stupidest things you have ever heard during a session.

[gsilbers]

great thread!!!

1
working for big jingle studio: sent the client the song on a tight deadline, he rings up shortly after all nervous and stressed about the track didnt have any bass.
i told engineers, assistant , everyone involved , we all listened made sure we sent the correct cut etc. call him up and wonder what else was wrong, he said " i am telling you, i am listening right now on my powerbook the song you sent me and i dont hear any bass."

of course i had to explain that little powerbooks speaker dont go to those lows frequencies.

2

waayy before getting into recording.

went to assist engineer, told me to label all the 24 tracks of instruments on SSL with tape while he loaded the session on pro tools.

so i grabed the regular tape and cut 24 3-4 inch pieces and label each one....kick in ,kick out , snare...snare bottom..

engineer turns around and just burst laughin.... " no dude just grab a long piece of artist tape and write on it. "

now i still laugh everytime i am in session on a SSL
3

assisted in a session of 6 piece band, engineer sent 2 cue mixes, one for the band , one for the singer.

singer wanted reverb but engineer sent singer's verb to the bands cue. so the singer kept asking for more, and more verb while the band just kept hearing the singer just drown in reverb and didnt realize there where 2 mixes going on.

long story short, half the band where in the floor laughin that he sang so bad he needed to really cover it while the rest where pissed. the singer couldnt stand it and left the session.

4




assistant engineer tells me: i used that mic over there (points at a royer ribbon mic) and didnt know if it was condenser so i turn the phantom on and off several times to see if it worked but no luck, i think its broken!".



5



setting up a big band on a small size venue. brass players said they "needed"
mics on every piece. i told them that ive heard other bigbands there and it already sound really loud and usually the singer(s) was the only who needed it. but they insisted . the band started playing to check sound while i was going to the console and right as i was going to reach for the mic levels they scream at me how well those mics where sounding.



6



told client/director i can mix the sound of their short film. told him to give me an OMF or the exported wav/aiff tracks from the 2beep till the end and give a data DVD, he replies ok sure. comes around drops his HarDrive, i said ok, maybe itss too big for a DVD, i open the folder (name of movie) and i just see lots wierd files and some wavs. what is that i ask over the phone, its the avid session (if u dont know, Avid stores ALL video and audio and other stuff in only one folder) he responded.



7


singer/guitarist only sings his overdubs with his guitar (unplugged)
on mix session: "whats that sound on my voice?"
me " your unpluuged guitar"

him "take it out!"


8



jingle recording:



composers usually give the score to the musicians in the same recording session.


musicians see the score in a wierd way... they ask the composer/producer:

"what key is this in?"


" its in C flat"





9



ask owner of post studio why all the MIDI gear if u only mix in the box and no score.


"to impress the client"

pssss i said...


clients come in later telling one another , "sounds great with all this stuff"





10


in
music store

"i need a piano virtual intrument/sample that sound really good and realistic"


salesman: "you should get reason (1), it has a great piano sound"


me " uhhh ok, bye






11



looooooooooooooong time ago



me : the cd stopped playing, do u want to put another one?


friend: "no, just turn sides
"

[gsilbers]

and check here for more. not audio but still funny.


http://www.dumbthings.com/

[Bas]

Tracking a singer 15 years ago, who had his 3 year old daughter in the room. Got to playback, and there was something hidden in the mix. Solo'd the vocal track and there it was "daddy, DADDY!" the next line continued with the vocalist "I believe that children are our future....."

Did a session on my old 8 track, had all the muso's in there and I was tracking the live session.

Suddenly it all falls to pieces as one of the singers starting shouting at another "You don't sing THAT harmony on stage. "YES I DO" came the reply. They had only played together for a few years, but obviously not in that close proximity.

[SiliconAudioLab]

Originally Posted by Bas

Tracking a singer 15 years ago, who had his 3 year old daughter in the room. Got to playback, and there was something hidden in the mix. Solo'd the vocal track and there it was "daddy, DADDY!" the next line continued with the vocalist "I believe that children are our future....."

So did you leave the kid in the take?

[Gorilla Audio]

the drummer says....
"Turn off that click...it's slowing me down!"

Classic!

[stevep]

Drummer ..... "That click track is all over the place"

[joeq]

Originally Posted by Bas

Tracking a singer 15 years ago, who had his 3 year old daughter in the room. Got to playback, and there was something hidden in the mix. Solo'd the vocal track and there it was "daddy, DADDY!" the next line continued with the vocalist "I believe that children are our future....."

I did a jazz session where the lead singer, unable to get a baby sitter, had to hold her baby while she sang. She belted out a big finish with a chopped ending :

"B Y E !... B Y E !... B L U E S ! "

and the baby said

"bye.. bye.. boo"

it made the mix.

