STUART HAWKES
How does the best pair of ears in the business get the perfect polish? Find out in this exclusive attended session!
To drum ’n’ bass fans, he’s the guy who mastered Goldie’s Timeless, along with countless other DnB bangers. For everyday music fans, he’s sprinkled his magic over huge hit albums from the likes of Avicii, Disclosure, Amy Winehouse, Rudimental and Ed Sheeran. Just before our interview, Stuart has to rush into his plush, purposebuilt mastering studio and master a track hot off the press from a world-famous artist (who we can’t name). Once done, he welcomes us inside, still humming the soon-to-be hit to himself…
Computer Music: Do you often find you get songs stuck in your head after you’ve mastered them?
Stuart Hawkes: “Yeah, quite often… which is not a bad thing! I’ve had albums in the past that haunt me! There was one: Transatlantic Ping Pong by… who’s the guy out of Squeeze? [Glenn Tilbrook] I remember doing an album for him, and it did literally haunt me. Every time I’d go to bed, I’d hear these ridiculously catchy tracks in my head. Very clever songwriting. It drove me mad!”
: So where do you start? Do you use a client’s ‘DIY’ master?
SH: “Yeah, a reference is always handy, because if you’re working on a mix that’s been approved from a ‘master’, or the mix engineer’s limited version, let’s say, you need to know what that sounded like because that was approved by the label. It’s always good to have a reference so that you can check you’re not wandering too far from an approved version. Hopefully you can do a better version, but sometimes the mix sounds great – it’s done correctly, everything’s balanced and nothing needs sorting out. Sometimes they might use a really good limiter that suited that track, and you think ‘god, there’s not a lot else I can do to that!’, but that’s part of mastering: quality control. There’s not always tons to do to a track – sometimes you might do a lot; others you might think it’s pretty good to go as it is.”
: So you don’t ever feel obliged to send a track through this expensive kit anyway, seeing as you’re getting paid for it? SH: “I can’t make something better if it’s as good as it can be already, no matter how much I want it to be better. I can run it through some kit, but there’s no ‘magic bullet’ when doing this job. It’s not like, “Oh, if I put it through the Shadow Hills it always sounds better” – a track might not need compressing; it might not need an analogue sound. It might be an EDM track that sounds good when really ‘digital’ and ‘tacky’… but that’s what mastering is. Making a track sound as good as it can.”
: Are you at the point where you just know what will work, or is a lot of it trial and error?
SH: “It’s trial and error, at least to some degree. As I said, there’s no ‘magic bullet’ – I’ll never think ‘I’ll definitely use this because that’ll sound best.’ If it’s the same track that needs bass adding to it, is it going to sound best using this EQ or that EQ? I can sort of guess at one and try it, but what I do a lot of is blind testing, so I’m not fooling myself. If I’m A/B-ing, adding bass with a £10,000 EQ unit vs. a plugin, psychologically I think the expensive one must be better. That’s the psychology of it: when you think you’re hearing something, your brain will create it, in a way! Its psychoacoustics, isn’t it? So if you blind
“A track might not need compressing; it might not need an analogue sound”
test yourself, it’s not always the obvious choice. I set it up so I’m flicking between two versions like this [clicks with mouse while looking away from the screen]. ‘OK, that’s the one I prefer’, and then I look back and see what I’ve chosen. It might not always be what you expect. But then the client’s not going to know what bit of kit you’re using; they’re just going to hear the end result, so it’s important to test it. I do this all the time, with every track I do.”
: So where’s the line where you won’t even try, and things have to be sorted in the mix?
SH: “Well, does it need to be sorted? Or is that the way they want it? Do they want the bass guitar to be the most prominent thing in this track? I don’t know. If they’re not here with me, all I can do is master this track in the way I think I’m getting the most out of it. It’s a simple elimination process: if you rule out all the things that don’t make it sound better, then you’re probably left with the best it can be, in a way.
