Drew Lavyne
The Art Of Listening At a.l.l digitalBy Randy Alberts
As a pressman to his keen eye or a master chef to their nose, Drew Lavyne simply refers to himself as an "ear" when it comes to mastering good-tasting music. He deeply trusts his own sense of aural conduit because he knows the last stage of every collective creative process is the stage that can be sonically shined or dulled the most by any one person.
"People are coming to me because they like my ears," says the respectful Lavyne of his Grammy-level work for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Moby, Dave Matthews Band, Marc Anthony, White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others. He has trusted BIAS Peak when it comes to those golden ears of his for ten years now, as well. "I am the final check, so in a way I'm mastering for the masses."
Lavyne's is one of those classic music and record industry stories gone good. You know, the "mailroom clerk at a record label now mastering platinum records for a living" story where people named Ringo, Aretha and Presley trust your ears more than anyone else's? His boss at EMI and now the current head of A&M Records, Ron Fair, advised Drew early on to open a project studio and produce new talent after earning his Bachelor of Music degree from New York University. It wasn't a year after Lavyne took his mentor's advice when he edited and mastered a Jon Secada record that went big, so in 1993 he opened a.l.l. digital in New York City and went to work.
Offering a full range of mastering, editing and production services for music, film, t.v. and children's content, the rest has literally been historic for Lavyne and a.l.l. He was asked and accepted the honor of mastering the freshly-remixed 1968 Elvis Presley song "A Little Less Conversation" that in '03 came back to break one of the planet's most cherished music records of all time.
Touched By Elvis: BIAS Peak
"I'm still floored by the thought that this was a song Elvis recorded," says Lavyne. The track he mastered shot to the tops of the pops in England and 25 countries, breaking a 30-year tie between The King and the Beatles for most #1 singles ever in the U.K. "He was standing near or maybe even leaning up against the tape machine that recorded and mixed the original tracks that I'm now working with in Peak, wow. Junkie XL remixed it and I was then the last set of ears on the song before the song went back out to the world again, which just floored me. It was all mastered in Peak. Santana, Bare Naked Ladies, Aretha, it's all done in Peak."
Drew has also mastered or edited albums for Richard Pryor, Ringo Starr and lots of projects for company names ending in "Records" — A&M, Arista, Capitol, Def Jam, Geffen, Koch, RCA, Roadrunner, Virgin, Sony and V2. He also used Peak for the infectiously good "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, Dave Matthews' "Stay" and Aretha Franklin's "A Rose Is Still A Rose." He's just as into his other clients' and friends' music, as well. Lavyne recently worked with The Wiggles, an Australian kids group that sings songs about counting to ten and being courteous and such, and he has also worked on other children's projects for Bob The Builder and Barney, as well.
"Elvis, Ringo, Barney, Bob The Builder and The Wiggles have all come my way," laughs Lavyne.
Speeding With Peak & Apple
Lavyne prefers a focused, powerfully simple mastering toolset centered around Peak that includes BIAS' SoundSoap and mastering plug-ins from Waves and Universal Audio's UAD-1 card. That's it. After eleven years of tweaking all the mastering apparatus out there — every mastering engineer's personal obsession to tame, he says — Drew has distilled his choices considerably down to his trim tool belt of today. He also has plenty to say about the new Apple Audio Units (AU) format plug-ins and the speed of working via BIAS these days on his new Apple G5.
"It's a dual 2 GHz Apple G5 with 3.5 gigabytes of RAM which, between you and me, is almost overkill," laughs Lavyne. "When you're doing this stuff all day long the difference between waiting a minute-and-a-half and 12 seconds for a task to complete ends up making a big difference in your day. You're looking at taking an hour less time per day now to do the same sort of things you did before on the G4."
And Peak and the other BIAS plug-ins like SoundSoap and Vbox, as well? What are those running like now?
"Peak is my main launch pad and there's not a project I don't start and end with it. The speed increase is ever-present in all my plug-ins, too, depending on who's plug-in it is, but all the BIAS stuff is now G5-optimized so there's a huge jump in performance there. In some cases that means going from 40 or 50 seconds to render something really big before to it now taking just 3 or 4 seconds; and path rendering has gone from taking minutes to taking seconds."
One of the many new features added to Peak in version 4 that particularly lights Lavyne up is the new audio document file drawer.
"The new drawer that comes off of each audio file now to show all of its regions and other info. That's a brilliant move," continues Lavyne. "When you open an audio file there's an optional drawer now that slides open on the right and shows all the regions integrated into one window. BIAS has combined the regions and the palette tools all into one place. That's a real time saver, as is working with the fast new AU plug-ins. And, we're only on version 1 [of Apple's Panther] and it's already beating everything that came before it by a long shot! It is a quantum leap. Things are dozens of times faster now, and that's showing up especially in Peak. It was rock solid before but I don't think I could crash it now if I even tried to. Peak is just flying, and you can quote me on that one."
Elvis, Barney, Ringo & Drew
A look into Lavyne's laid-back and respected a.l.l. digital studios — named for his initials, Andrew Laurence Lavyne — is like peering into a Manhattan living room that has the best stereo in a 10-mile radius. His main a.l.l. desk utilizes Mackie HR824 monitors, across the room is a Bose system, and a third audio space at the studio helps him get to know an artist's tracks and subsequent sonics intimately.
But it's usually not until he's walked a couple of mastering mixes through Central Park or Times Square enveloped in his trusty iPod headphones that Lavyne fully gets the artist's message and can wrap it all up for the rest of us to hear. Lavyne is big on the living room vibe for his most critical listening, as well, and once said he'd eventually like to have more people working with him someday in a big house, "a place with lots of living rooms in it." A home-grown business using Peak with big visions beyond the cozy fireplace warming all those future a.l.l. staff meetings.
Lavyne has mastered some historic sessions before, but his belated work with Elvis is epic. Breaking a 30-year tie with the Beatles for the most #1 singles in the UK is huge, huge news on both sides of the Atlantic. Drew mastered the new project in whole with Peak, made some subtle changes with a few choice plug-ins and the song soon became the 18th Presley single to reach #1 in England.
"Junkie XL did a phenomenal job on the mix," says Lavyne.
More than anything else Lavyne brings to every a.l.l. digital mastering project — or any project he's on, for that matter — is respect. He's played guitar and written songs for 25 years, has a music degree, records his own music and performs live gigs at least once a month, but it wasn't until the Beatles were brought up here that he even mentioned his own musical pursuits. Respect always includes putting one's self last on any list, and that's a cinch for Lavyne when the list has the Beatles on it.
"I've always wanted to be a Beatle," the 34-year-old Lavyne volunteers when asked about his influences. He says he's an old soul with a degree in Beatleology, so we asked him what he thought of the newly remixed and remastered Let It Be Naked. "I love it. I don't consider Let It Be as classic a record as, say, a Revolver or a Sergeant Pepper, but I was really impressed with how intimate it sounded and how much it now feels more like an album. It makes the original now feel more like a blurry snapshot of the album."
"I've also got to say that the one project in 2003 that gave me the biggest thrill. Everyone I've worked with will understand this knowing what a huge Beatles fan I am," admits Lavyne in closing, "but that was working with Ringo. His new album [Ringorama on Koch Records] was produced by Mark Hudson and Ringo and, especially being the Beatles head that I am, it was such an honor for me. To be involved with a Beatle and to be able to master his stuff at this stage of his career is such an honor for me."