Our guest this episode is LA mastering engineer John Greenham who just won a Grammy for his work on Billie Eilish’s album. We talk to him about how he came to work with Billie, and dig into his work on the album in depth, discussing topics including:
- John’s mastering chain and philosophy
- Whether “Xanny” is the loudest song ever
- How to get RMS levels above zero (!)
- Loudness, confidence and client relations
- Are loud mixes a problem for mastering engineers ?
- What it’s like to win a Grammy
Links
Ian’s Is Billie Eilish Too Loud ? video
Finneas on Producing Billie Eilish’s Hit Album in his Bedroom
Fantastic show guys!
Good episode. Interesting. More about attitudes and perspective than technicalities (that's just a comment not intended as either positive or negative! it's all interesting 🙂 Keep them coming.
New listener here--I enjoyed this and am going back to ep. 1 to catch up. Where do we submit questions or topics? The site says if we have any to let you know, but I don't see anything like "contact us", etc. My first would be: which episode, if any, gives the 10,000 foot view of the whole music production process from songwriting to uploading the file to Spotify, etc.? I'm a young songwriter with access to many instruments and will use Cubase Pro/WaveLab (only dabbled so far). I'd like to start with the end in mind, so at each point (writing/recording/mixing/mastering) I'm minimizing re-work and really doing each part correctly for long-term. I could see turning producing or mastering into a profession but for now I'm just a creator with a passion for doing things right the first time. Don't want to learn one area without knowing how it'll flow into the next. Thanks for any insight!
Really interesting listen! A lot of practical perspectives on loudness theory. So fascinating to hear John's story.