Author: admin

Categories
Boneheads Musicians Recording

Falling asleep in the mix

I recorded this really shitty metal band one time. Their singer was so bad, he would blow his voice out after singing 1 or 2 takes of a song. It wasn’t singing either, it was more like screaming remotely close to the key of the (bad) song.

So we finally get to the mix. We’re tweaking everything when I hear this strange noise. I stop the tape (yes, in the tape years) and I find that the sound is the bass player snoring on the couch. He was really sawing logs. I ran into the sound room and grabbed a great big large diaphragm microphone, placed it 1/4″ from his nose and hit record. Then we pumped his snoring through the main speakers and put a giant reverb on it. He sounded like a giant snoring in the Grand Canyon. He soon woke up.

Days later this bass player was bitching and moaning about how bad his bass sounded in the mix. I could only tell the dude that he might have gotten what he wanted if he was actually conscious during the mix. Typical bullshit we engineers go through. They sleep though the mix and blame you for their sound not being what they wanted.

Categories
Random

Coming Soon… Version 2.5.2.1.7

Version 2.5 of my to-do blog list:

*Becoming a Rock Star for Dummies – DONE
*Golf equipment in lieu of payment
*How to get a record deal
*My buddy’s Stolen Keyboard
*The club onwner who thought he could fly – DONE
*Graphic EQ Catalog Setting
*Total Bitch Who Turns Out To Be An Inlaw
*WTF Is A Boing Box?
*Locking Bridge
*Broken Steve Vai Guitar
*Christmas Party Gig
*Shaman Princess
*Guitar Case Sale
*Mouthing off to the club owner
*1 Song & Done
*Chick’s Visa Card
*Phony tubes? – DONE
*Uhh, where did the bass player go?
*Rickenbacker 12 string issue
*The Turf Club is the coolest place
*White to rap conversion
*Are you telling me I torched a $15,000 kit?
*Bag the female singer
*Shocking gig in Sun Valley
*Shocking bathroom incident
*There goes the moose head!
*Speaking of moose: Singer hits moose
*Hole in the stage
*Dumbass Metal Guitar Player
*Opening for The Romantics (power problems)
*Someone had sex on our stage and we didn’t know it?
*Here’s a drum stick in your eye
*Fell off the drum riser
*Surprise beer glass modification
*Contributing to the delinquency of a minor
*Opening for The Fixx
*Opening for Flock Of Seaguls
*Opening for Jerry Lee Lewis
*The freak duplicator?
*The best female singer I recorded is a….zone girl?
*The 2nd best female singer I recorded is a…..stripper?
*The band that wouldn’t get off the stage…voluntarily. (Don’t mess with the golden glove boxer part 2)
*The tour (the radio show with 3 video cameras which don’t broadcast anything?)
*Point that video camera straigt into a spotlight, great dumbass
*Band accomodations & crack house all in one
*Dude steals chair and nearly causes a natural gas explosion
*Wedding gigs: Is anyone really paying attention?
*Late for a crappy gig
*Don’t piss off the golden glove boxer
*To the asshole who stole my hardware case
*X
*When naked ladies are running around, why do they blame me?
*Studio poltergiest that scares the hell out of me…really. The scariest, creepiest studio story ever.
*Two gigs in three hours, 350 miles apart?
*Bam bam
*$5 bounced check (from a client)
*I swear I didn’t know it was a gay bar. – DONE
*”Tonto” The drunk indian – DONE
*Your bass player is too hard to watch – DONE
*High heels, used as a weapon – DONE
*Best sub gig ever (strippers!) – DONE
*Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope – DONE
*A pathetic coke whore – DONE
*Stolen sub – DONE
*Stolen PA – DONE
*Falling asleep in the mix – DONE
*Board mix breaks up band – DONE

Categories
Gigs

High heels, used as a weapon

Doing a gig for the local college one time… All was going as expected when all the sudden a dude came running down the stairs with two women (very attractive) chasing him. They tackled him right on the stage, knocking our guitar player’s rig over. They then took off their high heels and began abusing this guy’s face with them. They bloodied this guy pretty good.

Later we found out one of the two women was this guy’s girlfriend. He apparently wronged her in a bad way.

Categories
Boneheads Rants

Please sign the STOP ASHLEE SIMPSON PETITION

A brilliant 18 year old disgruntled Ashlee Simpson fan has created a petition to make her stop. It’s up to close to 200,000 signatures as of this post. My signature is #171427. The site is very slow, surely due to the huge amount of bandwidth of thousands of people signing it, so be patient. If you can’t get through, try it later.

DO US ALL A FAVOR: SIGN THIS PETITION

To: Geffen/DGC Records & JT Simpson Entertainment

We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson’s horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop. Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.

She cannot match the sound of her voice that can be found on her CDs, when she sings live. She simply yells the words (sometimes the wrong ones) into the mic.

We are so sickened by her “performing” that we are taking this opportunity to demand that she stop.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Categories
Rants Recording

Stiffed by Imax

I took my kids to the 3D iMax T-rex movie last night. It was quite fun. Imax movies are pretty cool.

But it reminded me of the studio gig I did for imax one time. I did a voice over gig where the two directors of some African Wildlife imax movie did their “director’s commentary.” This was to be an auxiliary audio track for the imax dvd where you select the director’s commentary and they talk about what was going on in their minds when they shot certain scenes.

The directors were fairly cool but a little dry. I set up a video monitor and played the imax movie and they just commented on each scene in real time as it happened. It was a cool gig just by the fact that I hadn’t done one of those before.

When the job was done I gave the directors an invoice. They told me that they weren’t responsible and gave me the number of the movie studio in California to contact for payment. When I contacted them, they gave me the name and number of the production company and told me to get the dough from them. When I called the production company I was given the name and number of the movie studio and told to get the dough from them…..and so on….and so on…

I never did get my dough. I finally gave up after getting jacked around X number of times. Usually studio owners get stiffed by flaky musicians but this time it was the big boys.