Stupidest things WE'VE ever done durring a session

[SiliconAudioLab]

Erased a whole session drive while SWEARING I was formatting the fresh drive. Wrong format too!

[TheReal7]

Originally Posted by SiliconAudioLab

Erased a whole session drive while SWEARING I was formatting the fresh drive. Wrong format too!

OUCH!

Repaired my Elop.

It worked but, when you look inside my work stands out!


D

[SiliconAudioLab]

Cold solder joints eh?

[SiliconAudioLab]

Switched the I/O on a hot/live expensive micrphone (Neumann) plugged into a Neve. stike

Engineer freaked!

Soooooooooorry!

[Drumsound]

I forgot to engage the master record on my 3M. The channels were engaged and the red lights were on. Playback had 'bubkis.’ The slate on the first take that actually made it to tape has me saying, "Take 2 'cause I'm an idiot!"

[whosyourdaddy00]

hooked powersupply to a Blue Tube 18V, into a 9V FMR RNC.... one loud pop....then lotsa smoke. funny thing is that it STILL worked, and the vocalist swears his vox tracks sound "warmer" lol i took it apart, and there was no visual sign of damage.

GO FMR!!!!

[Jules]

As an intern.... I 'cleaned' a U87.....yep opened it up with a jewlers screwdriver all by myself & got all the rust looking stuff off the capsule with a Q-Tip... er hang on.. this Q-Tip er.. looks kinda GOLD colored now...er...(looks out side maintanence room door to see if any one is coming..) er.. I think I will just put this back on the maintenance room "to be fixed" shelf and mark it "no signal"..and er..take out the trash and see if anyone wants me to go to the store for something.....

Announced to the band in the control room that every one should go out to the live area & "check out the female piano tuners great legs".... while she was standing right behind me..

Belived a Swedish band (Trance Dance) who said they could "light" my ciggarette (back when I smoked) without matches, simply by dragging it fast enough along the floor.... (2 hours laughing afterwards at just how stupid me an the producer were for beliving them)

One morning after a producer said I was clumsy and wondered how much $$ worth of gear I could trash NEXT on his session, he had the pleaseure of seing me accidentally trip and drag a whole stack of AMS and other gear, total worth £14,000 crashing to the floor...right on cue

I once lent a 'chemically challenged" rock star £30 on a session, I was the lowly assistant, the whole session was behind them waving furiously at me through the glass and waiving "NO!!!! DONT DO IT JULES"... that was dumb.. but I amazed everyone the next day by actually getting it back....

Charged a young band 'starving band rate" and then one of 'em turns up in a Porsche (computer programmer $$$ whiz kids)

Set fire to cloth covered recording area wall because I used a skinny cable between an Ampeg SVTII bass head going full blast into a 8 x 10 cab.. cable got so hot it set the wall it was touching on fire... studio owner was pissed off..

[henryrobinett]

One of my early sessions engineering one of my own sessions. I had the 414 turn opposite side recording my sax player. The whole day was lost due to this stupidity. Never made that mistake twice.

[Jules]

Try that same stunt on a spoken word poetry recording session, with a valve mic that is nosey the RIGHT way around...

[steins]

- Recording acoustic gitar in the control room with closed headphones, forgot to turn off the (very loud) main speakers. This has happened on more than one occasion.
- Alt-clicking a fader in ProTools with all 64 tracks grouped. You ProTools users know what happens..... Of course, no backup......
- Surfing the net while tracking take 23 from an extremely unusable vocalist. Suddenly, the CR monitors (and the headphones) goes bananas, producing veeery loud, strange, creepy, eerie noises. Turns out while surfing the net, I had pointed the mouse at some stupid banner adverstising for a new sci-fi television series. A banner with sound effects. The singer (female), got scared and freaked out. I had already treated the room with candles, all lights off...I got a little scared myself.

Stein Tore

[Magnus]

Once, I was gonna do a punch in on 1 of the 24 tracks but forgot to disarm the other 23 tracks that were being used previously to record the whole band live.

BIG gap across all 24 tracks!!!


After realizing my mistake I quickly said:

Me: - Hmm, I'm sure you guys can do a better take, don't you think?

Band: - Yeah, you're right. Let's do another one!


Got lucky, and the band never knew what happened since I was alone in the control room.

[Improv]

How about recording 6 hours-worth of background vocal stacks on a session that came from another studio at 48k (of course I was clocked at 44.1). Really wish PT warned of external clock discrepencies between 44.1 and 48k. It's okay, the freebie session was much improved anyway.

[seb37000]

Leaving 15 rapers and there sound tech alone in the studio for 30 minutes
Next day where reported missing : beta 52, sm57 and 58
Good thing I keep the expensive mics in another place


a couple years ago to help out a young sound tech and to make the most profit I accepted to let him record night sessions with local bands after he brought me a couple good demos he did, this lasted 2 months, Today I still suffer from the bad reputation he gave to the studio because of he's terrible work

[~ufo~]

jules.......


that nearly made me wet myself!

[Midlandmorgan]

Accidentally left the talk back mic on...during overdubs from a very bad singer trying a very bad song, with a very VERY bad "producer" telling her to purposely sing off key on a certain passage...

I SWEAR!!! I thought I was whispering my comments...the one that stands out was (I either whispered it to myself or just thought it and the mic picked it up...)
"Let me get my hound dog in here to start howling...it would be closer to the right key."

[drmmrboy]

Originally Posted by Jules

As an intern.... I 'cleaned' a U87.....yep opened it up with a jewlers screwdriver all by myself & got all the rust looking stuff off the capsule with a Q-Tip... er hang on.. this Q-Tip er.. looks kinda GOLD colored now...er...(looks out side maintanence room door to see if any one is coming..) er.. I think I will just put this back on the maintenance room "to be fixed" shelf and mark it "no signal"..and er..take out the trash and see if anyone wants me to go to the store for something.....

