You may have noticed that I've been real quiet over the last 4 months, the exciting news is I've been working to release a full length album on the 18th of October! I'm trying something a little bit different today. I thought it would be fun to do some blogging and bring you along for the journey, from PR and final mixes, through to marketing, all the way up to release day and beyond! I think there are a lot of interesting processes that go into an independent release and I’m so thrilled to share with you what my life is like for one of the most exciting periods a musician can experience! Please read with an open heart, I hope you laugh and learn, and maybe even grow a little as a person? Welcome to me. - Tom Cardy
26/9/24 - 22 days before release day - How to Master an Album!
Hey guys (again). In my first blog I wanted to talk a bit about Mastering an independent album. So the tracks require “mastering,” which is a process at the end of MIXING the different elements, that polishes the sound recording and ensures the songs shine on any speaker or headphone. Just to be clear, and this will make more sense to you soon, It is NOT the process of replacing every single audio track with different farts.
I say this because I've just got the tracks back from the mastering engineer and he’s replaced the entire thing with fart noises, again. All 10 tracks are just fart noises. Why does this keep happening to me? This is the 6th mastering house I've used. I don’t know how they manage to all do it exactly the same way. I thought it was a fun prank they were all in on, but this last guy I used had no sense of humor. I made sure of it, I spent 48 hours with the boring fuck to really be 100% sure that, if there was some elaborate joke being played on me by the “Masters Engineering Guild of Music Mastering”, he was not going to do me like so many of his cronies had done me before. i.e dunk on me emotionally/professionally. Lo and behold, I must once again accept a 10 track, 1.2 GB folder to my google drive that is literally just professionally mastered fart sounds.
I didn’t really want to talk about this sort of thing in the blog. I was really stoked to share fun facts and interesting practises of the music industry but instead all I can type about is my 4 year fart feud with ANY AND EVERY mastering engineer within 200 KM of the Greater Sydney Area. That isn’t what you are paying your money for*1. But guess what, that’s the industry, baby. You thought it was going to be all champagne and ARIA awards? I’ve got bad news bronco, you were born with a taste pallet too grossly sensitive for any carbonated beverage*2, plus the ARIA board members all have COMPLETELY ILLEGITIMATE and EXOTICALLY VARYING reasons to despise you. Sorry, did I say you? I meant me. Welcome to my fucking life.
---
All of the tracks are different fart sounds, I could whinge and moan about how we got here or, we can regroup and figure out a solution because in just over three weeks I have an album to release. Although it’s not easy, as I try to find a solution I become reminded of the fact that one song is just a single fart held for 3 minutes and 15 seconds. I thought it was the famous wartime bugle diddy “The Last Post” for a moment until I compared it with the version my neighbour was playing on his actual trumpet (which he was doing/does every time his doordash arrives). I could immediately tell which was farts. One song is a lot of very, very high pitch farts that seem almost inhuman. Another is half a second long, and is confirmed to be the quickest fart I've ever heard*3.
I think part of this pathetic jape is that the engineers actually spend the 2 allocated weeks mastering and take the $12K I pay upfront to still work, albeit on a completely different album than the one I intended to have mastered. God, I'm so goddamn mad right now. Fuck. Sorry. They’ve been doing this to me for 4 years now and it’s SO UNFAIR. Every time I end up just mastering them myself and moving on. Wait another year, think maybe it was all just in my head, try a new engineer and then invariably receive back farts. This time i’m not taking this lying down, screw angry calls and being passive aggressive. I’m walking straight down to “REDACTED SYDNEY STUDIO NAME” to demand they remove the farts from the recording or just re-master the right tracks (depending on if they put farts over my songs or if they are just full new fart compositions, not sure yet). YES I’m G’ing myself up, this is GREAT. I wasn’t actually going to do it, but now that I’ve used those CAPITALS my heart rate has literally shot up 40 bpm! I’m burning up. OK! I’m going to confront the fuckos! Or I might go Ice-Skating! I’m so f’n G’d up! Will decide on the way!
