Let’s get one thing straight.
This is about YOU.
Alex's whole journey and quest for fidelity through mastering is driven by one question:
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“How will I help YOU sound incredible through mastering?”
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Learning piano aged four planted the seed for Alex's journey. It laid perfect foundations for lifelong musicality.
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Alex picked up a First Class BSc (Hons) Music Technology degree and the university awarded him a Richer Sounds Award for outstanding studio work. He also won a placement at Sony Music, before completing a Masters degree with distinction.
Fellow engineers began to comment that his recordings sounded “finished” and they asked what “magic tool” was enabling this.
He started to help friends and other engineers by mastering or fine-tuning their recordings. Mastering and the quest for sonic perfection captivated him and lit a spark that never died.
Alex completed university whilst working at a guitar shop and releasing two self-produced albums (one of which charted alongside historic releases by Massive Attack, Zero 7 and The Chemical Brothers in the iTunes Electronic charts). He also picked up live sound work for signed acts, an X Factor semi finalist and UK chart-toppers The Hoosiers. He ghost-wrote and produced songs for YouTube names with subscribers in the hundreds of thousands.
From a mastering engineer’s perspective, all this gave Alex a broad appreciation for the needs and the mindset of YOU, the musician. He learned how musicians choose their instrument or their sound. He learned the process of releasing music and how this journey is lived through the lens of the artist. He learned what musicians strive for through a live mix or a recording.
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... Two years later, Alex began a PhD study of mastering engineers, their culture and their creative process. He traveled the globe to interview 20 of the most renowned names in mastering history. GRAMMY winning, 43-year mastering juggernaut Vlado Meller invited Alex for intensive, hands-on training to refine his mastering skills in Charleston, South Carolina.
From Sony’s studios in New York, to famed Abbey Road Studios in London, Amsterdam and far beyond, Alex noticed each engineer’s creative and technical approach to be different. Never wrong, but different.
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By the end of his journey, “How are they doing it?” became “That’s not how I’d do it!” or “I like some of those methods!” and sometimes even “Hey, imagine combining their methods!”
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“How will I help YOU sound incredible through mastering?” became a more informed question. ​At this stage, it felt right for Alex to begin offering his own mastering services more openly and with a creative approach that incorporated the sum total of his experiences.​ Indalo Mastering grew to be a moonlight labour of love.
Gradually, he began investing in world-class signal processing hardware. Along with friends, Alex rigorously tested a plethora of equipment and paid close attention to how each individual piece of equipment affected the audio signal.
The Indalo mastering chain uses a range of digital and analogue hardware made by the likes of PrismSound, Weiss Engineering, Looptrotter Audio Engineering and Lynx Studio Technology.
This hardware enables Alex to enhance your music in ways that are simply not possible when using plug-ins or working only in the digital audio workstation environment.
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... Alex is a musician too. He understands that music is art, and that art is someone’s baby. Alex would love to hear your beautiful music, make any necessary adjustments and craft the perfect sonic experience to get those endorphins racing.
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“You missed a bit!”
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Yep! You already know what great records sound like, and every great record is professionally mastered. But it is likely that you or your producer are now too familiar with your own recordings. Only fresh ears can pinpoint what should be done to help bring them to the finish line. That's what mastering is.
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And speaking of ears, for whatever it's worth, a music teacher, then a vocal coach, then finally a colleague identified that Alex possesses the auditory phenomenon of ‘perfect pitch’. He can name individual notes, keys of songs or pitches of everyday sounds (car horns etc) without a reference tone. “That fridge hums a B flat!”
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It can drive him mad... ;)
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To date, Alex has delivered mastering workshops and published research on mastering. In September 2018, he presented as part of the Audio Engineering Society’s first ever mastering conference. This took place at the University of Westminster in London. Alex also contributed a chapter, 'The Creative Mastering Studio' for the 2020 Routledge publication, 'Mastering in Music'.
Alex has offered technical support and produced tutorial videos on behalf of one of the world’s leading manufacturers of professional audio equipment (including mastering).
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You've heard the Indalo story. Now share yours! Where are you going and how can Indalo help make it happen?
