If you’ve tried out Tupe, you may have noticed two large words right in the middle of it: “tube” and “tape.” And when you change the values of the sliders on top of those words, you may also have noticed that the words themselves begin to change shape: the more tube you apply to the sound, the gnarlier the word “tube” gets in the interface; the more tape, the funkier “tape” becomes.

I never intended to be a mastering engineer, but over the years, between my own music, albums on Ukiyo Beat Tapes and projects from friends like SonoTWS, I found myself mastering several beat tapes. When I master my own music, I make all artistic decisions while mixing, so all I want in the mastering stage is to get the album to sound cohesive, regarding the tonal balance and volume. When mastering for other people, it’s important for me to understand if they expect me to bring some character to the music or not.