Stupidest thing YOU've done in a session

[Push845]

I just recently recorded a Jazz session and forgot to turn up one of the overhead mics on over the drums......I realized what I did in the middle of the last songs....I guess thats what you get for sleeping on the Job!

[blinkman]

One of my very first sessions as a second engineer was for a major artist, with a NY engineer known to be hard on assistants, and a BIG time producer--the sort of guy who definitely could have you fired at the drop of a hat.

Thankfully none of them was there at the end of the night, when for some reason (I no longer remember why) I had to shuttling some of the master reels around on the Sony 3348 machine.

Now, you know that rule about never ever using different-sized reels together?

I had chosen to ignore that rule momentarily, as I didn't have to go far enough into the reel for it to be a problem. But (I'm sure you see this coming) I got distracted and turned my back on the machine...just for a moment...

That sound. The sound of that thin, fragile 1/2" tape crinkling and stretching as it wrapped around the hub between the reel and the machine, culminating in a gut-wrenching SNAP. My ears got hot. I knew my career was short-lived.

I had to survey the damage, at least, so I unwound the ruined tape (several meters' worth), cut it out, and butt-spliced the good tape together. Spun it back a bit, and pressed play.

Silence. It was blank tape. HUGE sigh of relief.

I never told the clients. Never broke that rule again either.

c.

[Justynfromnz]

Man...another talkback-on-but-forgot situation...

Was doing a film where the director wanted the actors to sing the song (It was an Artschool Musical). After a couple of takes I lean over to the engineer and say

"Man this chick is the worst singer ever, but she has F@#&*n sweet tits"

The engineer looks at me and doesn't smile or anything...and the sinking feeling begins...until she pipes up and goes "you know your mic is on right?" and i try and say that i did and that i was just joking around. haha..ha..... She didn't buy it and hates me eternally.

[poncival]

I forgot to back something up once and naturally the drive died and luckily it just cost me a day's work but needless to say it was a lesson learned that backing up tomorrow or the next day isn't good enough... I back up as I go now, to at least one other drive. Not funny but definitely the stupidest thing ever!

Another time a few years back I had finished mixing a record for an independant local rock band and they had approved the mixes and already sent the masters in for duplication. So I had everything backed up to DDS4. The last thing we had done before it went in for mastering was to change some effects on a couple guitar licks and a few vocal parts that needed to be time stretched, etc. So I updated the backup tapes and went ahead and deleted all the files before I realized that I had not backed up the new files we had created on the last day of mixing- since I had forgotten to set the disk allocation in Pro Tools and they were being put on a different drive which wasn't included in the backup queue. I never mentioned it and now years later nobody has contacted me to do the remixes yet... If and when the time comes I should be able to fill in the holes but it was another hard lesson learned.

This didn't happen to me but to a friend of mine and was another definite candiate for stupidest thing ever done in a studio, it was actually several events leading up to it but the gist of it was that we had a neumann SM-69 which came in from Australia with a standard IEC power cord that had a 110 volt to 220 volt transformer duct taped onto the end of it because the mic power supply was rigged for 220. It seemed obvious to most of us in the know that you only used that mic with that cord and that's it, but one day my engineer friend had an intern hooking up mics and naturally the intern didn't know the difference so he plugged in the 110 V U67 With the cable with the 220 V transformer. Naturally the mic got smoked, the power supply mostly but I think it needed a new tube too if I remember correctly. This was the same U67 that had previously tracked an entire album's worth of death metal vocals while set up facing the wrong direction by the same engineer. Definite case of "**IT happening!" He had tried to play it off about the vocals sounding OK when blended in with enough eventidesss but they tried punching some things in with the mic facing the right direction and obviously he ended up tracking a bunch of vocals over for a very angry metal band.

Sometimes the stupidest and most regrettable things are the things that are not done or said, such as "there is no way that bass sound is going to end up on this record" or "no, it's not a good idea to sing in a different key than the song is in" or "watch out for that piano key lid because if you hit the keys too hard it might slam on your fingers" etc.

