Key to Keys: Dave Kutch, Mastering

Dave Kutch, the intrepid mastering engineer who setup a temporary mastering suite in the live room at The Oven to master Alicia Keys’ As I Am, has done it all again for her new record, The Element of Freedom.

Dave Kutch at his mastering desk setup in The Oven’s live room.

Since As I Am, Kutch has opened his own NYC facility, The Mastering Palace, where he’s mastered records by John Legend, Al Green, Daniel Merriweather, Joe Perry and Erykah Badu, among many others.

To work with Keys this time around, he left his main studio intact and prepped a secondary rig to cart out to The Oven. It’d be daunting for any mastering engineer to work so outside of his element, but Kutch fears not. “You have to trust your ears,” he says, embracing the challenge of listening in new environments.

Here, Kutch takes us behind the scenes into the final stage of production on The Element of Freedom.

The way you mastered As I Am, moving in-house here at The Oven, obviously worked well, since you’re doing it again. When you first got the call, what was the concept for your workflow? Why come out and set up here, when mastering is all about your room?

I said yes to this the first time for As I Am, because I love coming out of my box. I knew this was going to be a big album, so I came out and knew that the live room would be the best place to do this. Sony Mastering had just closed and I’d bought all my gear and was about to set up The Mastering Palace.
The reasons to do it like this, all under one roof, are a combination of convenience and security. The idea was, “Let’s make the records the way we used to make records. Budget isn’t entirely an issue, so let’s do stuff entirely out of the box, like we read about engineers doing the 1970’s and ‘80’s – left of center.” Left of center was, “Let’s mix upstairs, master downstairs, and when it’s done take your stuff and leave.”

Let’s talk about your first time using this process, for As I Am: How did the mastering process change once you were here, working on location?

I knew I’d be working mostly on midfield and near-field speakers. I had two recording studios where we could listen to what we were doing, and four cars in the driveway, so we could listen in our cars.

At the end of the day, we would all sit and listen. When we had a collection of songs, we’d go on a long drive to dinner in Ann’s Range Rover, set the EQ to flat, and Manny and I would take mixing and mastering notes. Then we’d come back here at 11 PM after dinner, recall the mixes and work until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

So you were mixing and mastering almost at the same time. How would things actually get finalized?

Once Alicia approved the mix, I would get it and approach it as if I it was final mastering. Then we’d go, “Hmm, it could have used a little of this. Can this be achieved in mastering? Or can Manny pull up the stems and it be addressed that way?” Then I’d go back and do the final mastering.

But we had the freedom and the time to do three or four EQs per song. “Superwoman,” on As I Am, started on 1”, then I transferred it to Digidesign Pro Tools to apply a plug-in, then transferred out of Pro Tools back to 1”. Then, I mastered off the 1” because there was a particular sound I was going for. The joke around the studio was that “Superwoman” kicked my ass. I spent a full day getting the sound I wanted for that song.

Fast forward to this album, The Element of Freedom, I didn’t have the luxury of as long a time frame. I may do one EQ, but other times we’d do three or four EQs, and Alicia would pick out the vibe she was looking for on that song, and I’d go with that.
Ann has overseen the project on a technical/engineering level from beginning to end. They literally tracked drums in here (the live room where the mastering gear is residing) the other night. We pushed things back and said, “Let’s do drums.” Ann is Alicia’s recording engineer. She is the glue that holds this whole process together.

Stylistically, how would you say things are different on Freedom from As I Am?

The last album went with a Motown/Chess Records vibe. I feel this one is hinting at ‘80’s Prince with a modern R&B twist. One of Ann’s biggest contributions is that she collects all kinds of sounds for Alicia to experiment with. On this record and on “As I Am”, she brought in as many old classic keyboards and LinnDrum machines, as possible. She has this huge collection of guitars, Hoffner basses, and a laundry list of classic guitar amps. Alicia would find a software synth in Pro Tools — say a Jupiter 8 pops up — Ann’s like, “Let’s get a real Jupiter 8.”

How are you personally approaching the mastering this time around?

My job is putting the icing on their cake. I work a lot with Manny, his mixes always have very special vibe. He always manages to bring his level of personality to the mixes he works on. I fall in line with that, and make it a little more open — not squash it, not flatten it, not ruin his vision, just give it a little splash of color.

The last time the 1” was an added element, but this time it’s not here. Our deadline has prohibited us the extra time to dabble with the 1” tape. Everything else is the same (in my mastering signal path), just in a different location. This is my duplicate mastering rig so it’s my normal signal chain.

The only thing I added was the new Dangerous Bax EQ. I stole it from Bob and Chris on the last day of AES (October ’09). I had the prototype to this one three or four months ago, just loose knobs and no detent. The final version is great. I fell in love with the 60 Hz punch. It’s tight and doesn’t get sloppy. It’s a fun new toy that adds a totally new color I to my box of crayons.