[I play in a ban]

me: cody, that's the same song i wrote for you a few months ago.

cody: no it's not, i would never use your song....it sucked.

[Bas]

Originally Posted by SiliconAudioLab

So did you leave the kid in the take?

Of course we did. thumbsup

[Norman Lindsey]

i had to record a metal drummer who was hired to play country once.
he brought in his huge kit . it was like one of those drum cages with many tom toms and cymbals.
i then had to mike it all up with twelve sends for each mic etc. at his request.
halfway through the session i realised he was only using kick snare hats and one tom because it was , ummmm , country type music.
i asked why he brought in his whole kit for the gig and he said ' i need my drums to breathe'.

[Dan DeTora]

i was tracking a song and it featured a rap artist who had worked dr. dre on his last album...

rap artist: "dr. dre copies my adlib track and pans it L+R to make it stereo."

me: "that won't make it stereo. he's doing more than just copying the part..."

artist: "no dawg, he just copies the track and pans them L+R"

me: "ok" (i do as he says...and perform a null test to prove it doesn't work)

artist: "you're doing something wrong... because dr. dre does it"


same artist, later in the session while i was doing a rough mix:

"i like don't automated consoles; the faders move back once i let them go"

---

whats the saying? a little bit of knowledge in the wrong hands...

[guid0]

A long time ago the band I was in decided to record a very rough demo of our best songs. Since we rehearsed in an old radio studio, all we had to do was get someone with recording equipment to come in and setup in the control room.

The guy we hired was the brother of the bass player who also happened to be a gear pimp at the local music store.

He comes in with a tascam 4-track portastudio, a few decent mics and a small rack of outboard gear. We get things started, recording the drums on 2 tracks, vocals on one track, and the rest on one track. He actually managed to come up with a decent sound, so we start chugging away, song after song.

We did about 3 or 4 takes of every song until we got a keeper.

At the end of the session, we come into the control room to listen to the tracks.

Just as we're coming in, the "engineer" seems all excited and pleased with himself:

"Wow, I managed to get all of this down on one tape. I flipped the tape over between song 5 and 6."

We're all looking at him, fuming
and he's all "what? What's wrong?"

[SiliconAudioLab]

Originally Posted by Bas

Of course we did. thumbsup

[andyspiller]

Fantastic Thread - makes all those crappy sessions I've endured somehow seem worth it.

Couple of favourites of mine

i) Went in to a studio to record the keyboard parts for a West End Musical cast album - the music producer (who's been at every performance for the first 3 months) - What are you playing?"

Answer "the same thing I've been playing for the first last 3 months. . . . ."

MP - "I've not heard any of this - are you sure. . . . .?"

ii) Working on a remix of a (never released) Janice Robinson track requiring a 2nd verse which I wrote the words for, from the artist's perspective. . .

Janice (God bless her) "Yeah, that is definitely what I'm feelin. . . . ."
(BTW me thin tall square white guy who is crap at lyrics, her cool dance diva/songwriter, budget spent (Manifesto) in total about $75,000. . . .A&R Manager insisting that only the keyboard riff matters. . . . .absolute insanity

iii) Did original ethnic TV ad music for Middle East country and was asked by the producer and creative to remix it a couple of years later to make it more "hip" - at their suggestion firstly strip track down - then over a period of about 3 hours kept adding track after track of original version until everything was back in again, only to be told, "that's fantastic, exactly what we want, much more like it "etc. . .

Identical to the original in every way. . . . . . there is no substitue for ears

If at first you don't succeed, give up. . . .

[johnwy]

True stories while working at another studio

--

Cousin of artist attending session: "yo, your kick drum is extorting"

-----

A freelance engineer rents a rack of Neve VR EQ's for a session. Engineer arrives for session, sees only 2 eq's in the rental rack and asks assistant if there was any way of getting more Neve VR eq's in the rack. Assistants reply was "You have 72 of them" while pointing to the Neve VR 72 console behind him.


--

Same engineer: "Why does my mix sound like it's in mono?"

Same assistant: "Because you didn't turn on the pan knobs"

(For those who don't know, on Neve VR's, if you want to pan your audio you must turn on the pan function on a channel by channel basis, unlike other consoles where the pan knob is always active)

---

Different freelance engineer says the same assistant "This is the strangest SSL I've ever seen" while looking at a Neve VRP.

--

Producer :"How can you call yourselves a recording studio when you don't own any ADAT machines?"

Well, we did own 4 Studer A-827's and a Studer D-820 (Sony 3348 format) at the time....I think those were common in recording studios........