Thanks, keep em comin!

[dorisinger]

Didn't unplug my headphones. Click track on the OH's for the entire day.

[ripper]

Said what I actually thought.....

[Mixmoses]

Okay,

So its my first job straight from recording school, and im assisting on a well known artits's solo album. So the producer/engineer is in the process selecting mic pres for drums, and we had been going from one pre to the next for several hours now. I was in charge of the patchbay, and knew the patchbay well enough to move around without any problems until...

We had patched the snare into the API 512 pre on an external lunchbox then into PT. Then the engineer askes to go to The GTQ2 pre. Well, I completely spaced , and made the horrible mistake of sending the already amped signal coming from the 512 into HIS GTQ2 and.... you guessed it, I fried it.

Not a good first impression. Thankfully he was only slightly pissed, and I lived to learn another day. Needless to say, I am EXTREMELY carefull about where im patching now.

And of course we had his GTQ2 fixed.

Moses

[ajfarber]

Back in '93 I was engineering a "direct to two-track" date at Sear Sound in NYC. Live jazz band in the room, no iso or anything, just the old fashioned way, direct to an AMPEX 300 1/4" 15ips.

Anyway, or "anyways" for our Canadian friends, Walter (Sear) had his old Neve 8038 fitted with flying faders. I was, of course, not using automation, but once in a while I solo an instrument during a take. The solo feature is PRE-FADE , however I noticed that the new faders had a solo button on them so I pushed one, because I dig pushing buttons. This solo button must have been POST-FADE and I ruined the take. I didn't know this until playback when I and the rest of the band heard everything suddenly drop out except the bass mic.

[Jonboy79]

Well mine isn't terrible but it certainly could've been. I live in St. Louis and had a talented song writing pair come down from Chicago to record. They were a DMB cover band and were very talented and wanted to start doing originals. So after getting in touch with me I offered to let them stay at my place for the weekend so we could really get some work done. Well our Saturday session started at 10am. By about 1 we had the drums nailed, I mean better than I had ever recorded them before. By 4 we had pretty much everything done and we decided to take a break. At about 7:30 we went to lay down vocals but the singer just wanted to sing some ideas to see if they sounded right, so I told him just to grab the talkback mic and sing into that and then we'll do it for real. So he grabs the stand the talkback mic is on and pulls it toward him. Now somehow one cable got wrapped around another and my cable management skills are fairly poor so that in turn lead to him pulling out the mac's power cable. I had failed to hit save once the entire day. Every bit of what we did gone. Now technically I didn't do it so the singer really felt like it was his fault, eventhough it was really all mine.

Here's how the song turned out http://www.jscstudios.com/music/AcousticSong.mp3 no vox though.

[thejook]

Originally Posted by theAdmiral

My friend shit his pants during a session. Fart gone bad.

He gambled and lost...

[pan]

Originally Posted by lefthando

I was running off some rough mixes late at night ...
The assistant and I started goofing around and singing along with the ruff mixes as they went down to the real-time burner. Naturally, we changed the lyrics around to poke fun at the songs.

What I didn't realize was that the SM57 sitting on the console bridge that was used to replace the broken talkback mic, was actuallly engaged! Further, For some stupid reason, it was bussed to the stereo mix and our off-key yodelling was going down to disc along with the ruff mixes! ...

Originally Posted by Justynfromnz

Man...another talkback-on-but-forgot situation...

"Man this chick is the worst singer ever, but she has F@#&*n sweet tits"

Priceless!

This just happened to me too, but it was me and the singer herself - both laughing hysterically along and commenting on the new elements and sounds of the track... "boah! That's cool... hmm we need something else here ... I like the melody, but the sound?...goofing around: how about some harmonies like this: daaadadadadadabaouuuuu..."

