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Masters Champion
For the second time in three years, engineer Gavin Lurssen wins big.
By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
April 21, 2004
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| Gavin Lurssen |
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| Courtesy of The Mastering Lab |
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If the practitioner of any music profession has a right to claim to be an unsung hero, it's the mastering engineer. The men and women who put the final touches on recordings before they are mass-produced play a critical role, but until recently, they weren't even eligible for Grammy Awards.
When the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) changed that policy in 2001 and began granting Grammys to mastering engineers, Gavin Lurssen '91 didn't waste any time. He received his first Grammy for his work on the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Album of the Year, 2001) and followed up that with his second Grammy win for his work on Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey (Best Historical Album, 2003).
"It puts you in a certain light," said Lurssen shortly after his second Grammy win in February. "It's a word-of-mouth industry in my end of it, and when you have a couple of Grammys, people deal with you in a certain way. Sometimes you're treated like an underling, but with the accolades, more people have higher expectations and perhaps pick you over somebody without the accolades."
While the awards will help, Lurssen didn't have trouble piling up a long list of credits before he started landing the NARAS props. He'd worked with artists such as Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Leo Kottke, Green Day, and Tom Waits.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa—his father worked there as a journalist—Lurssen went to high school in Washington, D.C., before attending Berklee as a film scoring major. After graduating in 1991, he moved immediately to Los Angeles and landed an entry-level job at The Mastering Lab, where he continues to work as mastering engineer.
While Lurssen has mastered a vast range of music styles, from punk and jazz to acoustic pop and scratchy archival recordings, he said that there are several concepts that apply regardless of the material.
"The art of mastering in my mind is similar to the ancient art of Chinese balance, feng shui," said Lurssen. "People will argue that if you walk into a room that's not properly balanced, you know it. It's the same thing with audio. You aim for complete tonal balance and you know it when it's right."
Berklee's Music Production and Engineering Department offers students several courses covering mastering techniques in depth, including Mix Techniques Lab and Advanced Digital Mastering, Editing, and Delivery.
One of the most important lessons Lurssen has learned on the job, he said, was avoiding pumping up the volume on his projects unnecessarily.
"Some mastering engineers try to outdo each other by making their disc louder than the other guy's disc," Lurssen said. "You have to be a responsible mastering engineer. The artist might like [the louder disc] for five days but then they'll find it fatiguing and less pleasant to the ears."
Lurssen's work on the Scorsese blues box presented a particular test because the material was originally recorded over a period spanning 50–60 years.
"It was recorded and mixed before the CD was even thought of as a format and because of that, there's a whole different set of parameters," Lurssen said of the box set issued to accompany Scorsese's PBS documentary on the history of the blues. "The biggest challenge was getting the consistency so that all these songs can live on the same disc. The other challenge was just finding the right disc level to maintain the original sound of these recordings, without giving it a contemporary sound."
Three other Berklee alumni also won awards at the 46th Grammys:
- Composer Howard Shore '68, Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Arranger Gil Goldstein '70, Best Instrumental Arrangement (with Michael Brecker), "Timbuktu," from Brecker's Wide Angles
- Engineer Todd Whitelock '89, Best Engineered Album, Classical (with Richard King), Yo-Yo Ma's Obrigado Brazil
Two alumni received top honors at the 76th Academy Awards, also held in February:
- Howard Shore '68, Original Score and Original Song, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- Michael Semanick '85, Sound Mixing, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
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