--

Session keyboard player says when he walks in the door "its 2:30, I can only stay until 5"

"Thats OK" says the producer.

At 4:45, after doing one horrible take after another, the keyboard player stands up and asks "..by the way, is this a paying gig?"

".....uh, .............yeah!?!" retorts the producer.

Keyboard player answers back "I can stay after 5 if you want."

--

I'll post more if I can remember any

[DeeDrive]

Singer listening back to his vox tracks:

"I think the word 'another' sounded weird. I like the 'a' and I like the 'er', can we just punch the 'noth'?"

We did it, sounded natural, but give me a break....

[rickrock305]

Originally Posted by DeeDrive

Singer listening back to his vox tracks:

"I think the word 'another' sounded weird. I like the 'a' and I like the 'er', can we just punch the 'noth'?"

We did it, sounded natural, but give me a break....

sounds like a latin pop music session

[celticrogues]

The guitar player in a band I recorded once borrowed equipment from a friend of mine to use at the session. My friend gave the guitarist an amp (which had two inputs), an effects pedal, and 2 cables (the guitarist had his own guitar). The guitarist struggled with this gear for quite a while before standing standing up to indicate he was ready to play. I looked at his rig and noticed that he had one cable hooked up from the output of the pedal to the first input of his amp, the other cable going from the input of the pedal to the other input of his amp, and nothing hooked up to his guitar.
"How do you think the sound is going to get out of your guitar?" I asked him. He looked down at his guitar for a minute, then replied "Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask you for another cable..."

[mattssons]

"It´s strange i always get kind of exited when i have a microphone infront of my face"


I had to leave the room & let the other engineer i was running the session with continue...

[maskedman72]

Originally Posted by Norman Lindsey

i had to record a metal drummer who was hired to play country once.
he brought in his huge kit . it was like one of those drum cages with many tom toms and cymbals.
i then had to mike it all up with twelve sends for each mic etc. at his request.
halfway through the session i realised he was only using kick snare hats and one tom because it was , ummmm , country type music.
i asked why he brought in his whole kit for the gig and he said ' i need my drums to breathe'.

classic!!!

[maskedman72]

Originally Posted by robmix

2). Same player and producers at Larabee in L.A. He's got the whole stereo Bradshaw rig setup, we've got a 57 on each cabinet and a stereo pair of Fet47's about 3 feet away. He plug's in and strums a chord and there's like 40 seconds of canyon reverb hapenning. He looks at me and says "damn you gotta move those room mics in".

now that is the best thing ever. i would have pissed myself if i were there like i just did.

[Audio Hombre]

Producer / [wannabe] Engineer / Arranger / bassist I was assisting on a CD. He'd worked with a lot of high powered people but was certifiable nUB when it came to AE.

Me: "Umm, we've got a LOT of that 737 on there already, like almost everything, you sure you want to use it for your bass, vocs and bgv's, too?"

Numbnutz: Oh ya man....ya....ya....I really love the warmth of the Avalon ...

Me: ok...[no comment re his "warm" avalon] Then why do we have +12db of high EQ on there?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Numbnutz: "Ah,...go check the R 4050 OH on the strings. I'm getting fuk all level here!

Me: "There, that'll have it."

Numbnutz: "That was fast. What did you do?"

Me: "The mic was sitting in the the mount backwards..."

[artbeat77]

This probably falls under stupidest session I ever did:

Got called to do a session one time that was described as "Bach - country." That's as in J.S. Bach. It was really just crap (Country + rap?). The song was instrumental, the lead instrument being guitar. Of course there weren't any charts. Not so much an issue for me this day, but really hard for the upright bass and violinist. Bass player joked (later, of course) that the writer must have been thinking, "I paid for these frets, and I'm going to use them" when writing the song. It was booked as a two-hour session, we didn't finish. It was a disaster.



Another day, out of the blue, had a recording school graduate/second engineer ask me what the buffer setting on my soundcard was set to. It was at 256 running with no problems (I had one Dr. Rex module open in Reason running a two bar loop). He said that I should change the buffer setting to 512 becase that is the best setting for MIDI.

[ARude]

This is a KILLER thread… I LOVE it. But it’s a book already. How ‘bout a War Stories thread?

Here’s my 1 & a 2 cents…

Had a regular session with a Led Zeppelin cover band, they were recording their next great album, of Zep covers…

I didn’t usually complain, they were paying top dollar to record 24 track 2” at 30 IPS. Had to pay the bills. The band was terrible and they all thought they were the second coming of the Zep. The vocalist had a barely competent ½ octave range.

As he listens to the playback on a vocal overdub he asks “Can you make me sound like Robert Plant?”

