[Piedpiper]

This is a new experience for me.

After over two years of pouring my life's blood into engineering and producing a completely undeveloped but talented songwriter with no performing experience, the client decided he wanted to have his project remixed by a famous mix engineer, whom he chose on paper without consulting me, to better insure his chances in a competition in which he planned to enter the CD. His guy then proceeded to "ruin" everything I had worked hard to achieve. The client trusted him implicitly due to "who he is" and encouraged him to disregard my input and follow his own instincts. The client then continued to solicit my unpaid input which he typically disregarded. I ended up telling him it was now between him and his new guy to sort it out. In addition to all this, the "famous" mastering engineer he similarly chose without my blessing squashed it to death. What started as a very subtle and refined project ended up as a harsh aggressive mess completely out of character with the evolution of the project.

I do feel that if we had all been able to sit together in the same room to mix it we could have produced something that we all could have been happy with, but we're in the states and the mix guy is in the client's native London. My only consolation is that I continued to refine my own mixes for possible alternative "producers mix" release. It made me want to find a way to insure against this happening again in my contracts.

Thoughts? Experiences? Contract wording?