Posts Tagged ‘level 42’

Level 42 “Love meeting love”

Hi people!

Again this is from the live 81 Gillingham tape.

Taken a slightly different approach with this. I found there was a huge difference between left and right eq, either from the recording itself or the transfer to digital. This was creating an empty centre, so I’ve done some work to balance it up(apart from the tape drift, it even seems to hold together in mono).

I’ve also used quite an aggressive compressor model to tame the kick and snare. Take a listen to the source file and check how far in front(louder) they are. It’s difficult because of the mid covering effect, but still audible.

Do take a close listen to the hard nature of the source. I can change the shape of the tone, but not the essence of the sample(which is all digitized sound is).

Love meeting love remaster 23-03-2010

As usual, I may tweak this again at a later date.

Thanks for stopping by

Tone

Level 42, the rare “Morning silence”

Hi people

I worked on this track for a while over christmas, and although it still needs a tweak or 2, I’m quite happy with the improvement. For those who don’t know…..this is one of the rarest Level 42 songs. “Morning silence” Written by Mike Lindup, only featured in a few live shows during the 80’s. Luckily it was captured in this recording, as I don’t think another version exists.

For any new visitors, the technical details are this:

Damaged cassette from 1981.

Large mid range eq lift on aux send to cassette, Forcing large amounts of tape saturation into and around the offending freq area. I’ve had to try, to match the shape of that boost, by using many smaller cuts. As well as using the standard ‘boost the nice bits’ technique.

Source has large Boost around 107hz

Constant eq changes by the engineer

Remember, this is never going to be a perfect finish, just more listenable.

Have a listen

Morning silence source


Morning silence remaster


Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to Check back for updates or new tracks etc. Part 2 of my multiband compression tutorial is imminent.

Tone

Level 42-The pier interviews

Hi people.

I had an interesting email from BBC director Damon Thomas, regarding my Level 42 restoration mastering. I have no idea how he stumbled upon my site, but he was very encouraging about my efforts. On the strength of that, I set about working on some more. To eventually get the whole gig done (one day).

Anyway, it transpires that he directed a series of interviews with the band in the late 90’s. I did some digging on Youtube and found them.

So…for anyone who’s interested, here is that series.

As usual, thanks for stopping by, and please keep doing so.

Tone

Part1

Part2

Part3

“Wings of love” Level 42

Hi

You can probably tell by now, I’m not working these tracks in the right order. Trying my best to avoid the early ones, where the engineer was setting up .

Gone back a couple of songs now for this one. A few minor changes from the “Almost there” settings. The eq moves for every track, so that needed tweaking, plus the release times for all the dynamics tools. You may also notice a difference in both sound and level from “Almost there”. I don’t usually go much on so called vintage compressor models etc, it normally means “buy this, and it will make everything sound fantastic for you”, which they rarely do.

But I did put one in-line just before the final limiter. The last thing this material needs is too much definition, so blurring the edges slightly with the vintage model had the effect I wanted. Listen to how it’s softened the highs of the hi hat and cymbals etc. I’m not pretending its transparent compression, it’s actually pretty obvious, but it works.

The Audio


Wings of love-Cassette source


Wings of love-remaster

Well, thanks for stopping by people, and keep checking back, as I’m going to be doing the whole gig eventually (even the scary earlier tracks). Also, there is a big mastering techniques article on it’s way.

Have a great weekend!

Tone

P.S As usual, I’ll end up tweaking this a little. I just noticed a couple of freq’s creep in.

Mastering Level42 Live 81

Background

Back in 81 in gillingham, my father goes to a gig with his friend who was sound engineer in a small live music venue. turns out its level 42. the story goes, mark king needs a reverb unit as his isn’t working. so dad nips off home and brings one back….and a cassette deck . so he asks mr king if he can record the gig in return. the answer was obviously yes.

fast forward to late 90’s. i’m going through the old mans tape collection in search of something and chance upon  the level gig. so i load it into the pc (glorified calcualtor   ), which was really a new thing for me at that time. make a couple of wrong changes (probably boost the 100hz and 4k   ) write it onto some very early cdr (phillips model…still got it somewhere) and send it to the fan club. they’re pretty excited at this, as it contained a song never recorded,  “morning silence”.

Then in 2009, after playing around for quite some time at learning mastering, i get to the stage where i’m pretty good at the restoration thing.

THE SOURCE FILE

check out this source file taken from the cassette   DOWNLOAD

The hardest thing about working on this material, is the huge tonal imbalance. its actually painful due to some of the massive spikes in it. made some notes below:

large imbalance which gives the impression there i no bass in the source, you will hear in my master that its not the case

damaged frequency areas, due to hitting the tape hard and sufferring too much saturation

a massive spike at 132hz coming from marks bass cab. probably a reflection. this isnt instantly obvious in the source, as the mid lift is covering everything.for those of you reading this who know….the ear is a bit cruel really. one freq area only has to be  slightly loud and other stuff disappears. so with material like this, you cant really tell exactly what problems are contained. they rear their ugly heads as you remove the louder issues.

broken, and very spikey freq’s especially in the hi hats etc. this can still be slightly heard in my master, the best that could be done was round them off and keep them low. you cant just totally remove freq’s at will. holes in the curve sound unnatural.

WORKED VERSION

There maybe a couple of people here who have heard some of my “outputs” before. and yeh…this has been going on for quite some time. but now being able to hit perfect freq and Q for every cut or boost(some 40 odd for this project), i can now put clarity back in, to a standard i never realised possible. especially from myself

Ok. this is the temp master. there are still a couple of tweaks i’d like to do. but i want to come back on it with fresh ears in a week or so. so far i have only used standard fixing tools (eq, multiband and wideband compression, width adjustment & limiting). when i come back to it i may add some dynamic eq.

DOWNLOAD

thanks for reading and listening

Tone