Artist (The Next Jay Z) - "Im gonna be the next big thing man watch, next jay z"
He goes to the Booth starts his rap.
"I sold dope, on the block I, I, so-so-sol...and then...("hol up run dat back, run run dat back")
-Re start track & recording he starts again (take 26)
"I sold dope on the block, then I sold dope in tha projects, and went ha-hard-, I went...ugghhhh!!...("Hol up, Hol up, run dat back run dat back..ugghh I wasnt ready that time")
(he starts re rapping and re writing the verse to his self... "I sold dope on the block, then I sold rocks now im ummm??? ummm??? HOT! Yeah! Yeah! im gone go with that. Is that cool man? dose that sound better to you?)
Dont you hate when you as the Eng has to be coaxed into being a producer and a writer to an absolute failure of an MC!!.. Oh well pays the bills.
6 years later...
The Next Jay Z Take 346..."Yea! I sold dope on the block and I sold rocks now Im hot, and I wont never, evvvvvver...uggghhh I wont ughhh, I wont ugghh.........
(Next Jay Z for sure, no this guy will be better, way better. Cant wait to buy the album...No truly his biggest fan I seen it first right here at the studio.)
the monitors are not mirrored. e.g. the tweeters are both on the right side.
Yes! Ding ding ding... That was exactly what I was pointing out. He wanted me to come over and critique a voiceover that he was doing. I looked at his setup and couldn't help but take a picture.
He told me that he had been placing a high pass filter on the left side of his stereo buss...J/K!..
What’s not so sunny is that he had them setup that way for at least a month.
What else is not funny is that after I took this picture, I set everything up for him. I asked him to pan a track left and right to ensure that the monitors were setup correctly, then he spent about 15 seconds looking at both Pro Tools screens trying to figure where the pan knobs were... This guy has been using Pro Tools for 3 1/2 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Curtis
The beer is out of arms reach.
I have been telling this guy for years not to place drinks on his desk near his Computer and his Avalon M5. He usually has a row of empty beer bottles up there too...
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Willett
Large monitors on the floor in a position totally useless for anything other than for taking your frustration out on the bass drivers.
Small monitors are vertical-mount monitors on their sides and are not symmetrical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by matt thomas
Maybe he's just using the large monitors as stands for the small ones (as I am doing in my studio currently, until I get some new stands made)
matt
That's exactly what it is. He is using the bottom speakers as stands.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petfeverdetector
are those mo-pads under his laptop?
Yes, those are Auralex mo-pads... If you notice, he was using them underneath the right monitor, but not the left. He felt that it was more important to place them under the laptop.
This guy does mostly voiceover work and actually gets paid to do it. He is the voice for a large financial institution (I'm not going to name which one). He has also done several other commercials.
He has a Pro Tools HD Native setup with an Avalon M5 preamp and a Blue microphone. He also has clients over there all of the time and that was how his studio was setup.
Guitarist of one metal band said: I want left guitar 2db lower, but I like the overall level, so i put bass 1 db up and second guitar 1db up. I tried to explain to him as laical as possible that you dan't calculate db's like that, for several minutes while he listened to me very carefully. I asked him if he understood and he said that he did... and then he: ok, enough talking, back to business, left guitar -2 db, bass and right guitar +1db each, it's the only logical thing... huh
Same guy: I want drums and bass to sound like matallica's black album and guitar and vox like iron maiden's seven son... I guess musician's always right, so i tried to make it happen... And then he said guitars doesn't sound anything like black album... he didn't take anything for an answer... well, few weeks later he said he wanted album to sound really fat, like early metallica, and didn't take "metallica's first albums are not as fat as our mix" for an answer...
Same guy: he was always sayng that dynamics of the songs were crucial to him. And while mixing he was always complaining that one part of the song was more quiet than the other. For example - chorus is two overdubbed distortion guitars, loud bass, fat drums, many vocals,... and after chorus there's just bass and clean guitars instrumental... Why it doesn't sound that full and loud anymore? Bring it up!
