stupidest things you have ever heard during a session.

[shikawkee]

Oh man, I just remembered one-

PRobb and I were recording an album for a female singer/songwriter. We tracked the thing then booked a week to record her vocals. On the first day for her vocal overdubs she shows up with an arsenal of teas and remedies, which is fine, but starts making excuses and explains she really can't sing that day because.....her moon was in Jupiter. I kid you not. I don't remember what I said but I do remember the look I shot my partner in crime first before I said it (It was my money).

I love show bidness.

[jonnyclueless]

DRUMMER: "I want my drums to sound like cannons firing"

ME "Are you sure that would be appropriate for a traditional country song?"

DRUMMER "Hmmm, OK maybe more like gunshots".


A friend told me abut how once as an assistant, he accidentally walked in on Jerry Garcia having a heated argument with a gobo.

[bloke]

A young band come in, as we are getting set up, the guitarist starts tuning away, then I notice hes not using a tuner, ( nor is he getting the guitar ANYWHERE near in tune), sooooo, I suggest a tuner, and get an indignant look for my trouble, after a bit, I ask if he could use a tunerplease, again we get the irritated look with (indignantcy on top for good measure), sooo, I calmly explained that if we need to do any overdubs or drop ins if he hasnt used a reference to tune to, it wont work, sooooooooo,, please use a tuner!!!!!!, this time I get an EXTREMELY irritated look and an exhasperated reply of,,


I DONT WANNA WORRY ABOUT ANY OF THIS TUNING SHIT!!!!!!

[Steffmo]

One I forgot.........

Working with a young rapper, kid asks..."do you have something to ...you know...make my voice deeper....

Pointing to the Vari Mu Compressor...I suggested "how about that".

He was ofcourse impressed that we had a device to make his voice sound more...Manley.

[Lynn Fuston]

Originally posted by cgarges
Producer:
"What's that hi-pitched tinny thing?"

Engineer:
"What? Where?"

Producer:
"Right there!"

Engineer begins soloing tracks.

Producer:
"There! That's it!"

Engineer:
"That's a hi hat, Nick.'

This one is local Nashville legend and it's true. All the names will be overlooked except the artist, one Tammy Faye Baker.



TFB on playback of completed track:

"What's that low thing?"

Producer: "What low thing?"

TFB: "I hear a low thing. What is that?"

Prod: "I don't know what you're hearing."

Several tense minutes are spent soloing and muting tracks, since this is a Nashville orchestra date with everyone live, there are plenty of tracks to check. Finally the engineer is getting down to the fundamentals. Mute the piano, mute the guitar, mute the drums.

TFB: "There! That low thing. I don't like it. I don't want it on my record."

Prod: "That's the bass guitar."

[Tim Farrant]

"More talent in the foldback please!"

[Berolzheimer]

Originally posted by PRobb
I was an assistant at a studio that became infected with a severe case of "thats what she said when the bed broke". At a staff meeting it was decided that enough was enough and we should cut it out.
The very next day I was assisting on a vocal session when the following dialog occured

Engineer: Do you have your voice in the cans?

Singer: Well, its in but its soft.


Tongues were bitten in half and several people exploded.

My co-producer, during a vocal session recently tracking "oohs", to the singers:

"Enter soft, then make it swell."

We were all so involved in the music It took a good 30 seconds for that to sink in before we all started snickering.

[minister]

finished a jingle demo and the producer really liked it. client wanted mowtown. i got us dangerously close to a martha and the vandellas song. producer tells client, yeah, he did a good job of capturing the vibe. drummers sits down, we begin running through the song to get him familiar.

"wait a minute, wait a minute!" said the client. "when is he gonna stop warming up on his snare drum and not play such an INSISTENT beat?! i want MOWTOWN!"

sigh/

[the reverend]

i had a famous "super model" booked in to do a lead vox to a track her record company sent me(this was as a favour to the A&R man I did not want to do it!)
someone from the record company phoned me twice to check I had the latest Auto-tune or she would not show!

