Recording - September 2019 - 29

Reuben
Cohen

Gavin
Lurssen
How was it working with Elliot as a reissue producer?
Gavin: I've known Elliot for a long time and there was a
great rhythm to the way we worked.

Typically, when you master a project, I'm assuming
maybe you master an album in a day, or maybe two?

Gavin: Usually it's an album a day, and then there are revisions, and sometimes a band will send us a new mix based on
our mastering and we have to master that and add it in.
In the case of these Toto records, we'd be working on one
and they might be referencing that while we were working on
the next one. Then we might come back and tweak a song or
two on the previous record, and then come back to the next
record. We went chronologically, but we did some bouncing
back and forth making tweaks and so forth.

Since the albums are from different eras, how did you
get the first album to hang with the seventh album
and the tenth album? Were there any challenges?
Gavin: That definitely was something that was high in our
level of consciousness in the approach we took on the project.
Reuben: I do remember discussions between Elliott, the band,
and us, about how we were going to approach the first couple of
records relative to the rest in the body of work. The first few needed help with the bottom end, and we applied EQ and did some
filtering just to make sure it was still tight-really, just enhancing it
without causing a departure from what everybody knows.
It helped to have the band with us, because they were very
clued into what they were looking for. It wasn't a moving target, which is great when you're remastering legacy content.
Over the last few years, we've remastered the entire George
Harrison catalog and John Lennon's Imagine, and while there
were great people overseeing the projects, the artists themselves
are no longer with us, so we can't call on them for their approvals.

Typically, most people think of mastering as, throw
something in a computer and do a plugin process, or
in traditional analog mastering, play the song in real
time through an EQ and a compressor, capture it, and
you're done. You made a comment that you would do
different things to verses and choruses. Did you capture that in the computer and reassemble it?
Gavin: We do it in real time. We work the desk. If you watch
us, it's a manual master. Sometimes we'll edit it in the computer

if it's weird and complicated, but for the most part, on almost
100% of the music we work on, we do it in real time. And we
can make really, really big moves! [laughs]
Reuben: On one particular part of the box, Live In Japan I
believe, that one needed a more modern approach, so we had
to get into some additional processing, like putting our tube EQ
back in the chain, which is not detented, it's free flowing. So, on
that one we had to do some really concentrated real time rides.
The cool thing about mastering is that if you don't get what
you want in the first rundown, you can always redo it. It's
not like capturing a performance with a singer-you can just
simply hit undo and do it again.

Any other challenges with the box set that you can
think of?

Reuben: In addition to the box set, we knew that there was going to be a compilation of songs from all of these releases, called
40 Trips Around the Sun, so all the songs had to live together in
one place. So, the challenge was having a global scope, and
establishing a continuity over the whole project. We didn't want
to master anything twice, which we succeeded in doing.

You guys did a gorgeous job on the set. Any final stories?

Gavin: One of the things for me was that in the 90s, I was
one of the mastering engineers called on to remaster Toto IV
when Sony came out with its 20-bit Super Bit Mapping protocol. There's something very special about that record. 'Africa'
and 'Rosanna' are just such incredibly written songs-timeless,
timeless songs. Even people that don't know Toto know those
songs. So, I was fresh into my mastering career which started
in 1991, and I was learning the craft of mastering on that
album! Toto IV. So with this project, it was very meaningful for
that record to come back through the chain again.
One last story: I've known Al Schmitt for over 30 years, and
he popped in after we were working on this set for hours and
hours and I look back and he gives me a thumbs up! I thought
to myself, "You know, if you're a mixing engineer or a mastering
engineer, whatever, and Al Schmitt gives you a thumbs up?" It's
one of those things you work your whole life to get, and that
moment happened. So anyway, I just wanted to add that.

This set really turned out stellar, kudos guys.

We are grateful for you including us here. Thanks for promoting
the craft of mastering.
RECORDING September 2019

Recording - September 2019

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