When I was a kid I took apart a U67 to see why it wasn't working. (I didn't know It needed it's own power.) I found a wire that wasn't connected to the capsule... Yeah, the same capsule I put my filthy fingers all over! tutt

If this thread is the "MOST stupid thing..." Then my story doesn't stop there.

I had a friend (?), while looking through my mics, picked up the U67 and said... "This isn't aaaa, um... No it isn't. Hmm. So what are you doing with that mic?" I told him it didn't work. He asked if he could have it... I smiled and said, sure...
That mic is in a studio here in Philly. My friend gave it to them for time.
The few people I've talked to about it, say it wasn't fully repaired, and doesn't work right...
Although... my friend used it on his record, and his record sounds good to me.
I've always been too upset/embaressed to go and see what the mic sounds like, first hand!!!

Andrew

[Winey]

I knocked a bong (not mine) filled with sticky THC tainted water directly into a brand new SSL's first 8 or so channels, which then started smoking out of the mix bus section. Then the computer started changing fader markers on it's own.
It was my first real production gig, I was 18 yrs old.
I thought I'd never work again.
I went home feeling sick.
The next morning the studio owner called me and said "the studio will be ready by three o'clock, and we don't blame you for spilling the tea into the console, it's the assistants job to make sure no beverages are placed there."
Whew!! How'd I get out of that one?
The band told them it was tea!

I still say it wasn't my fault.
Who puts a 3 foot high bong on an SSL??

the answer is on this page...
http://www.fnm.com/faq/

[wilcofan]

About 6 years ago while still tracking to 2" 24-track I did beds for this band sooooo Spinal Tap it wasn't even funny. Actually, at first it was pretty funny. We recorded 12 songs of drums, bass, guitars one day and were going to finish the rest on another day. Real shotgun recording and I was looking REAL forward to it being over. Judas Priest meets Lawrence Welk.

Then I didn't label the work tapes (we were doing Midnighters and many bands didn't have the budget to buy tape so we rotated a few reels) and the next guy ERASED them.

Man, of the about 100 bands I've worked with it HAD to be this session to be Ground Hog Day. I don't even remember the redo session since I'm sure I've blocked it out with some brain defensive mechanism.

Wrapping up the redo session OF COURSE they are bummed because the original one was way more "classic". fuuck

[Musicfuelzgood]

whilst working in the city with some big..UBER snobby band, who thinks they are amazing cuz they did a couple of TV theme songs...ha!......the drummer is sitting in the booth waiting for the song to come on...and somehow i had created a feedback loop i just didnt see.....and the drummer almost fell of his stool! the engineer...just as snobby as the band suggests i buy the guy a couple of soda's...i was working as an itern at the time and was incredibly poor...and my boss JUST had come in as i said..."yeah im PRETTY sure i'd buy the guy a soda if ::studio owner:: paid me to work with such jerks!"...funny thing is....the guy started paying me after that session! AND the band respected me a helluva lot more after that little comment... three cheers for that! haha.

[denial]

Patched the studio mics around a drumkit into the convertors and sat there stupid wondering why I couldn't hear/see anything metering in ProTools? After checking cables etc. and 5 minutes of scratching my head later, I realized I hadn't gone through any preamps.

[rainsinvelvet]

After working in PT for a while I did a session all analog with a local singer/songwriter. I had the 24 track returned to the main faders of the console along with the singer's microphone further down the board. Little did I notice that I had a few of the 24 track returns still set to a few busses. Sure enough I hit record for the vocals and a blast of feedback loop goes shooting through the singer's cans.. The look on the guys face and the way my phones went flying across the room.. Damn , that sucked.

Now, I always check everyone's cans before I hand 'em over.

Doh!

ERic

[PlugHead]

a few here:

While cleaning up a vocal track of a foreign group, long gone back home, (DA88's, no PT, old trident, no automation...): improv vocal section, I erased a couple of seconds of the last chorus re-entry. No back up tapes. Long story short, we offsynced one of the machines, and grabbed a prev. section from the earlier chorus to paste it back. No one knew, or ever noticed...

similar situation on DA88's: I punched into the next channel (acoustic gtr.) while comping vocals - after trying someone else to replay it, which never met it sonically, we ended up bringing in the orig. player to punch the fewbars,...

PT screwup in the early years: I backed up an empty folder I thought filled with a full session backup: erased the other copy, and thus lost it all thru mishandling. Luckily it was only a couple hrs from one night, so I got the 2 gals to come back free.
But still - nice job eh?

[Cosmonauta]

option-click a fader in ProTools without take notice "all" tracks were grouped is a classic for me.

[SoSueMe]

Originally Posted by seb37000

Leaving 15 rapers and there sound tech alone in the studio for 30 minutes

Did the sound tech end up becoming pregnant, or was it a guy?

[C.Lambrechts]

110 V gear in a dfegad 220 V country.

anyone have a old floppy drive lying around that would work in a MPC-60 II ?

[James Lehmann]

Perhaps the tape-op who accidentally erased the master multitrack of the infamous 'missing song' that Steely Dan recorded for Gaucho might care to contribute to this thread? If not, he surely gets a nomination in absentia!

[recorderman]

I hope ths doesn't take the cake..and I do have a lame excuse....but to cut to the chase.....

...I erased Ronnie James Dio's vocal from a song I was recording. He loved me till that day

[Jules]

I am goingt to drag Winey's comments around on my signature file for a while!

[ttauri]

Gotten involved in some work on a DAW/sequencer, forgot to save, then KERRRRRASH! Done that one again and again and again...

Peece,
T. Tauri