“I think there’s been a tendency in the past for mastering engineers to always compress a track. I’ve had a lot of people come in here and say, ‘What – you’re not compressing it?’ Well no, it doesn’t sound better for compression. ‘But I always compress them: that’s what my usual mastering engineer does!’ I A/B and say ‘look, that’s compressed, that’s not compressed: do you think it needs it?’ They say ‘no, not really.’ You’ve got to use your ears and just blind-test. Even if that ends up being that you’ve done very little to a track, then so be it.”
: So how much creative freedom are you given over someone’s ‘baby’? Do you get very specific instructions?
SH: “No, I can do what I want, but obviously I need to bear in mind that I might upset someone – you’ve got to keep it realistic. People don’t say ‘I want this, this, and this’; they might say ‘here’s a reference, but do what you think?’ There are so many similarities with hairdressing and mastering! It’s very precious to you, it’s hard to do it yourself, and it can be changed if it goes wrong. I always compare it to hairdressing!”
: It can be changed if it goes wrong, but we suppose it’s usually the client who decides what’s ‘wrong’…
SH: “When you’re pushing the track, especially with compressors and limiters, the balance changes; the mix changes, and it’s not the same as when they sent it. Last week I had a client who asked, ‘Can you make it louder but keep the balance exactly the same as the mix?’ … Well you can’t do that! It’s not like I’m just turning it up and there’s loads of headroom – as soon as you put it through a limiter or compressor, the shape changes. Whatever’s hitting loudest is hitting the endstops first, and the limiting is going to pull that back. So, if there’s a massive snare in the track, it’s going to duck that.
“In order to master a track these days, you need to make it loud to most people’s ears – loud is just ‘normal’ now, so you need to push it quite a bit. You can never be sure if the balance has changed too much from the original version. Clients don’t always understand that limiting something will change the shape of it. And the hope is I haven’t changed the shape too much, and it’s still recognisable as the original mix … well, hopefully improved!”
“The thing is, as a mastering engineer, I don’t know the track as well as the producer or the mix engineer, so I’ll be happily limiting it, doing this, doing that – I think the track sounds better, but then they might say that, for example, ‘the snare doesn’t sound as present any more.’ And it’s two steps forward, one step back.
“When I send something out, I can never be 100% sure that the client’s going to like it. Sometimes I send a whole album off and I’ve spent a long time and changed loads of things. I always find it amazing when a client comes back and approves it! ‘So you agreed with everything I did?’ I feel a bit more reassured when they come back and say ‘Can you change that or tweak this?’ At least I can understand that a bit more. When I’ve changed it so much, there must be something that’s not to your satisfaction!”
: What are the most common mistakes you find in submitted mixes? SH: “People often send limited files – supersquashed tracks that they’ve stuck through a
“As soon as you put it through a limiter or compressor, the shape changes”
limiter or compressor themselves. I need the option to add my own limiting, as there are so many ways to do it. And also, if it’s already superloud, and I want to add some bass to it, for example, I’ve got to take the volume down again to add the bass, then limit it back up again, and it’s processing on processing on processing. I need the pure, unadulterated premaster.”
: So you’re against mixing into a limiter?
SH: “I’m not fully against it, but there’s no ‘undo’ for me. Say they send me the file, and it’s got all this limiting on it and it’s super-loud, then I can’t do much – we’re already maxed out. I’ll phone them up and ask ‘have you got an unlimited version?’, and they say ‘no, because I mix into the limiter, so if I take the limiter off, the mix falls apart, so it’ll be wrong’. Mastering from their limited version restricts what I can do, but that’s the only way to keep the mix balance.
“The best way for a mix engineer to work is to get the mix right first, and then add limiting to send out as references. Mixing into a limiter is just a big cheat, really! If you limit something hard enough, it all comes together too easily; it’s letting the limiter do your mixing work, squashing it all together.”
“I need the option to add my own limiting, as there are so many ways to do it”