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[takeout]

ssltech wrote on Wed, 02 May 2007 22:38

...Guitar owner...

One of my favorite turns of phrase.

[Daniel Farris]

"Does your studio have M-One D-One?"

How long would it take you to figure out that they meant MIDI?

Another favorite. A friend of mine used to work in a music store, and a woman came in looking for a wireless mic. She looked at several models and, when she had found one she liked the look of, well... imagine a woman standing there holding a wireless mic. She turned it over and looked at the bottom and said, "Where the sound come out?"

DF

[stuntbutt]

Hardcore band in my control room looking at the pictures I have tacked to the wall:  "Hey man, don't get mad but we were wondering if we could see a NAKED picture of your wife?"  I've got a few stories from that session.

[Greg Dixon]

I had a guy ring up one time saying he wanted to book two hours of studio time. I asked what he wanted to do, assuming it would be a vocal and guitar/piano demo of one or two songs and he said wanted to record a band. I asked what he expected to get done in two hours and he said ten songs. I told him we'd need longer than that and he asked why, as it was a 10 song 40 minute set, so two hours was enough time to play each song twice, with some extra time. When I told him the reality of the situation, he was convinced I was ripping him off and hung up.

Early on in my career, I had an indie band do a very rough album, very quickly. Inside the booklet they say it was recorded in 24 hrs. A few years latter a girl rang asking to book a 24 hr block to record an album. I said I didn't do that and she mentioned that CD and I said, yes but it wasn't 24 hrs in a row. She replied, "but it says recorded in 24 hrs, at Aphek Studio". I then added that in reality I don't think they ever did more than 4 hrs at a time and her reaction was a very sad "oh.... ok then", as she hung up.

[Jon Hodgson]

Greg Dixon wrote on Tue, 26 June 2007 07:04

I had a guy ring up one time saying he wanted to book two hours of studio time. I asked what he wanted to do, assuming it would be a vocal and guitar/piano demo of one or two songs and he said wanted to record a band. I asked what he expected to get done in two hours and he said ten songs. I told him we'd need longer than that and he asked why, as it was a 10 song 40 minute set, so two hours was enough time to play each song twice, with some extra time. When I told him the reality of the situation, he was convinced I was ripping him off and hung up. Early on in my career, I had an indie band do a very rough album, very quickly. Inside the booklet they say it was recorded in 24 hrs. A few years latter a girl rang asking to book a 24 hr block to record an album. I said I didn't do that and she mentioned that CD and I said, yes but it wasn't 24 hrs in a row. She replied, "but it says recorded in 24 hrs, at Aphek Studio". I then added that in reality I don't think they ever did more than 4 hrs at a time and her reaction was a very sad "oh.... ok then", as she hung up.

When The Animals went into the studio to record "House of the Rising Sun" they had an hour booked, the thing was that they did it in one take, so it only took 20 minutes including setting up.

So what do you do when you have 40 minutes of studio time you've already paid for? Well that's simple, you record an EP!

[archtop]

I had a bass player with a huge rack, and besides all the goofy chorus, compressors,
and who knows what else, he had a huge canyon 2-3 second reverb as part of his sound, I asked if he could shorten it or make it dryer or something.


He say's.  No thats a gate.

I explained to him what a gate was.


He wouldn't believe me.

"it's a gate"

We argued for a while.
I even used my favorite line I stole from my brother.



"Do you know who I am?"




He probably still to this day is calling his 3 second reverb a gate.

[Ali Moniack]

Inexperienced indie drummer, prior to recording:

"Can you give it a bit of "edge"?

Me: "Edge? Are you thinking about eq or distortion or something?"

Drummer: "Dunno, just thought a bit of "edge" would be good"

Me: "No problem".

They were very pleased with the results, since their playing was so rough it had a certain "edge" all by itself anyway...

[J-Texas]

Not a quote, but very bizarre!

Had a lady from an AD agency in town bring her little yippy dog to the studio! The thing had a little bell on her collar and she let her run loose in the tracking room during a voiceover. I thought they were warming up and she asked if "I got it?" When I told her I couldn't keep it and she would have to get "Sparky" out of there, she looked at me funny and made her producer (flunky) watch the dog while she ran crazy in the control room! WOW. No clue.

Money is the root of evil.

