stupidest things you have ever heard during a session.

[toolskid]

whilst working on a particularly intense sound design job, the lighting director came up to me and demanded that the transitional sound we were working on on must be 'exactly like the sound of marble chips sliding through glycerine' .. and then left.......

[tunesmith]

I finally thought of one...

But the problem is that I said it. It's still good, so I'll tell on myself.

A few years back I was talking to a buddy of mine who is an Old School Christian Music Producer (Keith Green, Scott Wesley Brown... etc) and he was telling me he was next door to Steely Dan as they were mixing Aja and that he was friendly with them and would stick his head in from time to time.

He mentioned that they spent 2 weeks mixing eight bars one time. I responded... "So, back in the middle ages, how did you guys mix only 8 bars?"

I had never heard of a splice and I was pretty damn impressed. I wish I had been around back then... actually taking a knife to your work... damn. Ballsy.

I guess it's not the dumbest, but I have been trying to think of something I could contribute to my all time fav GS thread.

Tunes.

[CorkyTart]

One of my guitar students said that his brother ripped out all the frets on his Ltd Ed Wolfgang guitar because he thought he wanted a fretless. Cost a few hundred to get that repaired....

[mattasbob]

This happened at a rehearsal not in session. No mics being used (other than vocals through a crappy pa. Manager guy of local band, who knows less about music than a leaf blower is enjoying the band huffin through some new material and asks that the cymbals be turned down.

Drummer with one of the worst cases of bass pedal parkinsons i've ever heard comes in, takes about a dozen goes at a tune, producer (buddy, unpaid who just drops in for one session but gets credited as producer) complains that there is too much bass drum and recommends he use a double bass pedal instead.

I've also had the famous no headphones gaff many many times.

Not really a great story, but one I've enjoyed. Working with a local act that I'm really fond of, had a weekend to pretty much track a three song demo so time was tight. Bass player and drummer share a room, vocals/guitarist in another room. We are just focusing on getting the drum beds. (bass di'd) One tune has been really hard on the drummer, couple changes that just screw him up, over about 2 dozen takes he absolutely demolished the tune, sounded incredible. One bar left in the tune the bass player starts screaming, I ****ed up, I completely ****ed up!!! at the top of his lungs.

[Panopticon]

Originally posted by mattasbob One bar left in the tune the bass player starts screaming, I ****ed up, I completely ****ed up!!! at the top of his lungs.

Haha, I'd leave that in for sure!

[dim light]

Thanks funny,

Regards
Trondheim 9

[MJGreene Audio]

Not really the stupidest but still funny to me. A couple of guys I work with regularly invited me down to this hole in the wall studio to hang out. They were eating these big bags of Corn Nuts and the engineer at this studio was wearing those 70's style running shorts. His crack was showing a little bit and he was sitting on a stool while he was mixing. (He said he could reach the knobs better) So these friends of mine started to throw Corn Nuts into the back of his shorts. This went on for about an hour while they worked and everyone got a big childish laugh at it. About 3 hours later after all the Corn Nuts were gone they finally asked the engineer what he had done with the nuts they threw into his butt crack. He smiled and told them that he kept putting them back in the bag when they weren't looking.

I should add that I have never really loved Corn Nuts and didn't partake of any this night..... Thank god!!!

Michael Greene

[deft_bonz]

iiieehh

but effin LOL

[joeq]

screamo death-metal vocalist rubbing his throat: "man, I have to take some singing lessons"

band: "you do, and you're fired"

[Riad]

A girl visiting the band during a session:

girl: "So you're the bass player, it only has 4 strings it must be easy to play."

bassplayer "you only have 2 tits, you must be easy too"

[zxcv]

Another group of RAPPERS we recorded would keep interrupting the mixing session to go out their van, under the dubious auspices of "getting that tape out of the van". After about fifteen minutes of my brother and i waiting around for these bufoons to come back so we could resume mixing, these RAPPERS would reappear with glazed-over red eyes and looks of beatific cluelessness on their faces. For some reason, no one ever actually brought that "tape" in question in, no matter how trips to the van were made.

I've had the same thing happen, except they kept going outside to "ask a man about a horse." I wish I could post the song they recorded that night, it was bazaar/hilarious.

On another night I was recording vocals for one of the guys from the same group. All of a sudden he says, "Hey, I gotta show you something." He insisted I come outside with him. So I go out and he opens the trunk of his car and pulls out an AK-47. He had purchased it earlier that day and just wanted to show it off.

[deft_bonz]

Originally posted by zxcv


On another night I was recording vocals for one of the guys from the same group. All of a sudden he says, "Hey, I gotta show you something." He insisted I come outside with him. So I go out and he opens the trunk of his car and pulls out an AK-47. He had purchased it earlier that day and just wanted to show it off.

he wanted to get recorded for free!