At about the time she was to arive she (the model)called and said

"i'm a little lost, i'm in my car,i left my house an hour ago, do you know where I am?"

when she did turn up 2 hours later(my studio was 50min from her house)she said she had not learnt the song, but that was ok as she could just say the words and I could use Auto-tune to draw in the melody!

[lowland]

These happened in my presence or to me - not necessarily stupid, but they made me laugh (sometimes after the event) anyway...

1. Sax player plays a solo like Coltrane on speed, comes in to control room for playback, very proud. Producer (pointing at speakers): 'Great. I liked ...THAT note and ...THAT note!'

2. One producer had a habit of saying 'Mr Bond, I presume!' whenever anyone did anything clumsy, until the day we worked with yer actual Roger Moore. Roger was already in the control room when the producer arrived somewhat flustered holding a keyboard; the producer tripped, dropped the keyboard and snapped a key off. Me (under breath): 'Mr Bond, I presume!'.

3. Me to manager after a particularly fraught time recording a bunch of no-hopers: 'Good luck with getting them a record deal'. Manager to me: 'Luck don't enter into it!' I guess he was right, they sank without trace.

4. Recording a female singer, me to producer (talkback off): 'She's never going to get this, it's a complete waste of time'. Singer (on other side of glass): 'Did I ever tell you I can lipread?'.

5. Me after a couple of years engineering in the early eighties, very cocky, to manager: 'I guess I must have seen about everything that can happen in a studio by now'. Singer drops pants and reveals large ring through penis. Me (sheltered life): speechless. Manager: 'Do you still think that?'

[ISedlacek]

It could be also quite interesting to hear similar stories from the other side (clients) ... For sure, they must have also plenty of them ...

[Riad]

Originally posted by ISedlacek
It could be also quite interesting to hear similar stories from the other side (clients) ... For sure, they must have also plenty of them ...

Let them get their own forum!

[ISedlacek]

Originally posted by Riad
Let them get their own forum!

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally posted by borau
Since this is an totally normal, even appropriate thing to do within some genres, i don't think it qualifies as "the stupidest thing ever...." or is that above your...........you know.......head

hey ... I'm a drummer ok ...

[minister]

Originally posted by C.Lambrechts
hey ... I'm a drummer ok ...

right, so you know how to tighten your "head" or did you get that and i didn't get that you got that...

[Crash]

A real case of mic envy:

This didn't happened to me but to the studio owner of the studio I worked at in my very early years. Apparently he was setting up for doing basics with a death metal band called Sk**l F**k, that had the dual guitar thing going on. After he got the drum kit mic'd up, he grabbed an SM-57 for one of the guitar players Marshall cabinets and an RE-20 for the other, just to try and get something different from the sources. Apparently this caused quite a bit of issue between the guitar players, especially with the guy that had the tiny SM-57 coming unglued about how small his mic was, compared to the John Holmes sized RE 20 the other guitar player got. He said, something to the effect of "Hey man, his mic is bigger than mine ...he is going to be louder than me." Even after trying to explain to these guys that size isn't the real issue here with these mics and that size does not dictate volume, he still had to put SM-57s on both cabs to restore harmony between these two bozos.

[psytechguy]

I joined a session that was already in progress and found that for some reason the engineer and drummer weren't exactly getting along.

Right in the middle of a take the engineer waves everyone off and says "Something's breaking up, hang on a minute." This is followed by much cursing and changing of cables and mics.

Take 2: the same thing happens.

Someone suggests we take a break till it gets sorted out.

I go out to the parking lot. The drummer's already out there having a smoke.

He starts telling me what a jerk the engineer is. Then he shows me how he's been crackling the cellophane from a cigarette pack into various drum mics just to spite him.

"That guy's a f-ing ******!"

I never did find out what pissed him off in the first place. I cut my track and got out before the fists started flying!

[Riad]

Originally posted by C.Lambrechts
hey ... I'm a drummer ok ...

What do you call the guy that hangs out with the musicians in the band?

The drummer.

Donning my flame suit now!

[T_R_S]

I took the CD howme and I was dissappointed. How come my recording does not sound like Peter Gabriel?

