UNTIL RELATIVELY recently, recording engineers and producers were forced to go abroad to avail of high quality audio post-production and mastering facilities. Now, thanks to the comprehensive service provided by Trend Studios, this is no longer necessary. With their acclaimed Sonic Solutions digital editing and mastering system, Trend can now offer a complete mastering and post-production facility right here in Ireland. They are also, significantly, the only such operation in this country who provide a total manufacturing and packaging service.

Tim Martin is a studio engineer/producer with over fourteen years experience in the business. Among the dozens of bands and artists he has worked with over the years are: The Waterboys, Clannad, The Dubliners, Aslan, The Frames, Thin Lizzy, Paul Brady, My Little Funhouse and Schtum. He was also involved on the soundtrack of The Commitments and one of his most recent projects was mixing Something Happens’ critically acclaimed Planet Fabulous album, which was mastered at Trend. “That was a great album to work on,” he says. “We spent quite a while in Trend getting it right and everyone was pleased with the final result. It’s a good ballsy record, though to be fair, Chris O’Brien did all the production work before I was asked to mix it.”

Mastering (or pre-mastering as it is more accurately defined) is the crucial last stage in the recording process. Following the final mixing in the recording studio, the care and attention that is given to the master tape at this point will ultimately determine how the CD or cassette will sound. As an experienced engineer, who has worked in studios all over Europe, Tim Martin is conscious of the importance of getting the mastering absolutely right and he has found the Sonic Solutions system to be a major improvement over older mastering methods.

“Whether you use a half-inch analogue tape or a DAT master,” he says, “it can be easily transferred onto the hard disc and manipulated. You can then do all kinds of things — re-arrange the order of the songs, fade things in, fade them out, compress and equalise sounds. The old fashioned way was cutting up bits of tape and fiddling around with them as well as using manual faders. Sonic Solutions makes it all so much easier to do, especially with people like Mary Kettle at Trend, who is very experienced and familiar with how the system operates.”

Like many others in the music business, Martin started out more or less by accident, as he explains.

“One night about fifteen years ago I went to see Stepaside in the Baggot Inn and I thought they were brilliant,” he says. “I ended up working for them —first as a roadie, humping gear, then I started looking after their sound. Through that I was offered a job at Lombard Studios in Dublin.”

During his stint at Lombard he met up with the late Phil Lynott and was invited by Phil to work at his studio in London: “He had a fairly decent studio in his house and we did a lot of work there including some re-mixes of songs from Lizzy’s Thunder and Lightning album,” he recalls. “I remember doing a great re-mix of `The Sun Goes Down’ which, I think, only came out on twelve-inch.”

HERE AT HOME

Though he was mainly based in the UK, Martin worked with numerous Irish artists including Paul Brady, Mary Coughlan, In Tua Nua and Christie Hennessy. He also worked on the infamous Terence Trent D’arby second album, Neither Fish Nor Flesh which, though a critical success, was a monumental commercial flop. “It’s still considered a great album,” says Martin, “and I was very happy with the way it sounded. It would be nice to think that all the albums you work on would become million sellers but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

Martin’s approach in the studio is to work closely with the musicians and find out what they want to achieve: “Half the job is being able to get along with people,” he says. “There’s one UK producer I know who’s a bit of a dictator in the studio. If there was a light bulb gone on the desk, for example, he’d be shouting and roaring at the assistant, demanding that it be fixed. That sort of attitude just doesn’t make for a good atmosphere.

“I’m getting more into co-production these days,” he adds. “Obviously, it’s nicer if you have a little bit of say in the creative side of it. If I think some arrangement needs tightening up, I’ll say so and we’ll sit down and work something out. I also like a live sound. It’s very tempting nowadays to resort to studio gimmickry. For example some producers would spend twenty-minutes trying to get a snare drum sound, whereas I tend to get the drummer to play the whole kit and work on the overall drum sound instead of the individual parts — it’s much more organic that way.”

Working with Aslan on their seminal Feel No Shame album in 1987 was, he says, a particular highlight of his career. “They are really nice guys and there was a huge buzz about them at the time,” he remembers. “They were also very happy with themselves and they liked to have a bit of a laugh in the studio.”

He cites The Commitments as a particularly unusual project in that the soundtrack was recorded during actual filming: “Most people don’t realise that Andrew Strong was not miming and multi-tracks had to be brought onto the set to record the vocals,” he says. “Both the girls’ singing and Andrew’s performance was recorded totally live, which got complicated as there was up to eight takes for each song. It was good fun though, and it’s nice to see your name on the credits as they roll up.”

More recently, Martin has worked with younger bands like Schtum and My Little Funhouse – a band he feels will go far. “We demo-ed ten songs a few weeks ago with My Little Funhouse and five of them are now being done for the album. I’ve great hopes for them. They’ve toured the world a few times and the type of music they’re playing is really popular in America.”

Now based permanently in Ireland, Martin’s work has been made a lot easier by the dramatically improved facilities here. The Sonic Solutions system at Trend is exactly the same as that used in other top mastering houses like Abbey Road in London. And with a complete CD and cassette manufacturing and packaging service also available through Trend, the hassles involved in getting your product onto the shelves are reduced to a minimum.

“Everybody in the business used to assume automatically that you had to go to London to complete a recording project,” he concludes. “But that just isn’t the case anymore and the whole thing can be done right here at home."