[manisedap]

DAYUM, U turned down a free blow? hopefully one day sum hot girl who want's to make it offers me that.

Originally posted by deft_bonz
this quote will help to support the klische of it's a must to have sex with the producer (or ae) to get famous

the vocals were recorded, everything was fine...

-she to me: ok, thanks a lot, it was nice to work with you, ehm, where will we do it?
-me: ??? !!!
-she: you know...
-me:ehm no, what do you mean? (of course i was already assuming what she meant, but i wanted to be sure)
-she: ehm, i'll s*** your d*** because you recorded me and YOU make me famous
-me:"darling" there is no need to s*** and f*** with anyone, i'm already paid for the job, with MONEY. but thanks i appreciated your proposal (tried to be at least kind of polite)

[deft_bonz]

Originally posted by manisedap
DAYUM, U turned down a free blow? hopefully one day sum hot girl who want's to make it offers me that.

she was not THAT hot, but even then... this is not my style. in other circumstances i wouldnt't say no to a hot girl

[DirkB]

Bassist after struggling with timing through 2 fairly easy songs (and after some heavy editing to make it somewhat work with the drums):
"ok, you can quantise my parts now..."

Greetings,
Dirk

[maskedman72]

here is another good one you will all enjoy.


i had been an unpaid intern for quite some time and when i was hired as a house engineer and put on the payroll i could hardly wait to get my 1st gig.

well i got my 1st gig very quickly. it was with this band that was doing an all-out full length recording. very full length that is. i quickly found out that these guys were not all that bright. they came in with about 13 reels of 2 inch. i asked what it was all for and they said it was their record. all 13 reels!! they were going to put out all 13 reels on an 8 disc box set as their debut. 2 or 3 of the reels werent even music, it was just noises, shit like humpback whales whining with one of those ebow things on a guitar overdubbed over the top of the whales and i recorded a few tracks of them running around the live room throwing a stop sign around and screaming and busting light bulbs and shit, strange stuff.

this was the band that wanted to plug a computer line into the mci 2 inch so i could lock up the internet to smpte timecode.

after a few months of recording these guys all the tracks on the tape were full so they bacame obsessed with bouncing things to open more tracks up.

they paid me to do all of this bouncing on most of their 13 reels. it was so silly,but it was easy money and i became good at bouncing. one of the guys was always moving things around in the studio and he would do assanine things like fill the sugar shaker with salt and mix the salt and pepper togther. little things that you wouldnt notice till they were gone. very annoying. i then realized why this gig was given to me. no one else would touch it. well after 2 1/2 YEARS of working on all of these reels we finally had finished all of the guitars. so one night it was me and the singer and the guitar player finishing up a session. they were running around the studio acting like total asses and then they ran into the control room and began throwing a full 2 liter of pepsi at each others heads, all of a sudden i hear yelling. i just ignore it and keep doing my thing than i notice the singer is on the ground in a puddle of blood holding his eye and his gtr player is gone.....as in he got in his car and left altogther.

turns out that he got hit square in the eye with the full 2 liter at a good velocity.....he had to have surgery on his eye and would never regain full vision in that eye.
the gtr player just left him injured and lying on the ground bleeding. no apology or remorse at all ,he ran like a scared rat.
so the singer now wants to sue the gtr player cause he had to miss work for a while and all of that (yes, there was a lawsuit on my 1st gig!!) he asks me to testify as his witness!!! i didnt see anything thank god. so as you can guess the gtr player is out of the band. well, he files a counter lawsuit and the court made the singer erase all of his gtr tracks that we spent 2 1/2 years recording!!!
the 8 cd box set never came out. we never even mixed 1 of the 50 songs they had recorded and i have never heard from them again.

[CorkyTart]

Hopefully they wont make an insurance claim on your studio.

[maskedman72]

Originally posted by CorkyTart
Hopefully they wont make an insurance claim on your studio.

nope, it happened years ago.

[deft_bonz]

Originally posted by maskedman72
...(yes, there was a lawsuit on my 1st gig!!)
...

you should give the clients a disclaimer in before

[ToneLux]

1 (using pro tools)

(in the TB mic) OK, That sucked, come on in...


2 (really)

Can you give it more stereo?


3 (true story)

I was working in a studio, engineering, when the phone in the CR rang.

"can you come out here?"

"shit. OK"

so I go out there and there is a guy standing there with a gun.

He says "gimmy my tapes, fix (my old nik name)"

I said " Well, you know that you need to pay for them first, and they are on the other side of the control room, which you aren't going to be able to go through, because there is another session going on"

He said" I'm going to f*cking kill you if you don't give them to me"

I said "If you kill me, you won't be able to find them"

He paused. As I talked to him, I slowly reached for his gun, pushed it slowly away from pointing at me, and then gently took it out of his hand, talking to him the whole time.

