Bernie Grundman
Bernie Grundman is one of the most sought after mastering engineers in the music industry. He currently has two operating mastering studios, one in California and one in Japan. Bernie became interested in hi-fidelity sound at a young age when a stereo amplifier store opened up near his home town in Phoenix Arizona. After exploring what the store had to offer, he purchased a Macintosh 30 amplifier, a Gerrard turntable and Bozac speakers. Having a love for jazz music, Bernie purchased records to play on his high end system and spent countless hours listening to fine jazz. Eventually, he would wind up enlisting in the Air Force to learn more about electronics.
After Bernie served his four year tour in the Air Force, he made a decision that he wanted to be involved in the music production business. He drove to Capitol Records in California and asked the staff what it would take to break into the business. They told him to get a degree in Electrical Engineering. So Bernie enrolled at Arizona State University for Electrical Engineering. After finding out that an engineer that he knew from reading record liner notes worked at the local studio, Bernie asked for a job at ground level to start at the bottom and work his way up. They accepted and Bernie's music production career was under way. Through the local contacts, he would eventually wind up working at A & M records and work his way up to a top notch mastering engineer. Some of the groups and artist recordings that Bernie mastered include Steely Dan, The Doors, Herb Alpert, Michael Jackson, The Carpenters, Fleetwood Mac and many, many more. I spoke with Bernie about his career.
R.V.B. - Hey Bernie... Rob von Bernewitz from New York... how are you today?
B.G. - I'm fine... how are you?
R.V.B. - I'm doing pretty good. Congratulations on your career. You've accomplished a lot in your life and career. You do it by way of something that you love to do. It must be a whole lot of fun for you.
B.G. - It is because I do come at it from the audiophile standpoint. As a kid, I was a real audiophile. I hung out at the hi-fi shop on shop on Saturdays. I was a big listener to all these different types of recordings that were being made. You kind of develop some kind of a discrimination too. You begin to appreciate things that are recorded.
R.V.B. - Was there any piece of music that reached out and grabbed you when you were young.
B.G. - Well yes. There's a couple of things here. There's a few things that have affected me musically and there's other things that have affected me sonically. Occasionally they come together... but not always. There's a lot of difference between the kind of music you prefer and just good sound quality. Sound quality enhances the quality of the music. It's all serving the music - you can go in the wrong direction if you're only thinking about quality, in faithfully reproducing an instrument... saxophone, trumpet or whatever you're trying to reproduce. It's about making it sound as natural and real as possible... but if the guy can't play well, who cares. You have this situation where you've got guys that are hard core audiophiles, but their only interested in the quality of the instruments or the sound. The music might not be that great at all but they don't care as much about the music. I know a number of audiophiles like that. They only want to be impressed with the sound quality. My take on it is that, yeah... I certainly am impressed when I hear something that's really recorded well, but if it doesn't really have a lot of good musical content, then I get bored with it after a while. It's only something to be impressed with for a short time. It doesn't take me on any kind of interesting journey, like good music can. Music is really a much deeper experience, than just hearing something that is faithfully reproduced. It's actually touching us where we live... as human beings in our emotions. So if it's not doing that - if it's not communicating that way - then it becomes more of an intellectual thing. I'm not saying it doesn't have any value. It does have value, because if it's applies to good music, then you've got all things covered. Then you've got an extra special experience.
R.V.B. - Can you have that extra special experience, if you have good music and good sound quality, if it's played on a not such a good stereo?
B.G. - Yeah. You get quite a bit out of it... absolutely. If it's good music, that's gonna come through regardless. However, the connection that your making emotionally with the music, isn't as complete.... but the bones are there.