[GearHunter]

1) An example of pure studio ignarance. I put a singer in to a small padded, totally dead booth, and his piano player was miced up out in the larger live room. When I put some reverb on the singer's voice in to the headphones, the piano player said, "Wow, how are you getting that echo on the voice?"
To which the singer replied, "That's 'cause I'm in the echo booth!"

2) Forgetting we are surrounded by live microphones. This is a big one and it happens all the time. Why don't people realize there are mics everywhere?

Here's an example that really happened: The band does a basics take, after which the drummer comes in to the control-room to hear playback. While the tape's rewinding, a couple of the other idiot band memebers out in the live area start talking, which is totally audible in the CR:

"So did you tell the drummer he's fired yet?"

"No"

"Is that new drummer coming to the audition next week?"

"Yeah, it's all set."

NIIIIICCCCEEE!!!

[GearHunter]

Oh yeah--here's another one from the "Clueless A&R GUY" file:

Some of you recall that in the 80's there was a digital 2-track recorder called the Sony 501 (601/701). It was a Sony AtoD interface that recorded on to a standard video tape deck, like a beta or an SVHS. And of course the only way to play back the tape was to decode it back through the Sony device, which actually sounded pretty good.

So we had finished mixing this LP on 1/2 2-track, and edited it, and then I made a copy on to the Sony 701, on to a VHS tape.

So, I give the A&R guy ALL the masters, as was required (no one was to have any master-quality copies. Mr. Big Shot had to take posession of all masters).

So--you know what's coming don't you--He calls me the next day literally SCREAMING on the phone that the digital tape was blank, and that I was incompetent, and he was firing me, and he wasn't going to pay me or the studio, etc. stc. I listtened quietly while he raged on for minutes. You could hear how red his face was. Only then did I very calmly explain the whole Sony 701 thing to him.

That's right. He took it home and tried to play it in his VHS video deck.

The digital noise probably blew his speakers out.

Har!

fuuck

[Switchcraft]

a live sound engineer was telling me about when he was doing sound for Eric Clapton and Eric didnt like the guitar sound at all so he went to the board and changed the EQ for about an hour back and forth around and around. The live sound friend of mine came back an hour later after lunch and Eric said he finally got the tone through the EQ My friend walked over to the board next to him and said...

"do you wnt me to activate that EQ now?"

when I was in a session I was told to make the pro tools vocal track green cause it sounded better that way. the client is always right I guess.

[wolffy]

In an old band we always ****ed with the bass player...

Bassplayer: "Are we about ready to record yet?"

Me: "Looks like Jason's still tuning his drums."

Bassplayer: "Yo Jason, how much longer?"

Jason the drummer: "It'll be a while, I still gotta tune the cymbals."

Bassplayer: "Dammit man!"

[GearHunter]

i said hell yea!!!!!! the reason mr metal and crew were suing?...when they took their reels to the other studio the engineer there told the band that the engineer who worked with them before....(me)....ruined all of the reels and the entire project had to be re-recorded cause the reels were not "TAILS OUT"!!!!!!!

Holy Shite Maskedman!

That Mr. Metal story is really true?

Was there really anything wrong with the tracks? I mean, even if you did wind the reels heads-out, one or two week's time is not going to cause print-through.

What did they do to the tapes? Load them iin the back of their "RawkMetalVan" on top of the bass-players SVT Cab? Right next two a couple of Marshall 4 X 12?

Which reminds me...

At the load-in of a guitar overdub session, the band shows up with their amps. The two-inch reels were jammed in to tha back of a guy's Fender Twin Reverb, which always was a handy place to put stuff....like pedals, cords, straps....


magnetic recording tape!

DOH!

[Gregg Sartiano]

As for doing a "clients point of view" topic, I mean...you, know -- when you get the band/singer/rapper's previous recording (from Joe Soundcard's Really Pro Studio)...

When I hear some of those sonic emanations, I start to imagine what that poor bastard went through.

And then, the client(s) want to resurrect "all that work" that they did at Can't Find The Click But I Love Music Studios...do you ever find yourself having to psyche somebody >INTO< putting the quality of their final product first? "Maybe we can start fresh on this. Didn't you like the sound of [insert artist you produced/mixed here]?" "But we worked so HARRRD on those drum tracks -- and he [other engineer] burned all the Pro Tools files for you -- he's excited to see how you're gonna mix 'em!"

