The Illegal Mastering Engineer

In todays video I take a look at mastering engineering Brian Big Bass Gardner and how he transformed the mastering of certain hiphop records.

[Purafied]

Brian Gardner is a legend, and I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with him and am immensely proud of the work we created together.

[flood]

Brian Gardner is a mastering legend. Doing some of the biggest Hip-Hop records, him, Bernie Grundman and Mike Bozzi relied on the Lavry DA924 D/A Converter and the Lavry MK A/D Converter. Those units really have a legendary sound.

[User-jkwq]

There's a very good reason why blink-182 are one of the only bands from the late 90s who have never remastered their old material. Because Brian did such a fantastic job in the first place and cared more about sound quality rather than just loudness

[fcmastering]

Brian, is the one that inspired me to pursue mastering. Man is a legend!

[.Plus..Equals.]

"Red is good" 😄 I learned something new today.

[obsidian]

regardless of stylistic choices it is definitely much easier to make things louder without distorting than it was back then

[shadowkyd]

I’ve had Brian master a few of my tracks. Definitely a legend…

[mathien]

i think the janet jackson control album was somehow inadvertently pushed into the red and when the test pressing arrived everyone loved it -

[p.b]

We're in 2024 WE have hard clipper and 32 bit floating by now !

Always get a waveform analyzer to see what you are doing to your sound, add a spectrum analyzer, don't shut down your ears, use references and VSX headset if possible.
That's it ! you are pretty good to go for mixing in the modern era with no more than a monitoring headphone and a good sound card !🥳

[cupidodobaile]

I love Brian´s Standpoint because, even thought Bernie has a very respectable classic approach to mixing and mastering. Bernie Understands that music is actually culture that can be change and so it will. Loudness wars is something that would happen anyway. It´s a boundary to be tested and pushed.

[stringhellion]

Before he was known for Hip Hop mastering Brian also mastered a lot of 80s RnB and Funk records. S.O.S. Band albums “On The Rise” and “Just The Way You Like It” has some really tasteful loudness and bass for its time… all done by Big Bass Brian.

[jimmywhyte]

"the ultimate dude to master your shit" lol

[nwbrne]

Short and cool video, would love some more in-depth of this!

[ericMT]

There is a huge difference between digital clipping distortion and analog distortion. If you are careful it can enhance the mix but you really need to walk a fine line or it can ruin a song.

[Yizak]

this is an essential history lesson for the producers and sound engineers of today 🙏

[prodbyecee]

Brian is an absolute legend he has worked on everything.

[russcontact]

All of this is driven by attention spans for music and digital convenience. These guys kept up with the changing world, they didn’t drive those changes. People used to listen to entire albums on good systems, giving the artists time and undivided attention, and often on systems that could reproduce most of the frequency spectrum. Today with streaming on mobile devices, artists need to grab a listener’s attention quickly or they’ll skip to the next song and usually artist. And the most common speakers today are iPhone earbuds, which also restricts artists. That’s what created the loudness wars, and that’s why so many artists hate them.

[KRAFTWERKK]

Mixing is an art and is a skill. And sadly the ones dictating how something has to sound and wanting it to be the loudest, don't understand once it is already loud.... you cannot turn it up anymore. Even if you turn the final loudnesswar-mix down.. it will still be loud... and aggressive.... and absolutely flat and unappealing.

[alephestudios]

If I could give away one truly helpful advice it would be to stop mixing and mastering for loudness and change your mindset to acchieve bigness. Dre's 2001 sounds small compared to most hiphop hits of today.

[thePsykomanteum]

I got to sit in the couch behind Bernie when he did mine. He had a black machine with four giant round dials on it, that was all he touched.