If you listen to some old Fats Waller records - they're from the 40s - the sound isn't that great but man... the music is fantastic. It feels great and you have a good time listening to it. So that's number one. The music is what's important. We should be serving the music. We should be doing something to make this music bigger, better and a more effective experience. Something that connects with you emotionally, much better. So that's my goal as a mastering engineer... is to try to increase that connection. Make this music speak and make it easier to connect with it. In my experience, from way back, when hi-fi first even came in - I've been in this business 50 years - I was right there when this high end hi-fi equipment first started to hit the public. Certainly I was listening to records - my dad's 78's - before I first heard really great sound. The first really great sounding stuff that I heard wasn't necessarily what I ended up liking the most, but it got me interested in sound. I was raised in Phoenix Arizona but I was originally from Minneapolis. When I was 8 years old, my family moved to Phoenix Arizona. At that time in the 50s, it wasn't a very big city. I was just listening to 78 records. When LP's came in, I set up a little rig in my room. It wasn't anything special. There wasn't a lot of high fidelity stuff going on in the early 50s, but I was interested in music. My dad had all of these big band records so I was a little more interested in jazz... Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and the other big bands that were popular in the 30s and 40s. I had a feeling for that music because I was around it a certain amount. I listened to pop music on the radio but I had never really heard real high end incredible sound. I used to have this motor scooter that I would ride back and forth from a job that I had. Before shopping centers, there was this little strip mall that went in. I remember going by it on my motor scooter one day and there was a sign that went up that said Hi-Fidelity Sound Systems. That was the name of the place... Hi-Fidelity Sound. So me, as someone who is always being impressed by equipment - I used to also be interested in motion pictures... projectors and things like that. In the old days people were building their own cabinets and buying kits to build amplifiers. They would put together their own systems. There were a lot of hobbyists. I could see in the window that the speakers and amplifiers would be sitting on shelves. They were very impressive to me. So one day I decided that I had to see what was going on in there. I was walking around and looking at everything and I saw a Macintosh Mac-30. That was their first amplifier. It was a 30 watt tube amplifier. A lot of the speakers were unfinished cabinets and people would finish their own. The owner of the store said to me "Do you want to hear anything? Why don't I play you something?" I'm just a 14 year old kid and I said "Sure!" So he put on a Leroy Anderson record, which was light classical music. He put that record on and the sound was shocking to me. I had a natural kind of interest in things like that. It was so shocking to me, it changed my life. That one incident was so impressive to me, it was like the clouds opening up. From that day on, all my money went to audio equipment and records.
R.V.B. - So you bought a higher end system shortly after that?
B.G. - Yes. Shortly after that I bought myself a Mac-30. At one time, this public address company, that built things for schools, made high end audio also. So the pre-amp was a Bogen... of all things. I don't think they are in business anymore. The speaker was a Bozak with a 12" coax speaker. The turntable was a Gerrard, with the old GE cartridge. It was a flip cartridge where you could change it from a 78 to a 33/45 cartridge. That was my first audio system. I actually started working for this guy on the weekends. He started to sell Contemporary records. It was a jazz label. It was really big back in the 50s and 60s. It was one of the most important West Coast Jazz labels. During that period, I discovered Be Bop jazz. I was going to this one record store in the middle of Phoenix, still buying big band stuff. I was kind of curious about some of the other albums that I would thumb through in the shelves. There was this album that just looked interesting to me. It looked like these musicians were really into something, and I thought "I'm just gonna buy one of these and see what it is!" So I went home and put the record on, and the same thing happened to me as when I first heard the high end sound... I was shocked again about how good it was. There was this realization about that there is where this needs to go. There's not a whole lot of improvising on a big band album. You have some soloing and some improvising but they're not very extensive. This was Clifford Brown and Max Roach... it doesn't get any better than that. I just happened to pick that album Study in Brown, which is a classic, iconic album... from the peak of Be Bop jazz. That area of the late 50's and early 60s had big changes in jazz. It was riding as one of the most important innovations in music. It was so impressive to me. I looked at the jacket and saw it was EmArcy label... a division of Mercury. Then I would go back in the music store and buy anything by EmArcy. (Hahaha) From that day on, I was also sold on jazz... straight ahead jazz. Not fusion... they didn't have fusion then. It's pure jazz. It's jazz where it's mostly based on improvising. You really have to pay attention to it. It has a certain kind of complication.
R.V.B. - The west coast jazz like Chet Baker... that kind of thing?
B.G. - Yeah. He's a little easier to follow, but he's one of the greats. So what you find in recordings like that, is an more interesting emotional journey. Because it's being improvised, and it's his point of view - he's taking apart the tune in such a way - you're getting a real abstract vision of what that tune is. You're really learning more and getting more insight into how the tune is constructed and what it can be expanded to... in different points of view. It's all based on the beginning of the tune of course... the line or the melody. The best players make it really interesting. They all have a certain continuity and you feel the tune, but it's abstracted and it's kinda like being taken apart. So if it's good jazz, it doesn't lose that thread that goes through it all.