---
I was ready to rumble, but Dolf was not having it. Over the phone this audio dweeb seemed like the sort of no-humor cucklord that thrived on a physical altercation, such was the zeal I launched at him over his mastering desk in studio 3. I had workshopped and rehearsed my war cry on the bus ride over*4. As in, what I'd shout as I flew through the air and landed on the two-faced German audiophile (watch it). “I’ll teach you to play God with another Man's livelihood!” was what I landed on. But in the heat of the moment (and the surprising/infuriating squeal sound Dolf made when I crawled through the window) I flubbed my line and just yelled “FAAAAARTMONGER”.
To be fair I didn’t do much damage, it took only 3 open-hand-face-pushes for me to realize Dolf was crying and my victory over him would be hollow were I to give into my baser primal instincts (e.g. murder dumb P’ Of S’ and launch his stupid body into the sun). He stopped crying enough to say he was sorry. I said what for? He said he didn’t know but he was always in trouble, that he was pathetic, and started crying again. I shook him violently and leaned in very, very close to his face. After 2 minutes of foreplay I whispered hot breath onto the bit where he would/should have a mustache, had he been a man able to grow a mustache. “You put farts on my album, take them off now, please”.
From the moment I said “farts” the sad little thing made a choking sound and hurled himself at my feet, begging me not to change a thing. “It is my masterpiece,” he whimpered. “40 years of work in psycho-acoustics and audio engineering have culminated in this one single manifestation of my life, my skill. I will never again master something as I have this! Please! It must be shown to the world! PLEASE”. It was tough to argue with him because 1) He spoke all in German so I had to remember what he said at the time, come home and put it into a translation app 2) he was so sad. I felt for the guy. I felt angry at him, sure. But I also knew what it meant to just live for art. I hardly pushed Dolfs face after that. We decided to fix the window, bandage me up and talk things through.
I ended up taking Dolf to the Ice - Zoo*5 and paying for him to have 3 hours out on the rink. I gotta admit, 15 minutes prior to skates down, if anyone had asked me what I thought of the man I'd say “preposterously weak and probably bad at sex”. What I saw out on the ice was an angel chock-full of grace, gliding and spinning like an origami beyblade. If you’d asked me then and there what I thought of Dolf I'd say “Preposterously good at ice skating (and probably bad at sex)”. He’d keep calling out “watch this” and then just push a little kid over onto the ice or into the sideboards. It would make me laugh, and then he’d laugh, and we’d both laugh until the next biggest kid would skate over to try and avenge the last one. Dolf would yell “watch this!” and push that kid over. I'd laugh, he’d laugh etc. We’d go around and around. In the rink, Dolf would skate around and around. The children would spin around and around (if Dolf was spinning them). The changing of the seasons, winter always turns to spring, summer, and slowly the year crawls back to winter. I write songs. I mix songs. I forget that everytime I submit my songs to mastering engineers they come back as farts. I submit songs to mastering engineers. They come back as farts. I write more songs. The rhythm of life is one we may not always want to dance to, but it does not just stop because we sit by the edge of the dancefloor and sulk. I will hold my head up high and march true into my future, gratefully playing the hand that the great creator has dealt me. For this time, as Dolf plunges fresh twins into the glass barrier, it is my/this blog's new purpose to release a never before conceived audio masterpiece that will change the world.
EDIT: Found out I was sending the wrong Google Drive folder to mastering engineers for the past 4 years. Not the focus of this blog to explain why I have 10 tracks of fart songs stored. Have re-submitted original songs to different engineer, almost ready to upload to streaming. Told Dolf that we have to put our never before conceived audio masterpiece on the shelf for now. He has not returned my calls. I hope he is ok.
1* Important: Beginning entry 2 the blog will be heavily monetised. Also, no l0serz
2* I truly cannot withstand a mouthful of Perrier.
3* Yep. I checked, quickest fart I’ve heard. I timed it and went back to my notes. I haven't heard one faster. Well not yet at least.
4* I sat with the bus driver and we bounced ideas back and forth. Heads up, bus drivers are very angry people. Best keep them at arms length of revenge plans unless you actually don’t mind grievous bodily harm/committing it.
*5 Marrickvilles premier skate rink, open all year round. It is not a literal zoo, don’t expect polar bears and penguins and shit. I did, and I've never been even half as dissapointed.
Tom Cardy
Hey Guys!