I then explained to him the rules and how it was going to be if he wanted the tapes. I said "now, if I give you your gun back, are you going to shoot me?"

He said "no". I told him that if I didn't give him back the gun, I would most likely shoot him for the way he played on the tape anyway and that it wasn't worth killing anyone for. (of course, that was before crack) So I gave him back his gun.

He came back the next day with $100 and every couple of days he came back with some money until he paid it off. When I gave him the tapes, he said he was sorry and that it made him think about his playing and what he wanted to do for himself. I never saw him again after that.

I still think about it now and STILL can't imagine what the f*ck I was thinking...

[Ruphus]

When a barrel is pointing at you never look in there.

-
Too bad that it won´t exclusively happen to those who defend weapon possession.

Ruphus

[ToneLux]

I didn't look in it because I didn't want that to be that last thing I remembered...

[Ruphus]

I believe I thought similar when it once occured, also believe that looking in there could considerably increase the risk for the idiot to eventually pull the trigger, because the focus of the action switching over to him and his brain fart.

BTW, run into a group of rednecks accidentally tonight standing nose to nose with a jerk. Seems he was surprised and went his way then.

Why can´t jerks just associate over their own horizon and leave others alone, especially the ones who don´t trouble them? Sorry for the pun.

Ruphus

[Berolzheimer]

wow Paul, if your gear has anywhere near as much balls as you do.....


From the other Paul

[Crandall1]

I just remembered a good one. I'd locked out this studio in Chicago for several months, and naturally our proxemity to Columbia means we would get a lot of "fresh-off-the-boat" interns/seconds; these people were, 99.999% of the time, exactly what one would expect, but once in a while (twice, as it turned out) we'd get someone who really fit in to the family.

Anyways, it's about 3 in the morning, and we're trying to track down this minor issue in the 70s API console so we can do a pass. (Incidentally, Fletcher built this room, Warzone. What a great room it was, too). The louds are cranked, and we're going channel by channel pushing buttons trying to find this intermintant problem, and the other producer (there were two on this session) walks in to the room and hits "play" at which point we're knocked on our asses with some ear-splitting playback, and lightbulbs full on.

The other producer wins the race to the stop button, and jokingly goes "man, why does it always have to be that loud?"

The intern, without missing a beat, says "because it's hooked up to a really big amp."

He got hired as a second the next day.

Chris Randall
Audio Damage, Inc.
http://www.audiodamage.com

[maskedman72]

before caller id was big i had a guy come in and pay the full hourly rate for me to record him making prank phone calls all day.

[ToneLux]

Originally posted by Crandall1
Anyways, it's about 3 in the morning, and we're trying to track down this minor issue in the 70s API console so we can do a pass. (Incidentally, Fletcher built this room, Warzone. What a great room it was, too). The louds are cranked, and we're going channel by channel pushing buttons trying to find this intermintant problem, and the other producer (there were two on this session) walks in to the room and hits "play" at which point we're knocked on our asses with some ear-splitting playback, and lightbulbs full on.

Chris Randall
Audio Damage, Inc.
http://www.audiodamage.com

One trick that I did many years ago...

Take a DBX stereo (or 2 of) compressor, set the threshold for -20, turn the ratio to INF, and turn the output gain up all the way. Insert this between the console and the power amps. You can hunt down hum and switch things, unplug things and do just about everything, including be a moron and hit play, without blowing ears and speakers...

[ToneLux]

Originally posted by Berolzheimer
wow Paul, if your gear has anywhere near as much balls as you do.....


From the other Paul

Actually, in a studio listeneing test Friday, the studio owner/engineer/grammy winner/gold record owner (just to qualify him) said "this EQ is the bomb, Paul. I sounds like my 550a but with more flexability. You nailed this one"

[Kubilay]

maskedman72, please tell me you're writing a book. Mixerman (or whatever his name is) got nothing on you....

Makes one wonder how you managed to stick with it!

[maskedman72]

Originally posted by Kubilay
maskedman72, please tell me you're writing a book. Mixerman (or whatever his name is) got nothing on you....

Makes one wonder how you managed to stick with it!

believe me i have thought many times about just forgetting about this whole business cause it was getting to be a real hassle.

i dont even know why i stuck it out. the problems still continue for me. i have the worst of luck with sessions. i work hard on all of this stuff and most of it never gets put out or finished. oh well.

i will challenge anyone out there with engineering horror stories exept the guy that got the gun pulled on him. after getting sued i was always cautious when leaving the studio at night. i was waiting for the plaintiff to jump out and retailliate or something,or i expected to see the windows of my car bashed out but it never happened.