R.V.B. - You could argue that classical music does the same thing when it evolves through the movements.
B.G. - I also developed a very big interest in classical music. The only difference with classical music is that all the improvising is done by the composer. It's not spontaneous that way but the composers ideas may have been. I didn't learn to love it until a little bit later. I was young... I was a teenager and at 19, I even had my own after hours jazz club.
R.V.B. - There were enough players around?
B.G. - Oh yeah! Phoenix had jazz players. We would get players that would sit in. They would come in at four in the morning because it was around that coffee house time thing. There were a lot around San Francisco and other places. It was around the 'beat generation' time... Jack Kerouac. Everyone was into cool jazz... with Miles Davis. There were a lot of pseudo intellectual people who were trying to be intellectual but they weren't. There was a lot of this snobism' that went on. I knew all the musicians in town by then. I had even been doing some recording by then. I had some recording equipment. I used to go into the south side of Phoenix into the black area, and I'd hang out at the Elks club and record there. It was very segregated there. Arizona is very conservative but that didn't bother me because I was sold. (Haha) That stuff didn't matter to me. I discovered classical music around that time as well. it was interesting how I discovered it. You don't really know what's going on in these kinds of music because in a sense - to really get the full impact of it - you can't be a casual listener. You can't just have it on in the background. There is so much going on that you have to pay attention. Pop music, is easier to just have it going on and you can be doing other stuff. To really get everything out of some of these very involved types of music, you have to be present. In fact, nowadays with vinyl, it's helping people get back to listening. They have to go through this big ritual to play a vinyl record. They have to stop what they're doing - they have to put the record on - they have to put the cartridge arm on to the record. They tend to sit down and actually listen. It's kind of funny to say, but people don't listen as much as they used to. They use it as background music in their life. You hear these stories now - which is what we all did - that these kids are getting together and listening to records... Wow!
R.V.B. - Vinyl is making an amazing comeback!
B.G. - (Hahaha) It's kind of funny... but it's good. It's getting them to get involved.
R.V.B. - It's totally interactive.
B.G. - Yeah... music should be! But then again, a lot of music is very light too. It's easily accessible - a lot of pop music is. It's made for people who aren't even music people. It's a social thing. It's made for people like - 'this person is popular in school and likes this artist - I do too then. I want to associate with that... I want to align myself with that, so I'm accepted and have a certain kind of status. I go to these concerts because there is all these lights flashing and all these explosions going on, so it makes me feel like the music is better than it really is.'
R.V.B. - The show aspect of it.
B.G. - It's theatrical. Some people go for the excitement of being with a big crowd... and loud sound. It makes you excited. But it isn't necessarily about the music. It's all about the other things. It can even be about the personality of the artist. They can wear odd clothes or do all these interesting things when they're performing. It's entertainment then. But then again, it also has a musical aspect. But nowadays, you don't know what a person is there for... it's a social thing. Young people are worried about their identity. They want to belong. They're afraid of being too much of an individual... because they won't be part of the mainstream.
R.V.B. - You make an interesting point but there can be the counter side of it like the punk years, where everyone wanted to be different.
B.G. - Right. You're going to have a lot of that. Everybody wants to have something special of unique too. That's why music can fit into so many areas. My take on it is, all music has a place. Music is fundamentally an emotional expression of the human experience. So this musician has this point of view. They're gonna try to excite the same emotions that any artist does. We all have the same emotions. But maybe he's doing it through polka music! If he does it well, you're going to feel something from it. It might not be the kind of thing that you're used to but it's a human expression. In my business, you better be able to relate to that or else you won't know what to do with it. When you start adjusting things, you won't know if you're actually making this a more effective recording. You have to use yourself! You have to be open emotionally to it so that you can tell if you're making it feel better. You can't be prejudiced.
R.V.B. - When you were gaining this knowledge from these jazz purchases...
B.G. - I was a snob then. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - You were growing.
B.G. - Yeah... I was growing. I was heavy into jazz and classical music. Pop music was kinda so-so.
R.V.B. - I guess the folk boom was also in full swing.
B.G. - That was the period when they had coffee houses. They had poetry reading or folk music. That was there too. There was all these different things that were going on. I was more into the jazz thing. It was more club friendly. You couldn't really have classical.
R.V.B. - Can you describe the club that you had?
