3 Biggest challenges

[foolsfortune]

What are the 3 biggest challenges you face in recording? Can be anything at all. Techniques, gear related...as long as it relates to getting things recorded, it's fair game.

Thanks
Mike

[ScottyD]

Remaining calm when the guitar player insists to print with 4 effects pedal on.

-ScottyD

[James Meeker]

Why stop at three? In no particular order:

1.) When rock or metal drummers hit like anemic little girls. Especially when they've never heard of a high hat or a ride cymbal... only crash cymbals on every 8th note throughout the whole song.

2.) Singers that show up on their big day to record who tell you "I think I'm getting sick!". I hate that lame excuse, but I go thru with the farce anyways so as to not disturb their fragile ego.

3.) Guitar players that think a Mesa Rectifier is god's gift to guitar tone. Especially if it's set to "modern" and the gain and bass are on "10."

4.) Dealing with little league bands that want an amazing drum sound in 25 minutes of setup, an amazing guitar sound in 5 minutes of setup, and amazing sounding mixes in under 2 hours. Thankfully I'm dealing less and less with this problem as the years go by.

5.) Rappers that have 20 different people all putting ad libs, parts, verses or whatever on a song. Especially when you have something like 6 ad libs in the background that they want as loud (or louder) than the main vocal. One guy told me the ad libs are MORE IMPORTANT than the song! WTF?

6.) Here's a challenge I really hate--dealing with people that are totally out of their league. When dude has a part that they have a 2% chance of playing/singing correctly... doing punch after punch until you luck into the take--which will be mediocre at best because it's a little out of their reach.

7.) Bands that try to be "impressive" by having each player go "ape-shit" at the same time. Two (or more!) different guitar parts, a drummer doing a solo, while the bassist tries to impersonate Billy Sheehan.... total audio clusterfook! Especially when they do this all the time. Mixing this stuff is usually a nightmare.

[PoorGlory]

Convincing drummers that their drums sound like shit.
Convincing drummers that they're not keeping the tempo or playing with the click.
Convincing drummers that they can't talk or move around until after the cymbals fade out at the end of the song.

I solved my biggest problem of infinite remixes... mixing OTB. Now I tell bands "Once you approve this mix, that's it. To recall this mix on the console and all the outboard may not result in the exact same sound, so let's get it right and move on." While that may be stretching the truth, bands (meaning musicians, not audio guys) that are used to ITB mixes think that OTB is like sacred or something, and they take it pretty seriously... I have yet to have to do a full recall since I started telling them this.

[blarg]

Treating an otherwise crap room before anything gets switched on.
Dealing with otherwise crap gear after it gets switched on.
I think the social aspect is pretty much covered so far.-

Making good decisions when you're tired.

Not going to gearslutz with the laptop on the couch while half-listening to the mix. "huh"?"
"dude it sounds cool".
It's all good though man, just after this last thread.

I'm half joking.


help.

[foolsfortune]

Good stuff guys...keep 'em coming. I'm doing some research here and have no idea why I chose 3 things....it can be as many as you'd like.

If you want a copy of the resulting report, just PM your email addy to me and you'll receive it in PDF format.

Thanks
Mike

[Dopamine]

Dealing with clients that have no business being in the studio.

[Grasshopper]

how about these

guitar players that death grip the guitar neck and make everything sharp. (then one of the other band members says "dude, i think he's out of tune") o rly?

abuse of double bass drum pedals. this is way out of hand.

"bass players". if it sound like a fat guy running while wearing corduroy pants

just because the drumstick made contact with the snare drum head does not mean it counts

you can auto tune that right?

[A LaMere]

Hmm... for whatever reason...

There's a lot of bitching, and no one talking about actual work....

So, everyone's biggest "challenge" is other people in the studio essentially?

Strange....

[Blake Minaker]

Originally Posted by foolsfortune

What are the 3 biggest challenges you face in recording?

Friends
Family
Religion

These are the 3 demons you must slay to become successful at recording.




Seriously though. I hate drummers who blame the click track. It's not the computer that's broken, it's your feet. However, I've just accepted that no one can play to a click except my two best drummer friends, and have decided to just track things live off the floor from now on if the drum isn't up to par. I ended up doing this lately even with good bands, and I just kinda like this approach.

[Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by A LaMere

There's a lot of bitching, and no one talking about actual work....

So, everyone's biggest "challenge" is other people in the studio essentially?

must be nice to always record amazing musicians.

[john.sawyer]

3 biggest challenges:

1. Great songs (a lost art form)
2. Great musicians (a dying breed)
3. Great rooms (real estate seems to be more valuable as condos)

[doorknocker]

1. getting booked

2. getting paid

3. getting credit

[James Meeker]

I've always joked that this would be a great job except for the clients.