We later added those ideas and it worked out great

[edvdr76]

One time I was recording this Latin Cumbia band from Columbia. We had most of the tracks finished but still needed to do some keyboards, problem was the producer didn't have one so he went and borrowed one from some guy that was an hour away, also the guy he borrowed it from needed it back right away cause he had a gig that night. Anyways, the producer brought the keyboard, we did the tracks then he left to return the keyboard, meanwhile we started the vocals with the singer. Here's where I messed up, I forgot to write it down on the tracksheet and I accidently erased all the keyboard parts. I didn't realize this till we started mixing the song that night cause he needed to have it done THAT NIGHT. I started mixing and was hoping he wouldnt notice, but right away he said "can you turn up the keyboards?" I was petrified to tell him what I had done but I had to. When I told him he started talking s**t BIG TIME!! I felt so stupid. We ended up mixing the song till the next day.

[edvdr76]

Another time, the owner of the studio I worked at before decided to change the carpet in the studio without telling me. When I got to the studio I found that the guys that did the work knocked over our main vocal mic which was a U87. I told my boss what had happened because the bottom part of the mic was loose. I started messing with it as I was telling my boss, trying to fix it. I heard a snap and I said "there, I fixed it" and I held up the mic in front of him. As I lifted up the mic, the bottom part just fell off and slammed on the floor. My boss's face got pale as his U87 hit the floor. He was pissed!!! the mic never worked the same again.

[edvdr76]

I know you guys have more of these. Keep em comin!

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by edvdr76

One time I was recording this Latin Cumbia band from Columbia. We had most of the tracks finished but still needed to do some keyboards, problem was the producer didn't have one so he went and borrowed one from some guy that was an hour away, also the guy he borrowed it from needed it back right away cause he had a gig that night. Anyways, the producer brought the keyboard, we did the tracks then he left to return the keyboard, meanwhile we started the vocals with the singer. Here's where I messed up, I forgot to write it down on the tracksheet and I accidently erased all the keyboard parts. I didn't realize this till we started mixing the song that night cause he needed to have it done THAT NIGHT. I started mixing and was hoping he wouldnt notice, but right away he said "can you turn up the keyboards?" I was petrified to tell him what I had done but I had to. When I told him he started talking s**t BIG TIME!! I felt so stupid. We ended up mixing the song till the next day.

You mean there was no "undo" button on the Ampex? I think that's the ONLY aspect of analog recording that is inferior to the DAW, cause I can name a hundred ways you can screw up due to computer mishaps.

[oceantracks]

Originally Posted by bob katz

You mean there was no "undo" button on the Ampex? I think that's the ONLY aspect of analog recording that is inferior to the DAW, cause I can name a hundred ways you can screw up due to computer mishaps.

Well, the worst for me was when "60 Minutes" recorded a voiceover at WTVJ in Miami back in the 1980s. They had Harry Reasoner come in and I was a rookie audio guy, now about to record my first celebrity. I set him up in the booth, went to the control room and threaded up an MCI two track. When I was set with levels, we started recording. Harry read for about 4 or 5 minutes continuously...without a flub. While he was reading, I casually looked over at the MCI and saw that I had threaded the tape OVER the head guard. I looked at the producer and said "Uh...we have a problem...I'm not getting any of this..." The producer said...."Well, you tell him, I'm not."

It took all I had to press the talkback and interrupt him. "Mr. Reasoner, I"m sorry, can you hold on a second?"

"What's the problem?" he said.

I got up, left the control room and walked over to the VO booth. I opened the door and I looked like I'd seen a ghost. So I just blurted it out.

"Listen, I made a really dumb mistake, I'm new here but, I still shouldn't have made it...."

He got this big smile and said..."You know, I didn't like that take anyway. Let's do it again. You ready?"

Glad it wasn't a rock group.


TH

[rainsinvelvet]

Besides blasting feedback into a clients headphones TWICE in one session and erasing "keeper" tracks on the analog machine because it's been awhile since using it..

Sometimes I think the hardest thing is fight the urge to do the " I wonder what would would happen if I do this" thing while recording a take.. Damn A.D.D!

This thread is one of my favorites.!