B.G. - I went in on it with a friend of mine. We rented a space in an old, beat up, strip mall. It happened to be across from the most happening bar in Phoenix. We thought "OK, we're going to make an afterhours club here. Everybody has to stop drinking when the bars close at one o'clock in the morning. That's kind of early." Most places are two or four... like New York. We opened a club that didn't open until 10 o'clock and didn't close until four in the morning. As soon as one o'clock hit, everybody would leave the bar and walk across the street and go to my club. It was really great because it was one of those things like jazz was this underground thing and the musicians had a shady image. We would only sell setups. They would come with their bottles and keep drinking. We'd have jazz... we had a lot of colored lights on the stage. it was really kind of a neat place. We'd have piles of bottles - the next day when we cleaned up. We charged admission to get in and sold setups. It wasn't like basic setups like 7up or Coca-cola, we made our own little drinks.
R.V.B. - It sounded like a pretty successful little joint.
B.G. - It was OK for a while. It was a fad in a place like Phoenix... these after hours, smoke filled, coffee houses. People wanted to experience doing something a little bit unlawful. People got a kick out of it. It lasted about a year and a half before people lost interest in it.
R.V.B. - Is that about the time where you went into the service?
B.G. - Yes.
R.V.B. - Did you have your heart set on the Air Force?
B.G. - I wanted to learn more about electronics. In those days they had the draft. Everyone had to be concerned about the draft because when they drafted you, you went in the Army... you might be in a fox hole. I didn't particularly want to be in a fox hole. The Air Force was appealing to me. I was impressed with airplanes. I thought "You know??? I want to know more about electronics!" So I took the various tests to join. I got very high grades on the electronics part, so they guaranteed me electronics school. I signed up because I knew I'd be on a base. My family had zero money! I didn't make that much on the club. I really couldn't afford to go to school, so I went in the Air Force. I was in electronic warfare.
R.V.B. - Did you go overseas?
B.G. - No. I ended up in a very isolated base, way up in northeast Montana... next to North Dakota and Canada. It was a big SAC base with B-52 bombers and F-101 fighter planes.
R.V.B. - My son was in the Air Force and he was in South Dakota. He was at the B-1 Bomber base.
B.G. - In those days we didn't have the B-1. We had B-52's and B-47's. It all had to do with the second line of defense. It was 50 miles from the Canadian border. They had to close it because the weather was just too severe up there. It went down to 40 below in the winter and up to 100 degrees in the summer. The runway was cracking and buckling. We had to go to Fairchild in Spokane Washington for a whole summer while they repaired the runway. When I was there I was also a musician. I played drums all during the time I was in the Air Force. I was in a Rhythm and Blues band, of all things. I was the only white guy in the band. (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - (Hahaha) I would of thought you would be playing some other type of instrument, as an audiophile guy?
B.G. - Yeah maybe. The music is more important. One of my first loves is audio, but it also has to be with the right music with me. Music is a big drive for me... just being around music. A nice thing about being involved with audio, you do get to experience some really great recordings. Little did I know, that here I was getting some of these records in that record store - I worked at the Hi-Fi shop as well for a while - he would bring in these Contemporary records. Those were some of the best recordings every made - they still are - from the 50s and early 60s. Little did I know that I would become the engineer at Contemporary.
R.V.B. - Was that right after you got out of the service?
B.G. - I was in the service for four years. I got out one week before they escalated the Vietnam war. They would of kept me in for two more years. I decided "I better get serious here and go for the thing that I'm most passionate about." That was being a recording engineer. I just wanted to be in the recording business. I decided I don't want to be a drummer. You find out those things about yourself. You find out just how bad you want something - depending on how much abuse and aggravation you're going to put up with - to get what you want. To be the good be-bop drummer that I wanted to be, would have taken tremendous work, effort and ambition... and I didn't have it. I knew that I didn't want to pay those dues.
I did however know where my strongest passion was, and that was being a recording engineer. So I got in my car and went across to Seattle, Washington... where some relatives lived. I went down the coast and drove to Capitol Records in Hollywood. I walked in and went right to the head of recording and I said "OK, what do I have to do? I want to be a recording engineer." (Hahaha)
R.V.B. - Sounds like you're a real go-getter.
