Talented Recording and Mix Engineer

[mlewis]

Seems like a great idea!! Thanks Steve!

My specialism is recording and mixing from within the music and film industries. I worked in-house at SARM studios (http://www.sarmstudios.com) for five years for music producer Trevor Horn, in which time I worked with artists and producers including The Neptunes, Robbie Williams, Motörhead, Michael Jackson, JLS, Adele, Basement Jaxx, Mark Ronson and many others.

My original score mixing work in the film industry has been nominated for multiple oscars and golden globes (127 Hours), and I have had the pleasure of working on over twenty top-ten releases, nine of which topped the charts at number 1.

I'm as comfortable mixing on large format SSLs at major recording studios as I am mixing from within my private studio at home within Pro Tools, so can tailor my service to meet a wide variety of requirements and budgets.

For more info go to http://www.markjlewis.co.uk

Kind regards

ML

[carolco]

Wow..
Im working as ChoirMaster and korepetitor in Musical theatre. And my hobby is to make music so I have budget Home studio so Im concerned..

Wish you all the best with working with pros..
I envy you.

[mlewis]

Cheers!

I do a lot of work in my simple home studio too, it's the way the industry is going now that all the money hase gone from record label budgets and everything has gone from analogue equipment to software. Some of this biggest records these days get made with nothing more than a laptop and one vocal mic!

To put it into perspective, in the 90's, before mass file-sharing and large scale music piracy happened, labels used to set asside a small pot of cash when making an album for extras like takeaways, flowers, drinks, taxis or whatever. These days that would be the entire budget for an album!!

People like me are most definitely on the endangered species list!!

[NeoTrader]

hi mlewis

People like me are most definitely on the endangered species list!!

I still think that there is need for people like you who actually now how to use the recording/mixing software and who know how to produce a song/album.

You're right that the budgets get slimmer but the big record labels did that to themselves.
If they didn't started to protect their CD's in the awkward way they did and priced their Albums in the way they did and jumped earlier on what the customer demanded they still would have a good business going.
But as greedy they where and as fast as the technology revolutionized the whole industry they are exactly in the position they are now and belong to...and it is the same position where the movie and book business will be in the years to come...they can't switch the time back...

On the other Hand the Technology allows and enables many small bands and producers to work outside the big record labels and produce high quality songs/albums that they are able to market via direct marketing over the Internet without the bloated marketing machinery of the record labels. And they still earn more per song/album as they would have earned when they where under contract of one of the big labels.

just my two pips...

And no I'm not in the music business but I have a couple of friends who are.

happy trading,

NeoTrader

[mlewis]

hi mlewis

You're right that the budgets get slimmer but the big record labels did that to themselves.
If they didn't started to protect their CD's in the awkward way they did and priced their Albums in the way they did and jumped earlier on what the customer demanded they still would have a good business going.
But as greedy they where and as fast as the technology revolutionized the whole industry they are exactly in the position they are now and belong to...and it is the same position where the movie and book business will be in the years to come...they can't switch the time back...

On the other Hand the Technology allows and enables many small bands and producers to work outside the big record labels and produce high quality songs/albums that they are able to market via direct marketing over the Internet without the bloated marketing machinery of the record labels. And they still earn more per song/album as they would have earned when they where under contract of one of the big labels.

NeoTrader

Couldn't agree more with what you said. it is greed by the record industry that has perpetuated this issue. I see the situation as having really great plusses and really bad minusses, on one hand now ANYBODY who wants to make a record and has the talent to do so now has the tools to do professional work. This means that there have sprung up countless amazing people who just do stuff in their bedroom (Jai Paul who is about to drop his debut album on XL springs to mind).
The minus is that they are now much less likely to be big enough for long enough to make a living from this talent (although i have a feeling Jai Paul is going to be huge, so maybe that wasn't the best example!!).

[mlewis]

I'd love to do some mixes for you, just gimme a shout when you're ready. I've done strings at abbey road a few times but only ever done mastering there once and I didn't bother attending the session (It was a last minute bolt-on to an album so I'd been up all night mixing it). Most of the stuff I've done has been mastered by a few of the guys at Metropolis, Tim Young mostly. Sometimes Bob Ludwig over in the states. I must admit, I typically prefer mastering engineers to do as little as possible, so mix into mix bus EQ, compression and limiting (but then print limited and unlimited versions to send to mastering). They usually use the limited versions though.

ML

[Zool]

Hi!

ML are you doing mastering too? I have a band, and we're about to finish the mixing of our second album. We have a budget home studio, we recorded our music there, and I'm doing the mixing part of it. We want the mastering done by someone else, since a third pair of professional ears is always a good thing to have
We had our first album self published, but now we're trying to find a label, but I don't know if we will succeed. If some label decide to release our album maybe they will do the mastering for us, but if that's not the case we have to had the mastering done.
So if you're doing mastering jobs too, would you do it for us? We're playing a post-rock/experimental style music, you can listen our first release here: http://soundcloud.com/corrodal/sets/xei/
The current album would be 10 tracks, around 40-45 minutes long.
I would appreciate it if you could send some info about your pricing, shcedule and details of how can this thing be done. You can contect me in PM if you don't want to write all the details into this thread.

Greetings,
Zool

[mlewis]

Hi Zool, thanks for the interest. I don't do mastering i'm afraid and i typically wouldn't recommend anybody do mastering other than someone with a full-on mastering room, it kinda defeats the whole purpose of getting it mastered really, because mastering is all about making a mix translate to ANY soundsytem, from iPhone speakers to high end £150000 mastering set-ups that have a room designed around the speakers and can comfortably produce 15hz to 30khz with the highest possible accuracy. Unless you have a very high-end mastering set-up, you will always be making educated guesses as to what it would sound like on such a system.

Although that said, if all you want is another pair of ears to cast over the mixes i'd be happy to do so and have a fiddle, making any adjustments that I feel are needed and bring the overall loudness in line with other commercial releases. I'd do this pretty cheaply to reflect the fact that it's not 'proper' mastering, £20 per track or something if there are ten tracks. It's worth noting though that Metropolis Mastering, who i usually use for Mastering, do an unsigned rate of £90 per track and you will likely get better results.

If you plan on taking it to labels to be released they will definitely, without doubt want to goof about with your mixes or get it mixed by someone else, or want to have some input, even if it's just track order or bonus tracks or whatever. That would typically require a remaster so i would test the water before shelling out big bucks on mastering otherwise you may end up Mastering twice.

ML