On Fighter Jets and Mastering

An F-14A Tomcat streaked across the sky over the Mediterranean Sea. Strapped inside, wearing a green flight suit and white helmet, was an American fighter pilot and seated behind him was his navigator. Their wingman was flying another F-14 alongside for a routine visual inspection. Then, instead of veering away from the aircraft he was inspecting, the wingman crossed in front of the unsuspecting pilot, spreading chaotic waves of air turbulence.  The rear fighter was sent into a flat spin. Out of control and falling fast toward the sea, the imperiled pilot’s trained instincts took over.

Seated behind the mix console, I think of my dad’s fateful flight 40 years ago. He was at the controls of a mighty piece of American machinery. It was worth $38 million and was designed to go faster than the speed of sound and obliterate enemy targets. I’m at the controls of a song. Designed to take people places, transcendentally. Sometimes it’s a wall of sound, booming bass lines and kick drums to resonate in your lungs. There’s an array of buttons and knobs in front of me; blacks and grays with vibrantly colored spectrographs and sound files. Muscle memory has my hands working sequences to lift, compress, and color the sound passing through my monitors. The file, as it came to me, is like a missile. I know by the way it was designed what its purpose is. Now I have to guide it to its target, one tenth of a dB EQ move at a time. 

Speaking of decibels, a jet engine is often referenced to express how loud 120 dB is. Ear-splittingly loud. The pilot sits in front of all the noise, up where it’s relatively quiet. The real impact is felt below, and around.  In the same way, a mastering engineer—or any music maker for that matter—does not know the impact of their music. It feels great from the controls, and then it’s released to reverberate for an indefinite period of time in an untold number of rooms and cars and earbuds and even stadiums. 

Back to my dad, and his plummeting fighter jet. As the flight surfaces weren’t gaining any grip on the air around them, there was only one choice left. Eject. The navigator pulled down on the cord above his head—sooner than my dad preferred, Dad still quips. In an instant, the two 20-something American aviators rocketed out of the F-14 as the jettisoned canopy blew away. $38 million dollars crashed into the sea as scrap metal. Parachutes deployed to drift the dazed but grateful men down into the cold Mediterranean waters. Waiting for a helicopter exfil, they stretched their strained necks and backs and hoped sharks wouldn’t take an interest in them.