Woo! You Did It!
I'm so stoked to send this to you 🙂
Thank you for ordering this! Here’s a page full of some fun goodies to show my appreciation:
- I’ll get this in the mail this week!
- If you’re in the US, you can expect it within 2 weeks
- If you’re in another country, it might take up to a month
- I’ll check in with you to make sure you’ve gotten it ok
- You’ll receive an email a day over the next week that show an exclusive look inside the creation of my album Twine, and other fun stuff that only people on my list get
- After that, you’ll hear from me about once a week, and you’ll get early access to all my new music
- You can download Twine here
- Here’s some fun exclusive stuff:
The choice of "Twine" as a title
So I had an idea what the album meant, but never said it quite as real as when Shanae the Empathic Realist asked me on Hunter College Radio. I’ve included a clip here that starts when she asks the question. Feel free to start at the beginning instead if you’re curious!
Sparknotes:
“So Twine is the name of the final song on the album. I use Twine as the idea that ties everything together. It’s a string that can easily be broken, and it’s also a way that you can measure something. So Twine, I’m thinking of just this relationship dangling by length of twine – there’s specific amount of distance, you know, that’s held between yourself and another person by gravity. And you can know that this thing, you’re just hanging there, you’re in suspense, you have this potential energy and you know that this thing can snap at any moment, but you are also accepting that fact. And so it’s necessarily temporary, and it’s temporal in that way. You can reflect upon this moment of beauty that you know cannot last.”
Cutting the Vinyl Laquer
To start off this relationship right, I’m gonna show you something that’s really under the hood (I still get goosebumps when I watch this video). You ready to get nerdy with me?
Ok, then let’s get nerdy. A little secret: I’m actually a trained audio engineer. But I trust the real professionals when it comes to vinyl. Here’s a video of my mastering engineer Andy VanDette cutting the lacquer for Twine.
Andy has mastered for David Bowie, Metric, Mother Mother, Porcupine Tree, The Dear Hunter, Rush, Dream Theater, The Beastie Boys, and Deep Purple. He gets SO excited when he gets to cut vinyl. Like a kid on Christmas.
Here’s how the process works (I promised I’d get nerdy). What you see here is Andy cutting the Laquer. He’s mastered the album specifically for vinyl (different from how he did it for digital). What’s wild about this is that it’s all in real time. Once he drops the needle, it’s cutting into this lacquer. What you hear is what’s being cut. If there’s a mistake, he has to throw the whole thing away and start over!
He has two analog mastering chains. While one song is getting cut, he’s dialing all the knobs on the other chain to be ready for the next song. He’s figured out all the settings for each song and written them down beforehand. Once the song switches, he hits a button that switches to the other chain for the next song and gets to work again. It’s an intensive process for the whole session.
What you see here is Andy dropping the needle for my first song Celebrate. Once the lacquer is cut, it’s still too delicate to play. It’s then coated in silver, which is then electroplated in nickel. Once the nickel is removed, you have the Master. It’s a “negative” (think like a photography negative, with reverse black and white, but with sound instead). And it’s the only Master.
From here, They use electroplating again to create “Mothers.” (Up to four of them before degradation happens). These are positive again. You could put one on a record player and hear the album on a metal record!
Then they use the Mothers to create Stampers (yet again negatives). These stampers then press into hot hockey pucks of vinyl plastic, and voila! You have vinyl records. I told you I’d get nerdy!
Thank You
For real, if you made it down here, I know it’s because you care. And I want to emphasize: I really, really care that you’re here. It means the world to me that you’re enjoying this art and process, and I want to give even more to you. So please, never hesitate to reach out. If you send a message on socials, or an email reply, it’s me who receives it and answers it. And it makes my day when I get to talk with you. So thank you again for being here. Enjoy the music! And let’s be friends.
Cheers,