And you have to play wordgames to avoid trashing the client's previous engineer's abilities...

**********************************************

O.K., still y'all are right -- I mean the client's paying YOU to know things like, uhhhh, you CAN'T mute the hi-hat in the two-track beat that your buddy gave you an audio CD of...

[GuruInSpace]

Originally posted by NemoTracks
Back in the good 'ol days when 24tk analogue was a luxury and most of us were working on 16tk, I remember a session where all 16 tracks were absolutely full up. Chock a block.
The Producer turns to the engineer and asks to set up for yet another overdub.
The engineer says that all tracks are full up and there is no room.
A crisp £20 note is waved in engineers face with the words:
"I'm sure there's something you can do..."


I do remember a certain famous guitarist wanting the Studer A800 pulled right up to the SSL to .... "cut down on the signal path as now the sound has less distance to travel".

Obviously he'd never tried to move one before.

i like this one

[deft_bonz]

Originally posted by GearHunter
1) An example of pure studio ignarance. I put a singer in to a small padded, totally dead booth, and his piano player was miced up out in the larger live room. When I put some reverb on the singer's voice in to the headphones, the piano player said, "Wow, how are you getting that echo on the voice?"
To which the singer replied, "That's 'cause I'm in the echo booth!"

2) Forgetting we are surrounded by live microphones. This is a big one and it happens all the time. Why don't people realize there are mics everywhere?

Here's an example that really happened: The band does a basics take, after which the drummer comes in to the control-room to hear playback. While the tape's rewinding, a couple of the other idiot band memebers out in the live area start talking, which is totally audible in the CR:

"So did you tell the drummer he's fired yet?"

"No"

"Is that new drummer coming to the audition next week?"

"Yeah, it's all set."

NIIIIICCCCEEE!!!

ROTFL

that's cruel and idiotic at the same time, very bad combination

[GuruInSpace]

Originally posted by Angelo M
I was recording an Avant-Garde "Noise Rock" band. They employed 'normal' instruments but abused them to create unusual sound textures. The guitarist sawed on his strings with two metal rasps with the amp on 10 and the Sax players made squeaks and whistles with a mic jammed down inside the horn itself. They used circular breathing techniques so that they never had to stop.

To call it cacophony would not do it justice. If there is a jukebox in Hell, this record is Selection A1. (Though I would have preferred smaller doses, I actually kind of liked it.)

When it came time to mix, I was much relieved to find that my normal approach to saxes and guitars was fine with them and they liked the sound. Then at one point the sax player stopped me and said "wait, that has to come out"

"what has to come out"?

"that, right there."

I still didn't hear it

"after these bubbling sounds... there!"

after much soloing I finally figured out what he was talking about. In the heat of the jam, the sax player had accidentally closed a pad on his sax and and produced a recognizable musical tone! A C# instead of a squeak or a squawk. It had to go.


In 40 minutes of the most intense insane sounds I ever heard, that was the only edit.

was the band BORBETOMAGUS?

[deft_bonz]

i hear several times when clients come in the first time in a studio. don't know why, maybe i look incompetent

"wow ey, incredible amount of leds and pots and buttons, HOW (the intonation lies on this word) can you know to use them all?"

[kudzu]

Alt country singer sends me board mixes of his album. He wants me to get a feel of it B4 he sends me the files to mix

I listen to the board mixes one afternoon and make my track notes corresponding to each song on a text edit document...save it...and forget about it

A week goes by and the singer turns up with the Data DVDs...As I load the data in, we listen to the board mixes and i open up my text edit doc to read my notes...the singer is reading them also......Track 12. "this is possibly the worst song I've ever heard"

OOOPs

He really didn't want me to mix his album now....so left with his DVDs

Some months later I went along to the album launch where the singer was performing....the idiot walked on stage wearing a "John Lennon" t-shirt....all I could think of all the way thru his performance is how great a songwriter John Lennon was !!!!!!!!!!!