B.G. - Oh yeah! How else are you going to do it? Nobody is going to come to you. Everybody wants these jobs. They're not going to come up to you and say "Hey, do you want to become a recording engineer? I'm gonna teach you how to do it." You have to show that you're willing to do anything for it. You're going to be there, ready to go when they're ready to go. That's how it is with this business... the entertainment business in general. The guy was kind of non committal. He wasn't going to give me a job. I said "What should I do? Should I get my degree in Electrical Engineering? Would that help?" He said "Yeah, that would help." So I went back to Phoenix and was living at my mother's house. I enrolled in Arizona State University. I called this main studio in Phoenix, that I knew when it was real little, at some guys house. I called the studio and said "I want some information. I want to learn more about what I'm going to need to do to become a recording engineer." The guy that ran the place said - it was a big studio by then and I didn't know that. It could even hold a symphony orchestra.
He said "Maybe you should talk to Roy Dunann. He knows a lot more about what it might take." I said "Roy Dunann!!! Roy Dunann is there??? At your studio?" This is the guy who did all the Contemporary records. This was the guy that ran Capitol Records... all through the 40s and into the early 50s. He's the one that built Contemporary. I said "OK, I'm coming right down there." So I came down and said "OK, I got to work here! You don't need to pay me... I just need to be here. If Roy Dunann is here, I gotta be here. I'll clean the toilets... whatever." The guys said "Well... ummm. OK." (Hahaha) I was a little ambitious then... because I knew what I wanted. I didn't had parents that wanted me to me a doctor or a lawyer. They just let me be what I wanted to be. I came from this very dysfunctional broken family. I was alone in some ways but I was able to get very focused on things. It could have gone the other way. I could have become a juvenile Delinquent also, but I got very responsible... I went the other way. I had this realization that if I'm gonna get anywhere, I gotta be me. I have no real family. Nobody's gonna give me anything. Nobody's gonna pay for my education. I started working there when I had no classes or on the weekends. Whenever I could, I went into the studio to hang out. I would do gopher work... winding cables... setup work. Just to make some money, I went around to all the high schools and got them to record at the studio. They had this program where the senior year band at the school could make a record, for a memento of their years at the high school. So I tripled their business. The thing that's so American about this is the opportunity. At the time, I didn't realize that I was a little different than a lot of people. They were seeing things in me that I didn't see.
I've always had this little bit of insecurity. I came in one day - they had two rooms for cutting vinyl discs - They said "You should of been here, Howard Holzer (He put in a lot of cutting systems and was part of the engineering staff at Contemporary Records) they had two rooms that were put together by him... Roy told me "You know, Howard Holzer was here looking at the cutting heads and that sort of thing. We were going over things to make sure they were working well." I knew he worked with Roy at Contemporary but now he's building studios and cutting systems. He's got a little shop out in Van Ives. So I got in my car and drove over to LA. I pulled up at his place. Here I am in a suit and tie... I didn't know what to wear. I'm just out of the service and only had been working at the studio for about four months. I walked in and introduced myself. He said "Roy told me about you. Do you know that Lester, over at Contemporary Records is looking for an engineer. Why don't you look into that?" I said " I don't know anything! I couldn't just walk in there and be an engineer. I can't even cut a disc." He said the key word to me. "If you love your work, you'll find a way." I thought "Wow!" I thanked him and drove back to LA. It's working on me. I started thinking "I can do this." I'm gonna really get busy and watch every little nuance that Roy does in the studio as well as cutting discs. I buckled down and called Howard. I called Howard about a month later and I said "Do you think you could get me an interview with Lester at Contemporary... when I get out of summer school in August?" He said "Great... I'd be happy to get that for you. He doesn't have anyone yet." So I'm going to school and taking final exams, and about two weeks before I was finishing up I called Howard back. It had been months since I'd talked to him. I asked him if by any chance he got the appointment with Lester? He said "I got you the job... when can you start?" I "As soon as I get out of school, I'll be right over." So we both went over to see Lester, and Lester said "Howard says your terrific, when can you start." (Hahaha) They never watched me do anything? In September I drove there with my car and a trailer full of my stuff... I moved to LA. I went to work for Contemporary and two years later I was running the mastering department at A&M.
R.V.B. - What was some of the first things that you worked on.
