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In the often chaotic process of making pop and rock music, Brian Lucey comes in at the 11th hour, after the composing, the rethinking of the vision, the choice of sidemen, the improvisation, the divisive arguments, the laying down of the tracks, the arrangements, the producer’s imprimatur and the final mix. What he does is called mastering. And though it’s subtle, it’s an all important finishing touch.
“I’m making sure the music sounds consistently good on every conceivable platform,” says Lucey, who mastered the Black Keys’ Brothers, which won three Grammy Awards this year. “I use a lot of analog equipment to help digital music come alive. I’m interested in depth and clarity and the vibrational aspect of sound.”
Lucey, who grew up in Worthington and now lives in Grandview, has the confident stare of success mixed with a youthful sense of wonder. He also has a competitive streak and a hyper-sensitive and critical mindset that he says can be intense—a characteristic well suited for mastering.
Aside from the Black Keys, who were based in Akron until a recent move to Nashville, he works with other artists as diverse as the Iranian-born singer Sami Yusuf. His goal is to shape, sculpt, compress and finesse the recording he’s been delivered, trying to bring out the sonic splendor that makes it jump out of the speakers. If the music is edgy, he wants the edges to stand out. If it’s erotic, he seeks to bring out that voluptuousness. If it’s dark, he might add elements of light by way of contrast. Along the way, Lucey might include distortion here and provide a gritty bottom foundation there.
The best masters in the business leave a subtle imprint on the music. They don’t necessarily make the sound hot, although they often boost the volume. Instead, they create a sense of intimacy. Those who are masters at mastering place all the frequencies in the correct ranges so that the bass isn’t too loud and the highs fall deftly on the ears.
Lucey didn’t grow up with ambitions of mastering. He kind of fell into it after learning all aspects of music, from playing to recording. He essentially taught himself to play blues guitar off of vinyl records. But he also experimented with recording at an early age.
“When I was 11, I had a Radio Shack cassette recorder and a mono mic,” Lucey recalls. “I loved playing, but I had no ambitions to be onstage really. But by the time I got to Kenyon College, I started playing Stevie Ray Vaughan and other blues artists. In my second summer of college I went to New York City and became a hired gun guitarist for a cover band in the Greenwich Village.”
Between 1989 and 1996, Lucey studied in a program called Guitar Craft with Robert Fripp, a guitarist, composer, record producer, conceptualist and member of King Crimson. Fripp, widely acknowledged as one of the preeminent rock guitarists of all time, also was an original thinker and developed his own tape-delay system. “I was drawn to the spiritual side of Fripp’s music. Guitar Craft was an international school of music, which used guitar to help people to become more of who they were.”
Beginning in the mid 1990s, Lucey was in a Columbus-based band called Nude. But early on, he became unhappy with the sound he was getting of the band on tape. One day, he took out a $35,000 loan against his house and bought some state-of-the-art recording gear to create his own home studio.
“I basically bought a recording studio. I was a little ahead of the curve. Now everyone does this. Anyway, I was immediately unsatisfied. So I bought and sold and traded gear, constantly trying to get better equipment, going deeper into debt. And in the end I had this encyclopedic knowledge of equipment.”
If mixing a CD is capturing the separate tracks and combining them into a stereo mix, says Lucey, mastering is simpler and more subtle. “You’re taking a group of mixes and making each one better while tying them into a cohesive whole. Mastering is about harmonics and the vibration of music. I bring that taste into every style of music I work with. So my sound has a thumbprint. My recordings are big and beautiful with a lot of bottom end. I’m a guitar player. I want sounds to have body.”
With the Black Keys, Lucey found a perfect match.
“Brothers was well done in every way, but a little abrasive through the midrange,” says Lucey. “It was distorted in a way that wasn’t pretty distortion. Well, I gave it more distortion, but made it prettier. I altered the harmonic content of the distortion from digital distortion to analog distortion. And then I brought up the low end. . . . I took something good over the top.”
“That’s what I’m out to do,” he adds. “Mastering is seeing the potential in music and then taking vibrations of the mix and altering them harmonically or with equalizers and compression so that they’re emotionally connecting with the widest range of people. I hear the potential. I have a gift for seeing potential. It’s a blessing with mastering, but would be a curse in some other realms.” n
Jory Farr can be reached at joryfarr@gmail.com.
