Need advice on how much to charge and how much to do.

[TocaLaGuitara]

Well guys, I need your help with a complex situation. I'm just finishing up on a project for some clients/ friends of a friend. Actually my friend is my old boss, who has been doing live sound for the band for a few years, and is a longtime friend of the band leader. They are an Eagles tribute band, and were looking to record a live show in order to put together media for their website as well as to send to places for booking. At the moment I don't believe there is any plan to use the results for anything but promotion for the group.

Before I get into the situation, let me give you the background info of me to help qualify the situation: I graduated over a year ago from a 4-year audio program. I have been interning at a studio off and on for a year. I have built up my own rig and have been recording since graduating, working with about 8 or 9 groups in that time. At this point I am already getting quite respectable results in my projects. This was my first forray into recording a live show.

The show ended up being two hours of performance - two, 12-song sets. For this show, I took signals out of the direct-outs on the board. The show was run on 39 faders on the board. We ended up using all 18 channels of my system, based around a Digi003R and also a second system using the 8 onboard inputs of an M-Audio Profire2626 and sync'ed them together. We recorded everything into Logic 8. We ended up bussing down some channels together to fit into this maximum of 26 channels available.

Basically everything had it's own channel except: 4-toms and mono overhead bussed to a stereo pair, all 7 vocal mics bussed down to one channel (easiest way to knock the channel count down. from the beginning the band talked about overdubbing the vocals after the show).

Originally, that's all it was going to be. Set up the gear and record the show live, and then just redo vocals and that's it. Seemed pretty simple so we never discussed money at the getgo.

But now, things have gotten more complicated. We had a reccuring glitch on the 8 channels on the m-audio. These 8 channels were the 4 acoustic and 4 electric guitar tracks. For most parts it's concealable, but on Hotel California, it happens at the most inopportune time in the song (for the record, the sound quality on all of the recordings sounds great for a live show). The other 18 channels are completely unaffected.

We set out at first with 5 songs that the group wanted to focus on for the promo material. But now in addition to the vocals on a few songs and 12string on Hotel California, we have overdubbed practically all of the guitars from one of the 4 guitarists, all of the keyboard parts from the 5 songs, bass on a few songs, and a few other random parts. At this point we have done 20 hours of overdubs. These were done to correct screw-ups that the guys made on the live recording. Usually they were small flubs, but they opted for redoing entire songs. Vocal overdubs were done using the Atlas Pro Audio Juggernaut as a pre, and a Blue Blueberry mic.

We are at the mixing stage of the project and now are debating about money. I have put in so much time and effort now beyond the original scope of the project, that I feel I should be compensated for this time, but it seems that the band leader and myself so not see eye to eye on the monetary value of this.

My old boss has been the liason between myself and the band. As I stated, he has been doing sound for the band for a while. Additionally, he's been selling guitars to the leader for quite a few years and is an old friend of him. Originally I felt that $800 was a good number for these 5 songs, but my friend felt that for everything we are putting in and the quality, that it should be more like $1200, and communicated that number to the artists. But the artists feel that that is expensive and either want a lower price or more thrown in. For the record, the guys in the band are all in their 50s-60s and well to do, with plenty of high end and boutique gear. So they aren't on the same budgetary level as say a band in their 20s.



Basically my question is this: For my experience, the gear I used, and the time that I have put into this project, what do you guys feel I as an Engineer should recieve for a fee?

My feeling is that, for the entire live recording, and resulting in 5 songs recorded, overdubbed, mixed, and mastered, between $800 and $1200 is fair. The band seems to feel $1200 is a bit expensive and wants more for the money, but for $1200, I would be willing to throw in quick mixes on another couple songs. However, if I am going to mix another 8 songs (the band is thinking about getting up to 13, possibly for a CD?) or the entire remaining 19 songs to complete the show, I think that I deserve higher compensation. And that ANY overdubbing beyond what has already been done will be extra.



What do you guys think? What rate do you think would be fair to both engineer and artist for all of this work? How much for the 5 songs? What about if we do more? Sorry for the extremely long post, but I figured its best to give you all of the info.

[NorseHorse]

I won't get into working out some math equations, but if there were errors in the recording, you should do the make-up session(s) for free and should not count those in your overall charge.

[TocaLaGuitara]

Ok. Well the OD's that were from errors on the recording itself totals one or two hours, tops. All other overdubs were based on musicians' choices to redo parts based on their own issues while playing the songs live, not on my ability or equipment. And from the start, they had planned to overdub vocals, so my decision to buss down vocals from the show was merely to capture a vocal reference. So re-recording due to engineer/machine error is quite small and negligible.

[joelpatterson]

If you haven't talked about money until now, then the band has gotten the message that you're more interested in participating, helping them out and being a part of their scene than you care about being paid for your efforts.

Who can blame them? It sounds like that was the message you sent.

[videoteque]

If you haven't talked about money until now, then the band has gotten the message that you're more interested in participating, helping them out and being a part of their scene than you care about being paid for your efforts.

If you don't talk about money it means whatever they give you is good for you. Money must be talked before the fact!!!

[LX3]

Always try to avoid letting a third party negotiate your fee with the artist. Or if you have to, make it very clear to that third party what the artist will be getting for that fee. Whether you're dealing with the artist directly, or thru a third party, write a clear specification on paper and make sure the individual responsible for paying you has a copy before you start. Otherwise you will always get into these situations.

Especially with mixing and overdubs. Once the artist gets involved in this stage it can take anything from two days to four weeks. So again, you need to have agreed with the client how mixing and overdubs will be charged - from a fixed fee for a fixed number of days to a straight hourly or daily rate, or some combination of the two.

For budget work, it's usually a better idea to give the artist the multitracks and let them do the overdubs themselves... and possibly suggest that they mix themselves as well. Everyone seems to own a DAW these days. Then they can noodle away to their hearts content rather than getting progressively more frustrated by how long it's taking and wondering what the heck they're going to do when the bill arrives.

Personally, I think if the keyboard player has had to replace ALL their keyboard parts, then the band weren't ready to do a "Live recording"

Lastly, please don't take this personally, but it sounds like you had to make a few compromises on this recording, and even then you had equipment failures which meant you lost audio. Incidents like that will always undermine your position when it comes to getting paid. If you want to do more live recording and be taken (and paid) seriously, you need to build yourself a purpose-designed bullet-proof rig.

Let's put it this way, if I lose audio on a gig, and it's my fault, I waive my fee completely.

[BLP]

I've gotten into situations where a project being done for a flat rate grows far beyond its original scope and there's really not much you can do about it. If there's a flat "project" rate, there has to be time/effort parameters discussed beforehand. At this point, I'd say you might be SOL...