In my previous post, Where to Record, I discussed the factors to be weighed in choosing a place to record. Today, I will introduce the members of the recording team.
The person who oversees the whole process of making the recording from beginning to end is the recording producer. This is usually the person (or people – you'll sometimes see two people credited as co-producers of a disc) who runs the recording sessions, although sometimes a separate "session director" may be employed for this purpose. For Cedille Records, I act as producer for the great majority of our recordings. Even for the discs where we use an outside producer – usually Grammy-winning producer Judith Sherman – I act as an uncredited "executive producer," attending the recording sessions when possible and personally weighing in during the various stages of the post-recording process to maintain the quality for which Cedille Records is known.
The other key person at a recording session is the recording engineer. Sometimes the producer and engineer are the same person (Judith Sherman usually engineers the recordings she produces, for example). The engineer is the person who achieves the sound at the sessions – including choosing and positioning the microphones (and often the players around the microphones) and balancing the levels to achieve the ultimate sound "mix." For almost all of Cedille's recordings, veteran engineer Bill Maylone performs this function.
After the recording sessions, the producer usually comes up with the edit plan – choosing which takes will be used where. In our case, recording engineer Bill Maylone does all of the digital editing – the actual digital "splicing" of those takes together into a continuous whole – although on some CDs, you will see a distinct credit (separate from the producer and engineer) for "digital editing."
The last stage of making an album is called "mastering." This is where the various pieces on the disc are assembled in order and spaced out properly, levels are balanced from one piece to another, and any final sound processing is performed. While this is often done by the recording engineer and/or producer, there are mastering engineers and studios devoted to performing this function for albums where special treatment is needed. Most recently for Cedille, we used Paul Zinman of SoundByte Productions to master eighth blackbird's strange imaginary animals CD, which won this year's Grammy award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."
Speaking of Chamber Music, I should mention that Cedille Records has just launched a sale on all our full-price chamber music CDs. You can visit our web site for details.
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