Same guy: every cd i have sounds louder than your mixes... He didn't understood that mixes need headroom, even after explaining this to him every f***ing time... I guess i was incompetent one other thing was, you use your good speakers to camouflage your lack of knowledge, i've listened mixes on my cd player and it didn't sound so good, low end was far less recognisible... huh?
Of course when i requested that he'd do some overdubs it was a big problem... Can't you just duplicate it? No! Can't you do this or that? No! Did James fom Metallica did overdubs? Yes! Ok, no problem... Or when I gave him cables to use and he insisted on using his own. Because he read somewhere that they use it in as he said "big studios in New York"... Well, his cables were some cheap made by otherwise good brand, broken, with lots of cracks, hum, ... But sure, he knew the best... And I've heared him talking to other members of the band out on a cigarette during a break (when i wasn't supposed to hear) things like "yep, it's ok that he suggests something, but it's our album and we're gonna make it the way we want"- still about cables... Later we had to use my cables, cause we couldn't make one take without pause, crack or biblical hum!
Same guy: we had two different mixes of one song song and he was trying to convince other band members that previous mix sounded far better than latest. So we were listening to new mix, (i accidentally played the previous) and he was pointing out all the things that were worse than in "previous", and than i played the previous (now it was the new mix) and he was saying how perfect it was. Other members of the band agreed with him, that previous (new) mix was better... But than i discovered my mistake of switching the two mixes. Fire in the house!!! He said he knew all the way that mixes were switched and he was just teasing the others... Dictator as he was, ideal mix as he claimed few minutes ago, was total shit now and final mix was the previous...
This are just some of the things, just out of my head... To tell you the truth, this guy was really the biggest prick i ever worked with, he almost made me kill myself (almost made the other members of the band to kill themselves as well), BUT, the music he wrote was really good, so when he was not around it was really a lot of fun mixing it... But apart from music he wrote, his playing was not that good, so it took more than 100 takes of each part, to get "the one" as he said... Well, "the one" that was "so good, that no one could've possibly play it better" usually needed lots of editing, changing of slumpy notes and so on. I'm quite sure i have seen the biggest ego on earth, captured in the most stupid, but musically genius brains... As i have heared later, his "i know the best beacause i am god" behavior closed lots of doors for them. shame
One drummer from some other band: what's this click in my headphones? me: it's a metronome drummer: can you switch it off, it's confusing me...
And this one from ane session i was just assisting. there was this guitarist who was way better in his head than in real world, playin super fast solos on every kind of song and sound engineer/producer tried to explain to him how his solos fitted in music : "imagine a nice family movie, that's this song... And than all of a sudden big hard cock appears on a screen, and then the movie continues. That cock is your solo..."
One other: once a guy came in to do the mix and one track was his keyboard. It was played on a crappy keyboard, way too much input, it was all distorted, so i asked him if he could mixdown the track again with lower outpur and bring it back... he said he couldn't, so i asked him if he could bring me the midi file of it... and then... noooo way, i don't use midi, i'm all for the natural sound... And then when asked he told me he recorded it on this 150€ keayboards, ... didn't take anything for the answer "it's audio file isn't it? So how can you tell me my keayboard has midi sounds...". Later i discovered that distortion on keyboards probably sounded better than if the track was clead, so bad it was , this "his" sound...
On the other hand, i had this client once who couldn't tell me what he wanted... He couldn't communicate. It was like "it doesnt sound right, please make it sound better". Me: whats wrong with it? he: IT! It is wrong... To cut the long story short, he asked me if he could try to fix it himself... i said of course he could... He asked me what does this machine do, and what that... and aked me about what plugin is on this track and what on this... Than i showed him what was on this guitar track and he started to turn some knobs... And then he asked me the same about vocal tracks and i showed him and he turned some knobs... At that point it was clear to me at least that he's really LISTENING to the music and not just looking at it... I went out for a cigarette and left him to play with knobs a little... And then when I came back... shock, it really sounded so much better i couldn't believe my ears... I dunno if he was honest, but he claimed he never worked on pro equipment before... It really got me thinking... It was back when i was still new to the business and i have learned a lot that day, but he's done some serious damage as well, since i now take every idiot's comment on how to do something seriously, even knowing it can't be this way but it really surprised me how this guy wasn't trying to be smart or anything, he just sat there quietly and did it!