Once you get your technique mostly down and have made a few hundred songs you realize it's not that hard to make a record--just a lot of work and double checking. Then you realize that the sole purpose of 95% of people that come into your studio is to make you make a crappy sounding record.

It's hard to save people from themselves. It's like talking one of your drunk friends out of going home with that skank ho.... of course they don't listen to you and the next day they wake up with gonorrhea. That's the day to day life of the average audio engineer.

[jaydeluca]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

It's hard to save people from themselves. It's like talking one of your drunk friends out of going home with that skank ho.... of course they don't listen to you and the next day they wake up with gonorrhea. That's the day to day life of the average audio engineer.

hahhahaha

that is amazing

[James Meeker]

It's true! Ever try to talk some post-emo, post-hardcore kids out of not having four (sucky) guitar lines going simultaneously? Try to explain about simplicity being good, that the part isn't heavy because there is too much going on, it's going to be a nightmare to mix, that at most they should write a counterpoint.

They'll look at you like you're some old fart that doesn't understand their music.

Then, when the record is done and sounds middle of the road to lame they'll blame YOU. They'll try to convince themselves it was the audio engineering that was lacking... not their inability to play or write songs.

It's tough. There are some people that I won't work with ever again because the money isn't there (they always want miracles at half price) and they're ignorant about improving their craft, and clueless in the studio (no matter how hard you try to up their game).

Ah well... these are the road blocks and pitfalls of the job. If you can navigate them long enough they start to go away.

[danranges]

personally:

1) drum sounds
2) drum sounds
3) drum sounds



i'm working on it.

[donsolo]

I've been doing a lot of film music and sound lately so I'm going to bring in a different perspective.

People not backing up the final edit and a hard drive failing.
Crews walking off set because the budget just won't accommodate their extravagant concepts of what low-budget indie film is.
Having to work on percentage.

But 99% of problems in life are social because they are not logical problems. A logical problem has a logical answer. If something is broken, there is a way to fix it. If your room is creating mixes that do not translate elsewhere, there is a reason that can be solved logically and corrected.

Emotional problems don't always (if ever) have emotional or effective answers. The singer can't sing today because he is too intimidated (claiming sick). How do you deal with that? You can't go get him a cough drop and tell him to suck it up like you can with Pro Tools. You can't keep the band from infighting in the studio and giving you crappy takes but not having the budget to redo. Technology is far simpler than you think.

Not to stray too far off topic (though this probably is in the wrong forum regardless), but politics plays completely into this concept. Most issues that politicians deal with are emotional problems. "We don't want starving babies" of course you don't, but you can't afford to put food into the mouth of every starving baby. "No new taxes" and then who suffers? Libraries? Musicians? Artists? Poor? There's no logical solution to these problems, so politicians just kinda yank our heartstrings and try to evoke a positive emotional response towards them. People complain about nothing getting done in congress, there's nothing TO get done because neither way is actually progressing.

I only point this out because after you work with a bunch of bands, you start to see similarities in the way small social groups work and interact to larger groups. A strong band leader is more of a politician than a musician. It's not a bad thing but typically the best musicians are not the ones way up front, they focus a lot more of their energy into becoming better musicians. Without the band leader, the band falls apart. This is why I quit playing in bands actually...

Maybe I'm completely wrong. When it comes to social stuff, I can really miss the point sometimes.

[thedoner]

1) Staying booked consistently on projects I'm exited about.

2) From an engineering standpoint...recording singers who play ac gtr at the same time. I've done it dozens of times throughout my career, using a multitude of different mic techniques, and I've yet to get a result that I'm more that 65% happy with. Always a challenge to minimize both phase cancellation and off axis coloration. Although there's an interesting method outlined in the Tips and Techniques section using 2 figure 8's that I'm looking forward to trying out.

3) Trying to get less experienced drummers to play straighter, do fewer fills that step on the vox, and to not CONSTANTLY HIT THE KICK AND SNARE AT THE SAME TIME!

K, FLAM, K, FLAM, K, FLAM, KK, FLAM, K, FLAM, K, FLAM, K, FLAM, KK, FLAM

[shadewind]

I agree with some points here, but I think people in general complain too much about modern music. Some styles simply use a lot of cymbals all the time, for example post-hardcore. It's part of the sound. A lot of things that might seem weird are part of certain music styles. But then again, there are a lot of things that are just plain out wrong :)

When it comes to singers who are too intimidated to sing correctly, it's your job as a tracking engineer to make him comfortable with it and coach him. Any idiot can hit record. Same with drummers, you can't just tell a drummer "Hey, you drum sound sucks!" or "Hey, play in time with the click stupid!".

[ryanojohn]

Originally Posted by doorknocker

1. getting booked

2. getting paid

3. getting credit

+3!!!


and paying for gear...