I knew he wanted echo and heavy reverb but what came out was:

“I’ll call Bob and see if he’s up for a larynx transplant…”

Fortunately, all I got was a “what?” and a deer-in-the-headlights stare…

----------
Another was trying to explain to a young, talented guitarist why he couldn’t do a 4 minute intro to a song that was supposed to be “radio friendly” which meant 3:30 at the time. I explained that Program Directors wouldn’t add a song with an intro that was that long. His response?

“You can’t tell me ANYTHING about radio, I’ve been listening to radio all my life!”

The executive producer was a nationally known program director…

--------------
A young wantabe comes in with a cassette mix of his band that he had done on his portastudio. He was obviously very proud of his mix. I thought he was playing a demo of his band that he wanted to bring in. Not bad, unfortunately he thought that the recording was great and wanted to master the mix he had. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t really radio ready due to the noise and so forth but that it was a good effort. At this point he asks, “Isn’t there a button that you can push to make it sound better?”

“Yep!” I couldn’t help my self, I reached up and pushed the eject button!

--------
I record a lot of roots music and I had one old guitarist show up to do tracks on a song the artist thought this would be “just the thing” to make the track more authentic. The old guy pulls his guitar out of the case and starts playing with the track and it’s obvious that the guitar is completely out of tune. I stop the track and ask politely for the guitarist to tune up to the track. He looks at me blankly and says “I tuned it before I left the house.”

--------
For many blues & roots artists:

- Meter is something you park a car next to
- A pocket is where you keep your keys
- A bar is someplace to work. (and drink)

-----------------------------
As the audio engineer for a Gospel TV show the director says in my direction; “Why does this sound so awful?” I told him that the bassist was out of tune with the keys. [piano & C3] He tells the stage manager to have the bassist tune his bass. The stage manager keys his headset and between giggles tells the director “he doesn’t know how.” Director knows that I play bass and tells me to “Get out there and tune his bass!” I went out asked the bassist if I could tune his bass and he agreed. I tuned it up to the keys and returned it to him at which point he says “Thanks, I always wondered how to do that!”


I couldn’t make this up…

------------------------
Needed to do some tracking in a new market before my own stuff was set up, so I cased out the other studios in the new market. I was talking to one studio owner with a big add in all of the local music trades. I said “I see that you have only one set of monitors [Mackie] listed and no subwoofer listed. Do you have any alternate monitors?” I thought he would tell me that he’d hook up anything else I wanted or some-such, but NO! “These are the only monitors WE use here, they’re the best and we tried subwoofer’s and didn’t like them…”

[dsoukup]

Did you quantitize the vocals?

Raise the Snare one DV.

Use your wand thingy.

Let me tell tell ya something about mixing, you should be using these NS10's and not the Westlakes.

I think the blue one is better.

Make these midi drums sound like real drums.

Oh..and last night I was working with a producer that wanted me to put back in the piano track that had been taken out because it was in the wrong key. I tried telling him that but he didn't care...He told me to make it angelic. After it was bounced and he was listing to his cd's at the end of the night he told me he thinks the piano might be out of key.

[Sqye]

On the click track tip - I'm MD on this project:

I give our young bass player (19) a rehearsal CD w/ mixed backing tracks, cues, etc. so he can prep for our first real rehearsal, after reviewing all the parts for each song with him, and making sure he's really nailing it.

Later that night, Bass Player calls me on the phone:
'uh, Joseph, did you give me the right tracks? There's this really loud sound going through the whole track.....
Me:
You mean the 'click track?'
Bass player:
silence
Me:
"I think you're talking about the click track - it sounds like a sidestick, right?"
silence
Me:
Hello...?
Bass player:
"I donnooo.... it sounds really weird - you sure you gave me the right tracks, because that sound is really ANNOYING!!"

[lefthando]

Here's one involving solo jazz piano recorded live on a very cheap piano.

Producer: "Can't you just go in to the waveform and fix the tone of every note?"

Me: "Sorry, I don't have the Bosendizer plug-in"

[Sqye]

Say, how do I get my hands on that "Bozendiser" plug in, anyway - I ben eyin' that sumbitch for a minute, now Can I use it on Jew's Harps?

[maskedman72]

band books a night to do 2 songs with me.

the band says "we want to really take our time on this and make it sound really good"

so the band shows up last night at 6pm and as soon as they walk in they say "we have to hurry up with this cause we have to play a show tonight at 9pm".

[PRobb]

Originally Posted by Sqye

Say, how do I get my hands on that "Bozendiser" plug in, anyway - I ben eyin' that sumbitch for a minute, now Can I use it on Jew's Harps?

No. You're thinking of the "Boozerdiser".