ERic

[lemix]

Originally Posted by oceantracks

It took all I had to press the talkback and interrupt him. "Mr. Reasoner, I"m sorry, can you hold on a second?"
"What's the problem?" he said.
I got up, left the control room and walked over to the VO booth. I opened the door and I looked like I'd seen a ghost. So I just blurted it out.
"Listen, I made a really dumb mistake, I'm new here but, I still shouldn't have made it...."
He got this big smile and said..."You know, I didn't like that take anyway. Let's do it again. You ready?"

Glad it wasn't a rock group.

TH

Great ..thumbsup
There you have it...dealing with professionals vs assholes fuuck

[bob st john]

copied a few of these from one of my other threads...however read down for the real killers:

1. after 4 hours of background vocal overdubs, made a composite mix onto 4 tracks. in the process of cleaning up the left over tracks, forgot to take the comp tracks out of record. result? 4 more hours of background overdubs. for THIS...i HATE analog

2. while mixing "stop the world," i needed to do a quick recording of the bass solo onto the analog 24 tk. (we used an X850 for overdubs and studer with dolby sr for drums and bass) well, i couldn't get the machine to go into record. looked at the machine (which i knew WELL), found the first button that said record safe and disengaged it. erased 35 seconds of time code. nice. assistant engineer jim thomas stayed late that night and fixed the issue by making a comp of the code...you've got to get it within 1 frame for the slave machine to NOT stop and relocate. fortunately, there was nothing playing on the analog machine for about a minute (during the guitar solo).

3. X 850 auto punch in. do i need to say more? (this one isn't my fault)

4. same X 850; however a certain guitar player from a certain band was working the machine. using auto punch. i warned him. there was this GREAT part of the vocal...everytime it went by we kept looking at each other and smiling. suddenly, when we were punching in...we didn't hear it. looked at the machine. somehow it was recording. certain guitar player smashes his fist on the locator. the number keys go flying all over the room. the remote no longer wants to work. quickly, we put the numbers back on and run out to get the assistant. i start bitching that the machine suddenly stopped working. he looked at it...tried to get it to work. nothing. then he kept looking at the remote. he said..."anything strange happen before the remote stopped working?" i replied....no...it just stopped. looking at the remote he just smiled and said "so how did all these number buttons get on here backwards?" oops. larrchild would very much remember this one.

5. finished mixes, somehow patched wrong into the ATR 102; brought the mix home, listened to it, realized that somehow the assistant (who was subbing for carl at the time) managed to patch the left channel of the mix into both inputs of the atr. guess we got those mixes from dat.

6. finished, edited masters for extreme IV; on 14 inch reels; on an ATR 102. for those informed of these lovely but unpredictable machines...they can very easily make confetti of your 1/2 masters. lost about 40 seconds of a song that wasn't going to be on the record anyways. carl nappa's comment as he watched it? oops. now the reason it was on the machine, was that it was a rental; and the tech from the rental company grabbed the first reel he saw. now WHY he didn't look at the big stamp that said "MASTER" on it, i don't know.

7. left a pile of 2 inch tape on the floor; wasn't sure if i needed it but left a note on the pile to "not touch." too bad the cleaning crew didn't read english. next day, the tape was gone. horrified. the tech felt so bad he sent out the assistant to get it out of the trash. you can imagine the stuff in the studio trash in the summer in south florida, right? he sheephishly brought the tape back in...there was soy sauce, ketchup and coffee all over it. and we still managed to find the piece we wanted.

8. instructing an assistant to sit by the machine and stop the tape when he saw the 60 seconds of leader come up that i put between spare space on the tape and a song ready to be mixed. it was 3 am. i knew i had 5:00 of running time before we got to the leadered off master. just was listening to the band playing...looked over at the machine, saw the counter on the machine read 6:53. looked at the assistant. he was asleep. the assistant, at that time, was part owner of the studio. again...oops.

