Category: Recording

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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.

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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.

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Boneheads Musicians Recording

Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope

Recording rappers is always an entertaining experience. Rappers all love to brag about how badass they are. They love to tell you about how much bank they’re stackin’, how many ho’s they’re bustin’ nuts in, and how many coppas asses they busted caps in. (Soon my white man’s rap dictionary will be out so you can understand what I just wrote).

It’s funny when two different rappers show up at the studio at the same time too because they’re very competitive. One will say “where you from man” and the other will say “Compton.” The first one will say “Word mofo, I be from Compton too.” (I know damn well the one dude is from Midvale and the other one from Salt Lake…pretty damn far from Compton).

This one rapper (whose name was a derivative of the chemicals found in pot) was quite entertaining. He would always bring in his “posse” and they were all funny. It is a little scary though because you have to keep your eye on all of them. All small expensive pieces of gear must be locked up before the session. I don’t know why but all the rappers really seemed to like me. I’m pretty damn white so I don’t know what the see in me.

When you work with rappers in the studio you have to allow a bunch of breaks for them to go out and get some “inspiration.” I just tell them to keep it outside. Hell, if someone wants to pay me $60/hour to smoke dope outside what do I care?

So I finish the pot chemical rapper’s album and give him his bill. It isn’t cheap. He makes a call or two and jumps in his ride. 15 minutes later he comes back with cash. That is one great thing about working with rappers: they always pay in cash.

So I gave him his masters and he was on his way happily listening to his new album in his “boom boom car.” (I call those rap cars boom boom cars).

A couple of weeks later I called him up to see when the album was going to be released. As it turns out he and his posse got pulled over by the coppas. The coppas smelled something funny and had to search the boom boom car. Unfortunately they had to impound the vehicle and it’s contents which included the dope and the masters for the new album. Fortunately they paid me already or I wouldn’t have gotten my dough!

So the moral to the story is: “Don’t keep your studio masters with your dope.”

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Boneheads Gigs Musicians Recording

Board mix breaks up band

I do live sound gigs sometimes when someone wants to pony up a few bucks to pay me. When I do run sound it usually kicks ass.

There’s a heavy metal band I did some albums for and they hire me to do many live sound gigs as well. They have a big PA and it sounds killer.

The last gig I did for them was at a scary biker bar. The day after I did this gig a guy staggered into the bar with more than a dozen knife wounds…

This is a pretty easy gig. They set up the PA and I show up and twiddle some knobs. So for the hell of it I decided to bring my laptop, and an I/O (that’s soundman geek talk for input/output device) to capture some audio. I just ran a “board mix” straight into my laptop. If you know what a board mix is then you know they don’t necessarily sound very good. The issue is that POST mixer a ton of processing can take place in the PA. For these guys it’s namely thousands of watts of power with some EQ’s and compression blasting out of dozens of big speakers. So the sound coming out of the console may sound quite weak and out of balance if you don’t listen to it out of the PA.

Board mixes are almost always out of balance due to the stage volume of the players. The guitar player in this band for instance has quite a few Marshall amps which are loud as hell. So since his stage volume is very loud it’s not necessary to pump him out of the PA very much. The resulting recording of would then be lacking guitar because of this.

So what we ended up with was a mix that you would simply critique the band’s playing and tightness. I burned the band a CD of the gig (not from awedeals.com).

A couple of weeks later I get this crazy email from the drummer listing his $30,000 (supposedly) drum kit for sale. I later find out that after the drummer heard the board mix he got into a big fight with his bandmates. He thought the sound sucked and said that the singer sounded stupid when he talked to the audience inbetween songs. This singer has talked like this from day one. The only thing I can figure is that the drummer didn’t have as good of time since he was SOBER for the first time at a gig! Whatever the real reason is the band broke up. I felt a little guilty even though I clearly explained that the board mix wouldn’t sound all that great.

So in trying to do a favor for some guys, I produced the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll think again before I do any more clients any “favors.”

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Boneheads Random Recording

The “Goth” band Part II (the blood covered murderer)

I wrote about the Goth band earlier in “The Goth Band Part I.”

First of all these Goth guys are really cool. They dress “gothically” with all black and silver. For some strange reason they are all really tall. And they always bring a gallon jug of really cheap wine to the sessions and drink them out of silver chalices.

This particular event occured at approximately 2-3am after a long evening of recording. In case you have NO idea about the recording business, you have a lot of late nights. By “late” I don’t mean 10pm. I mean we watch the sun come up. But I digress…

2-3am we’re doing some mixing or tracking of some sort. Some of the band members went outside to have a smoke as they often do. The smokers come running into the studio with a very scared look on their faces and proceed to tell me they just witnessed a murder. The murderer is burying the body in a large snowbank. At this studio location there was a large parking lot which was used for several businesses. The snow plows always built up a big pile of snow which was about 50 feet outside my studio entrance.

We kill the lights and sneak out the front door and start creeping toward the murder scene. Sure enough, atop a giant snowbank is this guy digging in the snow. Mind you this is in the middle of the winter, 3am. This guy is dressed in a full suit & tie, and he is COVERED WITH BLOOD. The snow too is very bloddy. He’s got his pickup truck lights on so he can see what he is doing.

As I get closer I now realize I KNOW THIS GUY! It is this strange cat named Brian. He owns a used furniture store located a few doors down from my studio. I call out to him and ask what he’s doing. He’s quite calm and seemingly unsuprised that I’m talking to him. “Yeah” he replies as he wipes the blood off his face. “Uhhh, what are you doing???” I ask. He says “oh, I’m burying this deer.”

He proceeds to tell me the story of how he was driving down the freeway when he hit a deer with his pickup truck. But when he pulled over to see the deer it wasn’t dead. It was just dazed and confused, stumbling around. Rather than letting the deer shake it off and go home, he pulls out a 2×4 and proceeds to beat the friggin deer to death. After the deer is dead he throws it into his pickup and heads right for my parking lot. He buries the deer in the big snow bank to preserve it so later he can make deer-jerky out of it. He does all of this in a suit and tie…