Is 60 Hz a troublesome frequency?

Never troublesome, but 80 Hz is where you get that tight punch. 60 Hz is where you get that old classic foot feeling, and below 35 Hz is where the slop comes in. Depending on your EQ, that 60 Hz can be nice and thick and fun, or thick and mushy. With the Bax the bottom end gets thick and tight. I used it a lot on this record.

What’s your approach to mastering that makes you right for what’s going on at The Oven?

You have to have the right blend of personality, talent and work ethic to fit in with artists like this. Not just Alicia but also Ann, Manny, Tony, and Kerry. They are all artists. It’s a building full of extremely talented people with artistic personalities and we all have to have a similar vision of what the music should sound like.

We all have tremendous respect for each others abilities, and we get along great outside of the studio as well. It all helps when you’re working non-stop through the night into the next day together.

You also have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done right, even if it is something not normally in the definition of a mastering engineers job. The words “no” or “I’m not sure if we can do that” cannot be in your vocabulary. A lot of engineers won’t leave their mastering room or will over compress and flatten out the music. Ann knows I’m not that guy. I don’t smash it and kill the dynamics that the mixing engineer and producer have worked for hours on to create.

I’ve also mastered a lot of records for Peter Edge at J Records, and he’s the A&R for Alicia. He knows I don’t destroy mixes. I give them a little bit of color.

Taking it a step further, why do you have the right approach for Alicia?

Alicia has a clear vision for what she’s doing in an album, for a record or a song. So it’s for the same reason that Ann, Manny and Tony are the right choice — we hear her vision. Some mixing, tracking or mastering engineers don’t take the time to hear that vision of the artist they’re working for. We hear that vision and complement it. Some mastering engineers get insulted if they get asked for changes. I don’t mind it.

Mastering is a service industry.

Yes, I repeat that all the time. It’s totally true. It’s the most valuable lesson I learned from Eddie Germano.

Does Alicia usually have a specific way she wants the song to sound?

An example is when I was mastering “Distance and Time,” and she said, “The vocal needs to be a little brighter and open at the end.” Unbeknownst to her I quickly made this very subtle change and inserted it into an LP sequence that she and the label would be listening to shortly. She listened again and said, “You made the change already, didn’t you?” It was very subtle. She’s got excellent ears and is acutely aware of every single note, breathe and crescendo on her songs.

What are the complications involved in moving the mastering pod from your suite to The Oven?

You have to trust your ears. You have to test the room, and if it sounds like crap and you don’t trust your ears, it’s going to sound like crap. You also really need to know the wiring of your gear inside and out. You have to be able to do this without a tech on hand, because if something breaks you have to be able to change it yourself.

How much work is it to move your entire setup?

Boxing it up is not fun. Fortunately, this is my spare set of gear, so it was literally taking it out of the boxes and shipping it out here. Focal sent me the large speakers, and Ann purchased the Sterling modular furniture.

The most difficult part is the wiring. Four months prior to this project I had my assistant Michelle Mancini, measure every cable in my room and notate every male and female XLR connector and said, “Let’s make a duplicate.” This was to be an excellent learning opportunity for her and she nailed it. She made diagrams of both the digital and analog patchbays and ordered all the materials while asking me only 3 questions throughout the process. I had her call Joe Russo to do all of the soldering work.

Joe Russo is the most talented up-and-coming tech in New York. He’s based out of Flux Studios. At my studio, he was soldering the harness’s for about for about five days. This was completed about two weeks in advance of moving out to Oven. It was set up on Sunday/Monday, and we started working on Tuesday. Everything worked perfectly as planned.

Is this your first time with the Focal monitors?

The Focals saved my ass on my first album with Alicia. The Solo6 Be monitors worked, and I’m not going to change that. They’re tight, non ear-fatiguing, and have a ridiculous amount of sub for such a small speaker. They just work. Obviously speakers are very subjective, but for me they work perfectly. I started using these for the last record, and I’ve been using them ever since. I was only using them a month prior to As I Am – Fab (from NYC’s Flux Studios) told me I had to try the Focals. It was the sound I was looking for.

The big speakers are new. They are the Focal Electra Be. Focal sent them to Oven for me to me to try out for this LP. It’s still kind of hard listening to big speakers in a live room. I’m looking forward to getting these back to The Mastering Palace and listening to them in my studio.

What are the compromises/tradeoffs of working like this?

The hard part is I have to take care of my other clients, either early in the morning at my other studio or out here. The compromise is not being in the room I don’t know perfectly, but that’s part of becoming a better engineer. Projects like this take you out of your comfort zone.

But that’s all a part of the positives. To me, there were actually no compromises. This was the opportunity to do something different, something that never gets done, and to challenge myself.

And another reason there were no compromises is because I have all of my gear here. Most importantly when you are as fortunate as I have I been to work so intimately with such a talented artist there is no such thing as a compromise or a tradeoff. – SonicScoop

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