oh, just remembered one flower from that metal guitarist i was talking about... He once asked me to put some amplitube on one of the di tracks, just to compare the sond to one recorded with mics... He kinda liked the bee sound of it and asked me if it was possible to have laptop with amplitube on concerts, since he really like the sound... As if the idea wasn't stupid enough, he said day early that he can't understand guitarists and engineers who don't use tube amps... i told him amplitube was nowhere near the real tube sound, and he said "how come, i can see the tubes on the screen". I guess i've "learned" something new about digital tubes that day and appear total idiot to him
oh, just remembered one flower from that metal guitarist i was talking about... He once asked me to put some amplitube on one of the di tracks, just to compare the sond to one recorded with mics... He kinda liked the bee sound of it and asked me if it was possible to have laptop with amplitube on concerts, since he really like the sound... As if the idea wasn't stupid enough, he said day early that he can't understand guitarists and engineers who don't use tube amps... i told him amplitube was nowhere near the real tube sound, and he said "how come, i can see the tubes on the screen". I guess i've "learned" something new about digital tubes that day and appear total idiot to him
hey.. as an instructor in a recording arts program, I see all sorts of rookie mistakes
this one happened last week,
one of my students had this (end of year) project to sum his ProTools session into the studio's analog console (16 analog channels max) all of my students have been mixing various stuff on this console for over 40 weeks now.. I explained once again that PFL activates the input gain meter, adjust one channel at a time, as needed, for proper gain stage on each analog channel.. I step away for about 20 mins, and then step back into the studio to evaluate progress.. my student is trying to level the faders and panning with every single PFL button engaged.. wtf !?
haha unfortunatelly for him not, so he was out of arguments... for approx. 5 mins., than it was something new why does my amplitubed guitars not come out in the mix as good and massive as other guitarist's mic'd guitars??? of course eq-ing was out of question since he wanted the sound to be exactly as it was... so we had to change evrything else and build it around his guitar sound to prove him he was wrong... And as if it wasn't enough he later refused to pay for those hours, cause it was clearly my fault that we were throwing away the time. He literally said "why didn't you say anything?" i needed whole weekend to recover from the damage that explosion of anger inside me did to my nerves at that moment...
A long time ago about 94 or so I was working for a largish studio in Auckland NZ (polynesian capital of the world apparently). We don a few bands but mainly jingles and Post. Nice old Trident 80B and an MCI 24track, bunch of Ureis, nice mics etc that kind of thing.
I was asked to come in and do a session on a Saturday morning. Bit of a favour of some sort for a friend of a friend of the studio owner. Short session, couple of tracks played live, monitor mix etcetc. No probs, I'll throw the windsufer on the roof of the car and go for a sail in the afternoon.
I arrive nice and early, setup basic mics and wait. About 10am about three vans arrive. A bunch of nice Samoan guys with family in tow get out and say hi and proceed to unload; tables, chairs, a barbeque, chilli bins, food etcetc. There goes my sail I think to myself. And set it all up out the front of the studio in the car park.
No real movement of any instruments, and no real urgency to get into the studio.
Eventually after a few prompts the guys come in with me to have a look about, get comfortable. Cool, sweet bro, awesome etc as they look about.
Me: Ok, how about you bring your things in and we'll get setup?
Them: What things?
Me: Instruments.
Them :What?
Me :Instruments, you know, to play on?
Them: You do have any?
Me: Huh?
Them: We thought you had them
Me: Blank. Huh?
Them: Don't you supply them?
Me: Umm, well we have a nice DW kit and a couple of other bits and pieces.....
