Late September 2023 Ken Scott met with John Webber who's mastering the Bowie catalogue at Air Studios Mastering. The work involved half speed vinyl mastering, both met to chat about the complexities of the project and all manner of other mastering related issues in front of an audience of fellow producers and engineers.
Ken started at Abbey Road Studios. Back then, nearly 60 years ago, part of the transition to becoming an engineer was to spend time cutting discs. Most of these would have been for people such as George Martin to take home an acetate to listen to at home.
Learning what you could get away with and what you couldn't get away with helped the fledgling engineer understand the limitations of vinyl so once they became a full recording engineer only recordings that would cut it were sent for mastering. With this in mind, it seemed like a great idea for Ken who spent a brief period cutting discs on his way to becoming a sucessful engineer/producer could chat with someone who masters for a living to discuss progress and much more.
Just some of the artists that Ken has worked with: The Beatles • Elton John • Pink Floyd • David Bowie • Procol Harum • Mahavishnu Orchestra • Duran Duran • Jeff Beck
Information about artists John has mastered for is in the box below.
Keen eyed people might spot a number of leading producers in the audience, a surprising number of questions were asked by the audience which caught us off guard as we hadn't put up a room mic to capture questions (rookie mistake!) so had to pull audio off the camera mic - sorry about the average quality!
A big thanks to everyone at Air Studios for making this possible and for providing a great venue to record a relaxed and informative chat with so many industry professionals. People who joined us for the evening toured around the newly completed mastering suites at Air - very impressive - we hope to be able to bring a studio tour around the studios in the near future.
A very big thank you to Ken Scott and John Webber for taking time out to do this and to Nikki Affleck for such a huge effort in making everything come together.