9. i used to fix equipment for a living. now WHO would know better to keep liquids away from gear? well...a well-known studio in western massachusetts (draw your own conclusions) had an ssl in their b room. i took a break, walked across the parking lot and into the house to get a coffee. 4 sugars; 1/2 coffee and 1/2 light cream. just like i used to drink it (espresso would be my favorite now). nice and hot too. walked back into the studio. sit this filled to the brim cup down on the armrest on the ssl. started talking to the band, having a good laugh when i turned in my chair and leaned back...somehow, the handle of the cup had been turned out in such a way it extended OVER the edge of the armrest...go figure that. heard a characteristic little "clink" and then the sound of liquid dripping out from underneath the ssl...oh of COURSE it was right over the master section. if you're gonna do it...might as well do it good. shut off the master section from underneath...then the whole console. coffee is making a puddle on the floor and THANK GOD the head engineer from the studio isn't there. he'd have had a conniption. as a matter of fact...NO ONE associated with the studio was in the room. i opened up the console...dried all the coffee off of as many surfaces as possible...went back to work (i KNOW better than to do something that stupid, really).

next day, the status buttons on the master section seem to be sticking. go figure that. now it just so happened that a photographer (i believe his name was jonathan black) was there that day...he saw an opportunity and took some shots. i forgot all about it. one day a plain manila envelope arrives. no return address. and there were all the shots...completely incriminating. eventually, i scanned one of the shots and for the longest time it was the backdrop on my business cards...i'll upload it here tomorrow.

the last part...was years later, i was talking to the maintenance engineer at the studio; the ssl had long since been replaced with an neve 8078; but i asked him if he ever had any peculiar problems with that ssl. he said it worked perfectly, but he noticed the strangest thing when he had it open. he said, if he didn't know better, it looked like someone had dumped a whole coffee in it. bob bites his tongue. best part? i gave the studio manager one of the business cards! until this moment...they have no idea =)

for those of you that can connect the dots on this story...sorry anybody doubting this story need only focus their eyes downward...

bob

[bob st john]

as i have been asked...

only the names were changed to protect the innocent, er, guilty

bob

[Guidotoons]

I was cutting vocals for a country session in Kansas City years ago. The singer seemed to have a strange noise he was making. I asked him if his cans were OK. He said yes and we tried again. I asked him if he needed water and he said he had some.

Still the strange noise before every word. I told him it sounded like he was making a honking noise before each word and it really sounded funny.

Turns out he was trying to sing that way to mimic Randy Travis. After that he was totally freaked out and it took forever to get great takes after I insulted him.

I felt awful but had never heard of Travis. When I finally did I felt a bit better as this guy was not even close.

But I certainly managed to pee pee on his session with my comments. But I truly thought something was wrong with his voice. The mic. Something.

D'oh...

Guido

[andytheswede]

I just learned It’s good to use the search function BEFORE you start a thread, so if I get bashed for posting here as well you’ll know why.



Ok here we go,,,
I’ve just built this fairly professional pimped up vocal booth (whisper room style, if ya know what I mean), lots of acoustical foam etc etc.

So I’m sitting in there with a whole bunch of microphones that I want to try out with my new pre-amp and compressor (ADK ap-1 and ADK cla-1) that I just bought from Larry Villella at ADK.

I have this pimped tube mic in my lap (on my dick is a more correct geographic description), plugged into an old preamp that I’ve put together myself a year back and recently opened up to “fix” a disturbing brmmmmm kind of sound. It was bad soldering and I fixed it, so I thought!!!
All of a sudden the mic becomes electrified, where are talking 220volts right in to my weiner, first I screamed like a little girlieman(sorry to much SNL), I mean we are talking serious barbeque here, and then after checking that my penis wasn’t actually on fire , I laughed my arse of, tears in my eyes cause it hurt so much.


Ps
The compressor did a helluva job on that recorded scream, im definitely keeping this unit

[frans]

THIS gets my vote as best-topnotch-totally greatest fu§§up anywhere ever!
Congratulations andytheswede, your prize is in the mail....