Turns out they had flown in from Samoa to record, no discussion had been had by any of them about arranging instruments, bringing instruments whatever.
Barbeque tick
tables and chairs tick
chilli bins of food tick.... you know the essentials for a session.
But no instruments of any description.
Me: Shrug. I had played no part in the booking, was doing the boss a favour
By this stage, the barbeque was ready. Very tasty, stayed for an early lunch the locked up and went sailing.
In the end it all ended up happily. In true Island fashion, they called around, got some stuff together and came in after they had been to Church on Sunday, gave me a few hundred bucks for my time. They were lovely but the awkward moment of realisation that they hadn't brought anything to record was priceless
The above does remind me of a story my wife told me.
A gypsy folklore group from Slovakia had been booked to play on a major international festival in France.
Come the day of departure and the group waited for the coach that never arrived.
It seemed that the coach had been booked to collect them from outside the Cultural Centre in the capital city and the group were waiting at their home village as they had not been told.
Sad, really, as it was then too late for them to make the festival at all.
That cost you at least 10 years of your life, right?
at least, and still counting Since than I usually sit with the band before we make any kind of a deal and just talk normal stuff, to get any kind of idea what kind of people they are... If i find them unpleasant i say that i'm not the guy who can make their album sound as good as possible and recommend them another studio
I remembered another one from this guy - He was concerned that reverb is meant to make something louder... It was like "put some more reverb on this"
"ok"
"noooo, don't put it away in space, do you understand anything at all?"
"um?"
"it's not louder, it's just more distant"
"that's what reverb does"
"no, it was supposed to stay near and be louder"
"so you just want it louder?"
"yes"
"why didn't you say so?"
"i did"...
or constant use of "freakualizer" (i know there's a plugin frequalizer) when wanted to eq something... I guess this "freak" was his input in mixing
Artist recording
Artist: I liked that first take I want to stack 2 more with it make it sound cool?
Me: Ok ready when you are
(Record the takes, he sing every one of them differently pitch and all)
Artist: Why they all sound different?
Me: Thought thats what your were going for?
Artist: No way I want them to all sound full and punchy
Me: Ok well just sing the 2 takes again exactly like you did the very first take
Artist: Ok, yea your right
(Record, he hit both takes again, both takes completely diff from the previous two takes)
Artist: They still sound diff why are they so diff man? Are you recording them diff each time?
Me:Ugggh the same record button nothing different here. Your singing them diff each time are you going for a Chorus effect as in you wanting to build a harmony cause thats what your doing?
Artist: Nah Man I want that thick sound really loud ya know?
Me: Yeah! Ok well your gonna have to sing the takes all the same the very same way to accomplish that.
Artist: Yeah but wont that sound wierd? All of them the same if thas the case why do them?
Me: Well we could go in a totally diff direction and I can just compress the first take to make it full and thick it is always easier and in my opinion better but its up to you?
Artist: Naw, Im just gonna sing them no copy and pasting here Im a real singer
Me: Ok when ever your ready
(Record, sings the takes all diff again!
Great story. Just curious, did you give him the first take in the phones? If so then wow, what a case.
He heard all retakes on phones and monitors cause he couldn't figure out why it sounded "funny". Lol The session lasted over 2 hours jus on the chorus. Kill me
The classic "I've got a computer by my own" fail...
I met a DJ I know a long time and he told me that he wanted to start making music, so...
Me: Sounds terrific. You may wanna come to my studio for the production.
DJ: No thanks, I've got a MacBook.
Me: Sure, take your ideas with you and we'll give them the final touch together.
DJ: No, really thanks. I'm going to do it all by myself. I want to release an album next year. Don't wanna spend money for that!
Me: Sure, if you can do it all by yourself.
But me thinking: Sure, have fun struggling with it. We'll meet next year again and see how it worked out.
Me: So, what kind of monitors do you use. You told me, you wanna buy something new.
DJ: Got the Harman & Kardon loudspeakers, they sound so great.
Me thinking: Ok, not worth discussing with him.
