted to finish with maybe a quick question about how changes in technology more recently are changing how you do your work, because we’ve obviously now moved from physical formats to downloads, and mainly streaming now, which seems to give you a lot more work to do. Is that right?

Mandy Parnell

Yeah. There’s a great tool out there that might help all of you understand this a bit better. It’s by a company called NUGEN Audio, and it’s called MasterCheck. Now, what these guys have done... They’ve gone in and basically backward engineered all the streaming platforms, digital radio, and you can play your tracks and other tracks through it, and see what it’s going to sound like through these things.

Like I said, the proper means... We’re delivering to those different formats. Years ago, we delivered a master disc to the factory, and we delivered a CD master. So we knew what we were getting coming back. Now we don’t. People don’t understand that YouTube have two ingest centers, and they both sound different. How many people know that? One of them sounds better than the other. They’re not using the same codecs that are going out there. So it’s just simple little things about understanding what you’re going to. So what’s happened in my role is, I say to teams I’m working with, “Alright, we’ll master it like this. But if it goes out there and it gets 20 of these platforms and it’s not working, let’s recall and let’s tweak it maybe for that platform.” The problem is loads of different codecs. They all want different things. We’re not mastering to one particular thing, so we send the high-res WAV.

Now, some of the digital distribution companies are really dodgy. The bigger ones are better, but some of the smaller ones haven’t... because they’ve programmed their own ingests. They’re doing some very bad practices. So they’ll do things ... We might send out a 96k, 24-bit file. They’ll do the sample rate conversion. They might just go from 24-bit to 16-bit and drop it.

Now, why would we want them to do that? That’s my job. So I’ll deliver 96k, 24-bit; 48k, 24-bit; 44.1, 24-bit; 44.1, 16-bit. So I’ll deliver all of them, but of course, record companies might not understand what they’re getting, and they’ll just send something out. I’ve had some really horrific stuff happen where I’ve sent files to a record company. The girl in the office pulled it into her iTunes. She decided she needed to make an audio CD, burned an audio CD, imported the files back in to send to her producer for him to check, and that’s what was going off to digital distribution, and she had MasterCheck on, which brought it down 6dBs.

So the producer came back and was like, “Well, I can understand you bringing my mix down a little bit. It was a bit hot. But 6dB seems extreme.” Luckily, he emailed me, because some people would just go, “Oh, shit mastering engineer.” But he actually emailed me. And I went back and I went, “Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I made it louder than your mix. Give me your number.” And we got on a call, and he sent over the files he had, and it took me a day to get to the bottom of what had happened.

So we really need to communicate, because we don’t have a solid format to deliver to, and like I said, it can go into people’s hands that don’t know what they’re doing, or the smaller distributions that have some not very good practices at the moment. So it’s about really being open and discussing and not blaming the team, but working with the team, because we’re a team. And like I said earlier, if somebody’s making you feel uncomfortable in the team, they shouldn’t be in your team.

Chal Ravens

I feel like we might have a few questions. Does anybody have a question for Mandy? Yeah, yeah. Oh, god. OK. Wow. I thought this would happen.

Audience Member

Hello.

Mandy Parnell

Hello.

Audience Member

Thanks a lot for the lecture. It was very useful, and Biophilia is one of my favorite albums of all time, so thanks a lot. And I wanted to ask you, what is your usual mastering chain, and if you use only hardware, or also digital meter, or at what point do you add the digital part of the processing?

Mandy Parnell

It really depends on the project. So my setup is, I have a playback computer system. Most of the time, I’ll play back on SADiE, which is a mastering software. Sometimes I might play back on Logic or Pro Tools. It really depends what I hear off of SADiE. If I’m not sure... Sometimes with Pro Tools, if there’s inter-sample clipping in the file, when I play it back on SADiE, I might hear a funny sort of... It’s not even distortion. It just does something in the mid-range. And so maybe I’ll play it off Pro Tools to see whether that cleans it up.

So I have a playback system come through the Prism converters, ADA-8, generally into an EQ. So inwards connection. It’s very rare. There’s only four in the world of this particular EQ. Often, I might go into a valve compressor-limiters, so the Esoteric Audio Research, and their copies of the Fairchild ... I actually prefer them to the Fairchilds. All the Fairchilds out there now are very old. And the top end is a bit rounded off for me. The guy that makes this stuff is very big in the hi-fi world, and in fact helped teach me to cut records many years ago. We had a lot of his equipment at The Exchange. So I got into them, valve limiter-compressors.

Coming to my boards, I have an EMI transfer console, mastering console. Again, quite a rare piece of equipment. In there, I have level, EQ, compressor, filters. It comes out of there, back into Prism ADA-8, to convert it back to digital. Out of there, I go into L2 ultra maximizer hardware. TC Electronics 6000 for brickwall limiting. Then I capture back in with Sequoia, which is another mastering software whose company is really close by to here. Bless them, they’re an incredible team of people, like the SADiE guys.