B.G. - The first thing I was doing at Contemporary was keeping the catalog up. With vinyl, you have to keep cutting new masters because the stampers wear out. Then I started doing a lot of stuff. He wasn't making a lot of new jazz records. I did a few jazz records there... recorded them. Because I was there, he opened it up to custom work. Contemporary was open for mastering only. The only thing that was state of the art was the cutting system. Except it had been built in such a way - by Roy and Howard - it could accommodate a lot of adjusting of the sound. Mastering engineers were called that because they just cut a master disc. They didn't do anything to the sound. If you were at Columbia, RCA, Capitol or any major record company, you took the tape that the mixer gave you and you cut it flat. That's the way it is. If you wanted to change it, and you discovered after listening to all your mixes, you want to have this tune brighter, or this or that, You had to go back in the studio and make a tape copy with that EQ on it and insert it into the assembly and cut from that... flat again. The mastering engineer just knew how to make a disc that would track properly... and would process properly, and things like that. It was only transferring flat to the lacquer. Those kinds of problems... mechanics. Contemporary, on the other hand - because all of these direct to two track jazz records were kind of rough at times - it was more about the performance. They couldn't repeat a lot of things. If you got a good performance, you wanted to save it. They had all of these fancy manipulations that you could do. You could pan different bands of the frequency and move things around. Lester and I would have to map this out for an album... you can't stop the lathe. Sometimes It would take us all day, just to cut a set of lacquers - one album - maybe two days. You keep making mistakes or you want to make it better. You find places where you want to boost this instrument or take one down... on the left its too loud... the bass gets in the way. There are constant little adjustments that were mapped out for each side. I learned a lot from him because it was just one on one. But he did have it open for custom work. I started doing all of A&M's work there. Brazil 66... Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass... Procol Harum... Joe Cocker. I did Elektra Records... The Doors... all the Dionne Warwick stuff on Scepter Records. Supertramp... you name it. I had people lined up to master there.... because I could adjust the sound. I could do changes and adjustments. I was right on the ground floor when it became a creative process.
R.V.B. - So you took their final mixed tape and enhanced it.
B.G. - You took their assembled reels - side one and side two - and go down it, and make decisions on what adjustments you want to make on each tune. You have to make those adjustments when you cut it.
R.V.B. - You watch the clock?
B.G. - You can see the leaders between each tune. It was pretty obvious when tunes were over. You only have about two or three seconds to make the changes on the one console. Later on we had double boards where you could switch back and forth.
R.V.B. - Was it a two man operation with the two consoles?
B.G. - At first Lester and I did it together but then I eventually wound up doing it myself. It was a big learning experience.
R.V.B. - It sounded like a nice variety of music to work on.
B.G. - We did all the Burt Bacharach stuff. We did a lot of stuff, for just the two years I was at Contemporary, but then Elektra was building a mastering room. A&M had bought the Charlie Chaplin lot and was putting in their studios because they were so successful. They were gonna open a mastering room there too and they gave me the job... because I had been doing all their records.
R.V.B. - Were you involved with setting up the new studio at all?
B.G. - This was strictly mastering. Howard was involved with that. They had pretty good judgment on the equipment. There weren't very many competing equalizers in those days. There were only a few companies. If I felt I wasn't going to be able to get the manipulation that I wanted, I probably would have said something. The first room that was built at A&M was OK with me... with what they came up with. These guys were very good at what they did and our sound was quite good. If you know that you have good sound and good equipment, and you're able to get what you want on the disc, You're pretty happy. As we went on and new equipment started to surface, we would compare it. We would build new rooms at A&M and start experimenting with equipment. All of the things in the studio were built in house. Just like my studio in Hollywood. All of these equalizers and everything in this console in our studio is hand built by us. Even the processors... the A to D and D to A convertors are all rebuilt by us. All the analog circuitry is rebuilt. The power supplies are changed to better power supplies. All of the wiring is listened to and decided on. All these systems, we build the computer and just license the software. Just for sound quality!
R.V.B. - Once you master and cut a disc, that disc is then sent to a pressing plant?
B.G. - Exactly. We cut the master, then it's sent to the plant and they do the plating and test pressings.
R.V.B. - Can that plant make or break your master?
B.G. - That's true. Some plants are better than other plants. When it comes to vinyl, it's absolutely essential that the producer or the artist who is in charge listens to it. So many things can go wrong with vinyl. The whole process has many more limitations than CD's. It's much more difficult to keep a cutting system working well, than making a CD burner working well.
R.V.B. - There's the age old argument analog versus digital. Some people prefer analog.
