Category: Rants

Shit that pisses me off.

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Gigs Rants

Drove 189 blocks for a glass of cranberry juice

My 2nd gig last weekend was at “Tattoos-R-Us” club. We had an opening band so I didn’t have to show up until about 10:45. When I got there I noticed that they screwed up again and didn’t have our band name on the marquee.

I got in the club and grabbed my usual cranberry juice. I checked out the opening band and they were pretty good. They were a surf band and the guitar player had a Theremin.

When I walked back stage to open the back door and load my gear, I noticed another drum kit. I started adding up things in my head and went to talk to the sound guy. I asked him how many bands were playing and he said two. I asked who the 2nd band was and he pointed at a table in the audience and said “them.”

My band wasn’t playing.

I called my singer outside and he confirmed that we were not playing and apologized for forgetting to call me. It appears our bass player’s father had a heart attack and she canceled. It’s nice to drive 189 city blocks just to go drink a f’n cranberry juice and breathe a bunch of 2nd hand smoke. How considerate.

Categories
Rants

Comp USA closing 105 stores. Karma baby.

The big box goes down

Comp USA is closing 105 stores. Gee I wonder why?

If you are in the need of some terrible products and the worst customer service on the planet, you’d better get down there soon. Better hurry so you can take advantage of your final opportunity to be ignored on the sales floor.

The little box

The big box of computer stores is going down. Hmmm… This is a chance for the little box to gain some ground, which is good.

Categories
Rants Recording Why ProTools Sucks

Why ProTools Sucks

I’ve added a new category: “Why ProTools Sucks.”

This section will be where I voice my opinion about Digidesign’s ProTools digital audio recording hardware/software. ProTools has become the industry standard in the recording world. It’s the buzz word everyone always knows.

But in my opinion there are many systems out there which can do what ProTools does, even better. Add that to the fact that you can get these systems for a fraction of what ProTools costs… Customer service? Yeah well i remember calling a 900 number for my ProTools questions, paying $3/minute, being on hold for 47 minutes and then getting asked “did you plug it in?” There goes $150 bucks… But if you have thousands of extra dollars to waste on an overpriced recording system, I guess you can pay $150 bucks to be on hold for 47 minutes.

CAN’T SELECT MULTIPLE MARKERS

I’m editing this book on CD. It’s a 350 page book where the author has read the entire thing. The author has a speech impediment and screws up constantly. So there are over 3000 markers in this ProTools project, each is an edit or fix that needs to be done.

I’ve got the book edited and now I need to get rid of most of the 3000 markers and put new ones in. So about 2800 of the markers need to be deleted. Should be easy, right? Just select a marker, hold down the shift key, then select the end of the group you want to delete….right? WRONG. You can’t select multiple markers in ProTools. You can delete ALL the markers, but you can’t say select 30 of them and delete them, leaving the rest.

I have the choice of deleting all 3000 markers, and losing the 200 I want to keep. Or I can delete 2800 markers, one at a time. Oh you can’t just hit the delete key when you have a marker selected either. You have to select the marker, then use a pull down menu to select “clear marker.” This process would take me close to 10,000 mouse clicks on this project. Is digidesign willing to pay my doctor bill for ligament damage which I’ll incur from clicking my mouse so many times?

Categories
Gigs Rants

A little notice would be nice…

I’ve had a very busy few days. I’m beat. I was finally had a chance to relax for about an hour and a half and have some dinner before I had to go play a gig at a really crappy club. I dragged myself away and got to the gig to find that there was an opening act. If I’d have known this nugget in advance I could have stayed home for another hour and a half rather than sitting in a damn smoke filled bar which only had people that were all tatt’d out (lots of tattoos).

I can think of many things I’d rather do than sit there breathing cigarette smoke looking at ugly chicks covered in tattoos…

The club sucks. My singer apologized for booking the gig and I took the opportunity to let him know that I don’t want to play there again…

Categories
Musicians Rants Recording

Learn how to play the friggin’ guitar

So I’m working into the rotation at the big studio. Right now I’m not getting the most “prestigious” gigs.

I’m working with a hack acoustic guitar player and I just can’t get his guitar to sound very crisp. I’ve got a friggin’ $8000 Neumann microphone on this guy’s guitar and it sounds terrible. No crispness at all. It sounds like the mic is across the room pointing the other direction.

I go in the sound booth to see what is up. Maybe the guy took his shoes off and hung his shoe on the mic?

All thumbs

As it turns out, this guy is paying $100/hour to record his acoustic tracks and he’s playing the guitar with the meat of his thumb. DOH! I asked “where’s your guitar pick?” and he says “I don’ t use one.” Hmm… I say “that’s probably why it doesn’t sound very crisp.”

Later in the session when I go to set up an auto-tuner on his vocals I ask the same guy what key the song is in. “I don’t know” is his answer. So I ask “what chord are you playing on the last note of the song?” “I don’t know” again. The guy is self taught, doesn’t use a guitar pick, and doesn’t know what a chord is. He was playing a bastardized G chord…

Normally I’d say “kill me” in this situation, but I’m glad to have a gig at this point so no worries. Just get a friggin’ guitar lesson before the next session please…