[poncival]

Originally Posted by Guidotoons

But I certainly managed to pee pee on his session with my comments. But I truly thought something was wrong with his voice. The mic. Something.
Guido

I made the mistake of laughing and telling a metal singer something he did sounded like Sean Connery... Little did I know he does an amazing impersonation of SC and then proceeded to say stupid stuff in Sean Connery's voice after every take for the rest of the day... It was pretty funny for an hour or so but it got to be pretty old after a while.. I should post some of the clips on here later

[DeathMonkey]

Man, these are hysterical.

Let's see... my band in Nashville had some great opportunities to record, and as the lead guitarist, I had the bulk of the work to do, and always loved hanging out, learning from the great people we were lucky enough to work with. In my attempts to be "helpful" I have done some surprisingly stupid things.

1. For some reason, I thought the Lexicon remote on the board was wireless. It was not. Well, it was after a producer asked me for it (meaning "tilt it towards me, I'm going to move my chair towards it") and I handed it to him. As in "ripped it out of its connections and handed it to him 6 feet away".

2. Brand new multi-million dollar studio, beautiful hardwood floors in the control room, it's laaaaate, and all weekend we have been having a bit of fun with the new rolling ergonomic chairs, zooming around from fader bank to fader bank. Until I roll into the tape machine remote, sending it down the short stairs to collide with the tape machine itself.

3. Waiting for my session, the producer is finishing up with the tracks he has just done with a well known country artist. Bored, I ask if I can check out the amps in the big room - I mention the producers Top Hat and Speedster Deluxe. He says sure. He comes to find me playing a tweed Bassman and an AC-30 (two amps I had never gotten to play before), two amps they had spent 4 hours trying to get sounds out of that day (they hadn't used the Top Hat or Speedster). Of course, I had not only twiddled the knobs, but moved the amps themselves to face me.

Guitar players. What ya gonna do?

I have also gotten yelled at for treating a $100 shiny new mic like gold while allowing the "beat to hell old" U67 (or something of that ilk) to roll around on the floor, and told a famous guitarist that they could use my brand spanking new standard Strat instead of that " beat to hell old" strat he was playing (yeah, '57 or '63 or something. Hey, I played metal most of my life.).

[juicylime]

When I was training I did a supervised session with a well known pro cellist in Denmark. My Danish was pretty basic at the time but I was trying mt best and during our session while setting up the talkback I repeatedly- to the shock of all involved- asked the cellist could she f*ck me in her headphones instead of could she hear me. It was a rather embarrassing moment!

[DigitalMahem]

1. Knocked over someone's favourite guitar
2. Dropped a microphone onto someone's snare head denting it
3. Dropped a mastertape (pancake) onto the floor in front of the producer
4. Fell asleep (I couldn't take it anymore. After 18 hours of the group and their "producer) bickering over the beginning to one song)
5. Told off a recording artist who insisted our multitrack was off speed making her sing flat. This was a good one. It was impossible to explain the tape deck will not make her sing flat especially since everything else was in key. It was just track "5" that was off. She was a blonde too.

"Your tape deck is making me sound like I sing flat"
A: "We're not monitoring off of the tape"

"It IS a tape deck isn't it?"
A: "Yes it is"

"Well then there IS tape on it am I correct?"
A: "There seems to be"

"Well then your TAPE DECK is making me sound like I sing flat"
A: "You did sing flat........."

It took off from there. In the wee hours of the morning at times it's really hard to figure out a good response to statements like that and the potential fallout!

[Greg Wells]

I was preparing for a vocal session with a very famous actress I was producing a song for. I was alone in the control room and put the headphones on to dial in the headphone mix. While I was rocking out in my headphone nirvana, there was a... wind explusion... not a small one. I'm way too shy and repressed to ever do that in front of people other than my kids, and my assistant was far away in the front lounge listening for the doorbell. I continued for another 15 seconds, happy with my headphone mix, and took the headphones off and turned around from the console. The entire room was full with the movie star standing directly in front of me, and five other people in the control room, all faces fire engine red from laughter.

Oy.

[heyman]

Greg, at least you didnt shit your pants..

[Chris Parsons]

Lucid master clock set to 44.1K, DP set to 48K. ....I think I did that twice actually!