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No, I mean, did you feed him the take he was trying to duplicate while he was tryingto sing along with it? Just wondering how coul dhe go so off if he was hearing the right one?!?!
Well, last year I had a rapper who could do his rap stuff good enough, but for some reason, there were 2 lines he wanted to actually sing. He couldn't sing in tune to save his life... so we did a few passes, took the "best" bits, processed them with melodyne to get something that sounded like the intended melody. Hearing the result, he said, well, I could used that as a guide and sing along to it, I guess it will be better that all this comping and processing.
Me, yeah sure, actually a good idea, let's go.
So I give him this guide in his headphones, and he tried for about half an hour, without ever being able to be remotely in tune...
The good thing is, the guy realized he couldn't sing, and came back a few times, just rapping.
Geoff Emmericks book is a MUST READ... John had no idea about technology and it often led to brilliant expeditions into new territory.
John's request for the vocal on Tomorrow Never Knows was make me sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop.
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To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
-Henri Poincare
I once had a client re arrange the patch bay cables in Alphabetical order of the color of cable. He said he way OCD and that the cables had to Plug from the top row to the bottom row and they had to be in Order or he couldn't concentrate on The Mix. Here is the following convo.
Me " You don't have to worry about mixing, thats my job bro. Just sit back and listen to the mix"
Artist " Yah I know but every time i Here this song it is going to sound out of order because those cables are out of order"
Me "The only reason it will sound out of order is because its out of tune"
Artist " Isnt it your job to make a bad band sound good"
If he really had OCD then that is actually a pretty unpleasant condition to have. To have your life governed by your own obsessive thoughts or other mental disorder can be devastating and is not something to be seen as "being stupid". I'm not saying you should have to work with him (I know I wouldn't want to either) and I can understand the frustration but OCD can be serious and wreck people's lives. Sorry for the downer but had to be said.
Ok. Back to funny!
__________________
Haven't thought of a good line yet.
The Famous Yard is online now
I'm not making fun of the guy at all. He was a brilliant musician and had some really Progressive ideas as far as song structure goes. But we all know that you can spend a good half an hour patching a bay and its a little frustrating for that to happen. The Hip hop guys are interesting as well. "I want the track to hit as low as possible". Then, naw naw it needs to hit lower man! Its your system bro!
Me: "There is a photographer from a national music magazine here to photograph another band, but he wants to meet you guys."
Three bandmembers: "Yeah, let's go!"
Fourth bandmember (acting half insulted): "I'm not doing that - I want to get something to eat!"
I'm not saying it would have led to a major label deal and a private jet, but there are so many independent artists out there struggling and giving 150% to move forward. And this guy is turning down opportunities. Some people stay stuck by their own choosing. This guy had previously missed two radio interviews with the band - one was a small local market, but the other was a top ten national market.
Bandleader to me regarding her habit of hiring flaky bandmembers: "They all act motivated until you hire them, and then all they care about is eating and collecting a paycheck. There's more to being in a band than that."
Funniest thing said in a vocal booth.... Me- in the control room, "Do you want any effects on your vocals?" Vocalist- in the vocal booth. "Don't Phase me Bro!"
__________________
I've told you a million times, don't exaggerate!
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Robert Whitehead
TweaK FreQ StudioS http://www.tweakfreqstudios.com
Austin, TX
I was working for a live entertainment company and needed a band recording of a particular piece. I recorded the rehearsal, while the artists on stage did their things.
The Cellist kept on talking when he was not playing. I told him to be careful not to talk because we could hear him in the house (the musicians played in booths). He replied he did not talk.
At the end of the rehearsal I had him listen to the recording. (he didn't know I was recording)
We could clearly hear his voice.
He told me: "I don't know who we hear on that recording, but it's not me"
He never admitted! I couldn't beleive it, really it was no big deal that he talked, but it was a big one that he denied!
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one other thing was, you use your good speakers to camouflage your lack of knowledge, i've listened mixes on my cd player and it didn't sound so good, low end was far less recognisible... huh?