B.G. - Well you know??? that's true, but I've heard good of each. Analog can be very good but a lot of people are really referring to sounds that they've heard a long time ago from analog recordings. When I say analog recordings, I mean all analog... even the consoles. On some of those really spectacular recordings, there was no digital in there anywhere. There's a lot of misconceptions about what made them that way. A lot of people will come in and want to put it through a tube stage to get that analog sound. It's not going to do it! It will maybe give you a small percentage of it, but it's not gonna give you what you've heard on an all analog recording. There are things that start happening when you start converting from analog to digital and from digital to analog... then going to a computer.. The computer is actually kind of a weak link. It actually changes the sound quite a bit. If you want it fully natural, you don't want to have anything in there that converts it from analog. What they're referring to is really obtainable but it's really hard to do with the way we made records now. You usually have some digital in there. It was so cumbersome when you had a lot of tracks, in analog. Of course analog can go downhill too. If you get too much processing... too many channels... too many things on the console... it's not going to sound that great. They all go downhill. Yes, they're a lot of great analog recordings but a lot are direct to two track. So if you're going to do a pop record where you're donna do a lot of tracks, and you're gonna have a lot of manipulation, to make the music do what you want it to do, it probably won't be the greatest sound in the world. It certainly will be good, but it won't have the magic of quality. It won't be as natural as something that's not manipulated at all... except for slight adjustments for spectrum balance. I think that there's a lot of misconceptions of what is going to make this magic sound of analog. I have these people that want to make a tape copy of their digital source. "Let's run it on to the tape machine and then we'll master it from that." No!!! Not a good idea. "Yeah, but it's warmer." Well it is warmer in a way. Now the transients aren't compromised... now it's not as detailed... now it's mushier on the bottom... now it's spread more on the bottom... and it sounds a little warmer... but, you've lost all kinds of quality and detail. "So what do you want?" Now sometimes with the digital recordings, it is so harsh... it can be with digital. It can accentuate transients. You might get a benefit from a tape machine. The tape machine is the opposite of digital in the fact that it's slow. It's transience response is slower that a digital machine. The digital machine actually comes out more transient that the source. An acoustic guitar will sound like switches being turned off and on... rather than the actual sound of the string. It will be more comfortable to listen to with analog, because it's slower. It doesn't really get the transient s fast. There's a certain kind of lag time because of the way the recording head works... because it's a coil. I don't want to get too technical about it. But that's some of what people like about analog... it's a more comfortable sound.
R.V.B. - So you eventually built your own studio.
B.G. - After 15 years at A&M, I opened my own studio in 1984.
R.V.B. - What was your goal in doing this?
B.G. - I wanted to have more control. If I wanted to change something, I wanted to be the one that decides... as the owner. At A&M, in order to get some of the equipment I wanted, I had to ask the finance department. A lot of people were telling me that I should have my own studio. I thought it would be nice to have control. I could build it the way I wanted to build it. So I took the chief technician at A&M and I made him a partner. For three years, on the weekends, he built the first console in his garage. It was analog and all hand built. It has to have equalizers... it has to have a double system... it had to have preview and program, because we were still cutting discs then. So the equalizers were doubled. Then we wanted double... double. We wanted two sides of the console to go between tunes. It's a lot of work. He couldn't work all the time because he was working at A&M. We also had to build the studio and all the acoustical work. It took a good three years.
R.V.B. - This was strictly a mastering studio. You didn't do any recording there.
B.G. - That's correct. We did experiment with it a little bit - just as a hobby - where we were making some audiophile recordings. We called the label "Straight Ahead Records." But it's really hard to sell new product to audiophiles. They like the old historic stuff. It's hard to sell new artists. The cost of making it was so much higher. You have to pay the musicians, and make the artwork, and do the promotion. When you do these reissues, it's easy because the artwork is already done and the recording is already done. All you have to do is re-master it and you're done. It just wasn't cost effective to have a recording studio. We fell back on what we do best... our core business. We have six mastering rooms in our studio.
R.V.B. - Are they analog and digital?
B.G. - They're both. The consoles are all analog. We have digital processors that we can use. We can do a combination of plug ins into the computer. It's very flexible.
R.V.B. - On the approach to different styles of music. On your resume I see: Quincy Jones, Fleetwood Mac, Jack Johnson - who is an acoustic artist - do you approach the mastering process differently to the different styles of music?