You may have noticed that I've been real quiet over the last 4 months, the exciting news is I've been working to release a full length album on the 18th of October! I'm trying something a little bit different today. I thought it would be fun to do some blogging and bring you along for the journey, from PR and final mixes, through to marketing, all the way up to release day and beyond! I think there are a lot of interesting processes that go into an independent release and I’m so thrilled to share with you what my life is like for one of the most exciting periods a musician can experience! Please read with an open heart, I hope you laugh and learn, and maybe even grow a little as a person? Welcome to me. - Tom Cardy
26/9/24 - 22 days before release day - How to Master an Album!
Hey guys (again). In my first blog I wanted to talk a bit about Mastering an independent album. So the tracks require “mastering,” which is a process at the end of MIXING the different elements, that polishes the sound recording and ensures the songs shine on any speaker or headphone. Just to be clear, and this will make more sense to you soon, It is NOT the process of replacing every single audio track with different farts.
I say this because I've just got the tracks back from the mastering engineer and he’s replaced the entire thing with fart noises, again. All 10 tracks are just fart noises. Why does this keep happening to me? This is the 6th mastering house I've used. I don’t know how they manage to all do it exactly the same way. I thought it was a fun prank they were all in on, but this last guy I used had no sense of humor. I made sure of it, I spent 48 hours with the boring fuck to really be 100% sure that, if there was some elaborate joke being played on me by the “Masters Engineering Guild of Music Mastering”, he was not going to do me like so many of his cronies had done me before. i.e dunk on me emotionally/professionally. Lo and behold, I must once again accept a 10 track, 1.2 GB folder to my google drive that is literally just professionally mastered fart sounds.
I didn’t really want to talk about this sort of thing in the blog. I was really stoked to share fun facts and interesting practises of the music industry but instead all I can type about is my 4 year fart feud with ANY AND EVERY mastering engineer within 200 KM of the Greater Sydney Area. That isn’t what you are paying your money for*1. But guess what, that’s the industry, baby. You thought it was going to be all champagne and ARIA awards? I’ve got bad news bronco, you were born with a taste pallet too grossly sensitive for any carbonated beverage*2, plus the ARIA board members all have COMPLETELY ILLEGITIMATE and EXOTICALLY VARYING reasons to despise you. Sorry, did I say you? I meant me. Welcome to my fucking life.
---
All of the tracks are different fart sounds, I could whinge and moan about how we got here or, we can regroup and figure out a solution because in just over three weeks I have an album to release. Although it’s not easy, as I try to find a solution I become reminded of the fact that one song is just a single fart held for 3 minutes and 15 seconds. I thought it was the famous wartime bugle diddy “The Last Post” for a moment until I compared it with the version my neighbour was playing on his actual trumpet (which he was doing/does every time his doordash arrives). I could immediately tell which was farts. One song is a lot of very, very high pitch farts that seem almost inhuman. Another is half a second long, and is confirmed to be the quickest fart I've ever heard*3.
I think part of this pathetic jape is that the engineers actually spend the 2 allocated weeks mastering and take the $12K I pay upfront to still work, albeit on a completely different album than the one I intended to have mastered. God, I'm so goddamn mad right now. Fuck. Sorry. They’ve been doing this to me for 4 years now and it’s SO UNFAIR. Every time I end up just mastering them myself and moving on. Wait another year, think maybe it was all just in my head, try a new engineer and then invariably receive back farts. This time i’m not taking this lying down, screw angry calls and being passive aggressive. I’m walking straight down to “REDACTED SYDNEY STUDIO NAME” to demand they remove the farts from the recording or just re-master the right tracks (depending on if they put farts over my songs or if they are just full new fart compositions, not sure yet). YES I’m G’ing myself up, this is GREAT. I wasn’t actually going to do it, but now that I’ve used those CAPITALS my heart rate has literally shot up 40 bpm! I’m burning up. OK! I’m going to confront the fuckos! Or I might go Ice-Skating! I’m so f’n G’d up! Will decide on the way!