Then it comes back out through another ADA-8 to my monitors. So I have ATC-100s with a sub. Still waiting for them to bring another sub, ‘cause I want to try it with two subs. I’ve been really busy and really hard to get them up there and set it up. To set a sub up takes a bit of maneuvering. It’s a big beast of a thing.

So digital stuff... Sometimes I will use the digital stuff at the beginning if the mix isn’t where it needs to be and I need to get in there and beef it up, or be clinical like a doctor with some frequencies. Sometimes I’ll do it at the end. What’s been happening more recently is I’ve been delivering two lots of masters, because of some of this streaming stuff, just to see where we go with it. Because, like I said, everyone still wants it loud. But I know we’re going to get to a point where it’s going to have to be quieter.

So I’m delivering a quieter one and then putting another limiter on inside Sequoia. Often, I like the FabFilter limiter. It’s probably one of the more transparent ones and easy to get level out of. I don’t have to work too hard at it. I find a problem for me with a lot of digital things – bearing in mind that I grew up with tape to vinyl, so really learn a lot about not using eyes, but ears – is that I start thinking too much about what I’m seeing. So I’m often having to do stuff and then turn my chair around and listen, and move back and look at it.

So, yeah. I’ll do EQ on there. Like Feist’s last album, we did a lot inside Sequoia with EQ, riding things, editing, just all getting in and doing lots of small, little tweaks because of the process of how they recorded and mixed it, because it was very live and we just needed to do a lot of rides and stuff with EQ, just matching different sections up.

So, yeah. I can unplug things, I can plug other things in. I have lots of other tools around, but that’s my basic tool set, if you like. Mono button is my best friend. Really, mono button is my best friend. And the key is, I think, and this is a really interesting one for you guys to think about, is really being in control of your monitor setup.

So I have a monitor controller, but you can just get a knob. But really, having specific settings. I’ve got marks on my monitor to control that this is where I always work to. I work here. This is my gauge of how loud something is. Alright, it’s calibrated, it’s measured. I’ll work here, because you get used to it. You know how loud something should sound. And then I have a dim button and I have a quiet setting, I have a mid setting, I have a loud setting. So I have that for digital mastering, and then I have the same for vinyl mastering, and then I have the same for doing cinematic mastering. So, yeah. Being in control of your monitor levels.

And then the other thing when it comes to this loud stuff is really think about all the old-school engineers that have gone to digital, and some of you might have watched the guys on Mix with the Masters. But a lot of them that came from working on a board, when you talk to them, they’re still working to them standards in respects to levels, if that makes sense.

So what I say to people, in the sense of references – ’cause it’s really hard, you don’t have access to music that isn’t really overlimited and really loud – is go back to some of the classic albums. Get the first CD release, because a lot of them were just one-to-one transfers of the tape, the reel-to-reel tape. So that will give you a gauge of where the board mixes were.

When it comes to new music, I’ll often say, bring it down 6dBs and use that as your references, because often, I’ll be adding in the region of 6dB gain when I’m mastering. So that way, you’re not going to be slamming your mixes. And then when it gets to me, I’m going to go, “What the fuck are you doing?” [laughs] I’ve got no headroom to do anything. And, of course, when you turn it down, your mix might fall apart, depending on how you’ve mixed it.

So if you start with your references 6dB down, I think you’re going to end up with a better mix. It’s going to give more space for mastering.

Audience Member

Hi.

Mandy Parnell

Hi.

Audience Member

How do you... I’m wondering if you have tricks if you happen to lose perspective on what you’re mastering.

Mandy Parnell

Yes. Play something else that’s not necessarily in the same genre.

Audience Member

So not references, but just something...

Mandy Parnell

Just something completely different. Say if I’m doing something really hard and upbeat, I might go play a folk song. Or if I’m doing a folk song and I lose it, I might go play a punk song. Go outside. When your ears are tired, oxygen is the best thing for you.

Audience Member

Do you have a limit to how long you work on something in intervals or your ears get tired?

Mandy Parnell

Well, I do. When I work with an assistant, I’ll master the track, and often because I’m training them on critical listening... Like I said, when I take on an assistant for the first year, they basically sit there and listen. They don’t touch a button. Maybe even up to two years. Don’t touch a button. They might do production parts on computers or bounce out WAV files or listen to stuff, but they won’t sit on my board and touch my board. They need their ears to start learning.