B.G. - As I was saying earlier in our conversation, it's kind of like a matter of adjusting yourself, paying attention, and getting involved in whatever comes in the door. It's also trial and error... just like mixer's. I'm trying to understand what's important for the music. What makes this music touch me emotionally. With hip hop, it might be the kick and feel of the bottom end. With Jack Johnson, you're looking for something that's kinda romanticized, in a way. He's from Hawaii and it's got a liquid thing about it... a more comfortable sound... a crooner type sound. So you don't want to make it too aggressive. If you have a tune that's up-tempo, you have to be careful because you want to keep the feeling. If I can heighten that feeling and make it even better and more effective in connecting with you better. I'll experiment with a few things during the process. Sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it does. I usually have an idea of where it needs to go. That's because I have a lot of experience. I've been doing this for so long I've heard the best of anything. This is what I say in my seminars. This can be developed. You have to spend a lot of time listening to all different types of music. Whatever type of music it is, the best ones will start standing out. You'll play one R&B tune and then another and say "Why is this one affecting me so much more?" You learn what elements made that thing connect with you so well. So when a new one comes in, you have that in your head. You hold on to that as a standard in your mind. Now you say "How can I make this thing get closer to this ideal?" You try to do things that will help it do that. A lot of times the emotion is just not there in the performance, but you can actually take it closer to the one that you think is ideal. It's better if you've heard a lot of music but if it's something new - something really different - it's still a human expression. You can fool around and manipulate it and see if it affects you. However you have to be careful with that also, because it's a collaborative effort. You are trying to help that artist and producer realize their dream. It's what they started trying to accomplish to communicate with their audience. Sometimes I don't know that. I don't know what their looking for. I have a pretty good idea, but they might not even be here. In this day and age, they're sending me files and I'm just doing what I think is going to work. That's why I need their input. I need to know if it's a good direction to take it. I can take it in a direction that's actually valid, but it might only be valid for me. I might make it too aggressive and I might like it that way... but that might not be what they had in mind. I have to be able to give them what they want, only better. That's the goal.
R.V.B. - When you make a master... back in the 70's you could release it on a reel to reel tape, a cassette tape, a record, and an 8 track. It can sound different depending what you're playing it back on... like a boom box or a small stereo or a high end stereo. Did you have to account for that also?
B.G. - Sometimes we would do that. We would be a little more extreme with the EQ. Way back in the 60's, a lot of stuff was still on AM radio. That changed the sound a lot. We would do a special mastering for the single. Today we don't... we haven't for a long time. The only thing that might be done is shortening or editing the single.
R.V.B. - What are you proud of in your place in the music industry?
B.G. - I like to be known for turning out a quality product... not just a bunch of cheap thrills and hyped up stuff. I like to feel that I've helped things musically as well as commercially... from a feeling standpoint. That's my goal. Sometimes I don't win projects because they aren't aggressive enough. It's hard for me to get into distorted things. When you manipulate these things and make them really hot, they're all fudgy, grainy and smeary. The sound quality is poor but they are loud. For some people, that's all they want. I really prefer to try and straddle the fence. I know I need to be close to the louder things, but I don't want to destroy the music. I'm very concerned about serving the music.
R.V.B. - How many people work at your company?
B.G. - We have about 17 people that work here. We have about 9 people in the Tokyo location. We have a couple of rooms there. We also do Blu-ray authoring there. We occupy two floors in an office building. I go there once or twice a year. It's staffed by the Japanese. The main mastering engineer there had worked here for six years. My wife does the business end of it.
R.V.B. - Let the music people take of the music and let the numbers people take care of the numbers. (Haha) Congratulations on your important work in the music industry. You've been awarded with some rewards. Thank you for the long detailed answers... I appreciate it.
B.G. - Sure thing.
Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz
This interview may not be reproduced in any part or form without permission from this site.
For more information on Bernie Grundman Mastering visit his website berniegrundmanmastering
Over 10,000 records, CD's, Cassette tapes, 8 track tapes. Click here to see Musicguy247 Records, CD's, Tapes and Publications on Amazon
For collectable vintage music tee shirts click Collectable tee shirt tab on the right column.
More Records, CD's and tapes on Discogs under Bertberner. Click here to view products Musicguy247/Bertberner Records, Cd’s, Tapes on Discogs.
For information on this site contact Robvonb247(at)gmail(dot)com