---
I was ready to rumble, but Dolf was not having it. Over the phone this audio dweeb seemed like the sort of no-humor cucklord that thrived on a physical altercation, such was the zeal I launched at him over his mastering desk in studio 3. I had workshopped and rehearsed my war cry on the bus ride over*4. As in, what I'd shout as I flew through the air and landed on the two-faced German audiophile (watch it). “I’ll teach you to play God with another Man's livelihood!” was what I landed on. But in the heat of the moment (and the surprising/infuriating squeal sound Dolf made when I crawled through the window) I flubbed my line and just yelled “FAAAAARTMONGER”.
To be fair I didn’t do much damage, it took only 3 open-hand-face-pushes for me to realize Dolf was crying and my victory over him would be hollow were I to give into my baser primal instincts (e.g. murder dumb P’ Of S’ and launch his stupid body into the sun). He stopped crying enough to say he was sorry. I said what for? He said he didn’t know but he was always in trouble, that he was pathetic, and started crying again. I shook him violently and leaned in very, very close to his face. After 2 minutes of foreplay I whispered hot breath onto the bit where he would/should have a mustache, had he been a man able to grow a mustache. “You put farts on my album, take them off now, please”.
From the moment I said “farts” the sad little thing made a choking sound and hurled himself at my feet, begging me not to change a thing. “It is my masterpiece,” he whimpered. “40 years of work in psycho-acoustics and audio engineering have culminated in this one single manifestation of my life, my skill. I will never again master something as I have this! Please! It must be shown to the world! PLEASE”. It was tough to argue with him because 1) He spoke all in German so I had to remember what he said at the time, come home and put it into a translation app 2) he was so sad. I felt for the guy. I felt angry at him, sure. But I also knew what it meant to just live for art. I hardly pushed Dolfs face after that. We decided to fix the window, bandage me up and talk things through.
I ended up taking Dolf to the Ice - Zoo*5 and paying for him to have 3 hours out on the rink. I gotta admit, 15 minutes prior to skates down, if anyone had asked me what I thought of the man I'd say “preposterously weak and probably bad at sex”. What I saw out on the ice was an angel chock-full of grace, gliding and spinning like an origami beyblade. If you’d asked me then and there what I thought of Dolf I'd say “Preposterously good at ice skating (and probably bad at sex)”. He’d keep calling out “watch this” and then just push a little kid over onto the ice or into the sideboards. It would make me laugh, and then he’d laugh, and we’d both laugh until the next biggest kid would skate over to try and avenge the last one. Dolf would yell “watch this!” and push that kid over. I'd laugh, he’d laugh etc. We’d go around and around. In the rink, Dolf would skate around and around. The children would spin around and around (if Dolf was spinning them). The changing of the seasons, winter always turns to spring, summer, and slowly the year crawls back to winter. I write songs. I mix songs. I forget that everytime I submit my songs to mastering engineers they come back as farts. I submit songs to mastering engineers. They come back as farts. I write more songs. The rhythm of life is one we may not always want to dance to, but it does not just stop because we sit by the edge of the dancefloor and sulk. I will hold my head up high and march true into my future, gratefully playing the hand that the great creator has dealt me. For this time, as Dolf plunges fresh twins into the glass barrier, it is my/this blog's new purpose to release a never before conceived audio masterpiece that will change the world.
EDIT: Found out I was sending the wrong Google Drive folder to mastering engineers for the past 4 years. Not the focus of this blog to explain why I have 10 tracks of fart songs stored. Have re-submitted original songs to different engineer, almost ready to upload to streaming. Told Dolf that we have to put our never before conceived audio masterpiece on the shelf for now. He has not returned my calls. I hope he is ok.
1* Important: Beginning entry 2 the blog will be heavily monetised. Also, no l0serz
2* I truly cannot withstand a mouthful of Perrier.
3* Yep. I checked, quickest fart I’ve heard. I timed it and went back to my notes. I haven't heard one faster. Well not yet at least.
4* I sat with the bus driver and we bounced ideas back and forth. Heads up, bus drivers are very angry people. Best keep them at arms length of revenge plans unless you actually don’t mind grievous bodily harm/committing it.
*5 Marrickvilles premier skate rink, open all year round. It is not a literal zoo, don’t expect polar bears and penguins and shit. I did, and I've never been even half as dissapointed.
11 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 9,802