But what I’ll do is I’ll get them to do the critical listening. So they will record the track on headphones after I’ve mastered it. So I’ll walk out of the room then. When I did the Biophilia album, we had a very tight deadline, and of course, I was... It’s not my place to talk to the artist and put the artist under pressure about what we’re doing and what the timeframes are. My role, especially when you’re working with an artist-producer, is to be very gentle with them, because they’re producing themselves and it’s a big journey to get a record finished.

But I worked one all-nighter. I worked two days basically with an all-nighter on the trot. Arriving in a studio 11 in the morning and leaving the next night at 10 o’clock to meet the deadline, ‘cause I need to get it back to London, run all the production parts for it to hit its release date for Japan, which was really important.

So going outside. Eating. Brain foods, nuts, bananas. Protein only. Not too much coffee. Lots of water. Yoga exercises are great. There’s some great exercises for your lymphatic system as well that you can see online, to clear your lymphatic system. Your lymphatic system at the tops are clearing your ears. But really going out and having breaks. The minute you think you’re getting tired, get outside. Oxygen is the best thing. Sit outside.

Another thing that really happens, I discovered a few years ago, is as you go through your journey, we’re very prone to vitamin D deficiency, which affects our hearing. So make sure you get outside. So it’s really hard to... There’s vitamin D supplements, but they’re not particularly great at raising levels. So one of the doctors said to me, go outside and just expose your forearms. Every time you walk outside, just have your forearms exposed.

So something to think about, because we tend to be better through later in the day, more artistic when the rest of the world is sleeping. The energies are very different. Often when you speak to artist, their best work is coming later in the day when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. So really being aware, when you’re outside, get as much vitamin D.

But some of the yoga... energize and exercises. I’m working with a yoga instructor at the moment. There’s some great stuff to just get your energy up. But outside... Every time you think you’re tired, play something else. And don’t listen loud. When you sit with some of the top mix engineers, it’s not loud. Can we play a track? I’ll show them.

Chal Ravens

Of what? Of just...

Mandy Parnell

Any one, and I’ll just show the reference. But what you should be doing from a mix point of view.

Chal Ravens

Should I put the Aphex one back on, maybe?

Mandy Parnell

Yeah, doesn’t matter. [Demonstrates reference volume for mastering]

(music: Aphex Twin – “minipops 67 (source field mix)”)

Mandy Parnell

The best mix engineers that I’ve sat behind, they don’t mix loud. They mix quiet ‘cause you’ll shoot your ears out.

Chal Ravens

Another one?

Audience Member

Hi. Thank you so much again, it was very informative. But I was just curious, ‘cause you mentioned something about riding different... maybe riding EQs or something in masters. And I was just wondering, does automation play a role? Or will you ride a compressor or EQs typically, or do you just try to set static settings, and just leave it?

Mandy Parnell

Ideally, I’d like static settings. But sometimes, especially now, my job has changed so much from when I started. When I started, you got the reel-to-reel. You just needed to transfer it, and you weren’t at liberty to change things, really. You’d just do very minimal things, and then you’d transfer it.

But now it’s whatever it takes, because sometimes, like I said, people are in their bedrooms. They’re not hearing stuff well. They might not have a great convertor, so the convertor is playing something when it comes to mid-range, and not hearing their compressing settings. So I have to ride things a lot more. I just had a client in [unintelligible]. We had to edit between sections because he’d put a limiter on his mix bus, which sounded great for most of the stuff, but when the choruses came in, it was just too much. And we had to really get in there and mess around and tweak it to keep the level of the drums, in a sense, and the vocals, and the sonic picture that his limiter was coming, was bringing to the table. So we had to work, editing between the sections. So what I often say to young producers when it comes to this mixing into a limiter, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

Audience Member

Like, just don’t have a limiter on your master while you’re mixing?

Mandy Parnell

Yeah, because the thing is, you’re only doing that to get into this loudness thing. That’s the only reason. And what happens when you take it off to send to mastering, your mix falls apart. And the amount of times I sit there with a mix, and I’m like... And it’s happened with some very big teams, I’m not going to mention. But extremely big teams that cost me a lot of time and a lot of emotion, a lot of energy. The mix will fall apart. And maybe your drums come forward and your vocal goes back.

So what I say is, set up another bus. Set up another bus that’s like your mix bus, and then have your limiter on another bus, and just flick it in and out. But don’t mix to it, because even though some of these guys might do that, they’re going to have a lot more experience generally than you with understanding what’s happening there. So I wouldn’t advise it, because it changes your sonic picture a lot.

So often what I’m having to do is say to young artists, “OK. We need to set up another bus so that we can turn the output down, but I need your limiter on there, because it’s the glue to your mix.” And often, you’re clipping it, which is going to give a very different sound. Often you’re feeding into it too much, you’re getting louder, louder, louder, and to get your mix to breathe and do what it wants to do... See, you’re clipping the limiter. And then when you take it off, so many things change. So I need a fader to bring it down afterwards.