[pete andrews]

last night's mixing session with singer/songwriter:
i'm mixing and  adding elements to tracks he did himself at home (vox/acoustic guit/synthy stuff) adding simple percussion, bass, etc, you get the picture.

me (noticing mad tempo shifts): "did you play this to a click?"
client: "yup"
me (pointing out 2 areas of the song that shift by about 10 bpm): "these are totally different tempo's here.... ?"
client: "oh.... i may not have actualy listened to the click when i was recording though".

right on.

[j.hall]

pete andrews wrote on Thu, 06 September 2007 07:55

last night's mixing session with singer/songwriter: i'm mixing and  adding elements to tracks he did himself at home (vox/acoustic guit/synthy stuff) adding simple percussion, bass, etc, you get the picture. me (noticing mad tempo shifts): "did you play this to a click?" client: "yup" me (pointing out 2 areas of the song that shift by about 10 bpm): "these are totally different tempo's here.... ?" client: "oh.... i may not have actualy listened to the click when i was recording though". right on.

i think that has to top my current list of genius "home studio" moves.

BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!

[jonathan jetter]

a couple years back i was recording + mixing a hard rock EP for a friend of a friend.  the drums + bass had been tracked by a friend of mine who ended up not being able to do the project.  the bassist...well...lets just say he wasn't afraid to play a lot of notes.

for some reason he convinces my client that he needs to be there for the mixing session.  because he has pro tools at home too and he even has some fancy EQ called "renaissance."  

i load up the rough mix.  we get to work.  client's digging it.  bassist chimes in:

"i think we need to turn down the kick drum."

me:  "ok.  hey (client), do you agree w/ that?"  
him:  "yeah let's try it."

i turn down the kick, start EQ'ing some other stuff.  etc etc.

bassist:  "ok now that we turned down the kick...im hearing too much guitar.  can we turn down the guitar?"

i turn down the guitar.  get back to doing real work.  another 10 or 15 minutes go by.

"ok now that we've turned down the kick and the rhythm guitar, i think we need to turn down the lead vocal."

and then

"now i think the harmonies are too loud.  lets turn those down too."

"you know...it's weird.  now even the keys are too loud."

"the kick is too loud again."

at this point we'd been working for a little over 2 hours.  i pulled my client aside and told him that he'd just paid for 2 hours of time for me to essentially turn up the bass by 3db.

the bassist also has probably my favorite studio quote ever.  he decided he didn't like the vocal sound so.....

"can you gate the vocal more?  i think you need more gate on the vocal."

...

...

...i give up.

jon

[el duderino]

this past weekend i did a quick ep for a punk band. sunday i'm mixing a song and have them come in and listen to it and tell me what they think. simple enough.

the guitar player and the drummer start talking about it.

Drummer: do you think the drums should come up more in the bridge?

Guitarist: oh dont ask me, i dont know how to listen to drums.


WTF?

[disincorporated]

About 5 or 6 years ago I played in this noise/metal band for about six months....the singer/guitar player had the proverbial rich uncle, and they had all this gear laying around that they didn't have a clue how to use.

They were also very anti-theory, mostly cause they were too busy smoking weed and watching TV to bother learning about chords, or anything else....one day I'm in one room with headphones attached to one of these trying to come up with presets, and I can sorta hear the front guy and the bassist in the next room trying to track (on one of these).

They're playing the same thing over and over and not getting it. We'd played it a zillion times just fine with all four of us in one room, but now that they were trying to track it, they couldn't. This goes on for a while, maybe 30 minutes or more, and finally I can't stand it any longer and I take off the phones and start paying attention. After about 10 seconds of listening, I realize that they're trying to record a 6/8 tune to a 4/4 click (which is obviously the default setting).

!!!!

So I go in and tell them to try changing the click to 6/8. Of course they didn't want to hear it. "Fuck off with your technical bullshit," they tell me. Sheer rock greatness will carry us through, as long as we never learn anything at all....

After about 10 more minutes of frustration, I finally convince them to at least try it, so they can say definitively that I was full of shit....and about five minutes later they had the thing laid down and had moved on, and I got back to noodling with the synth.

Of course they had to be all tough guy and pretend it didn't happen....

[MikeNice81]

Just this morning...

Rapper: Can I get you to make me sound like Ludacris?
Me: What exactly do you mean?
Rapper: I want my voice and flow to sound exactly like Ludacris.
(The rapper's voice sounds like Barry White with a three pack a day smoking habit.)
Me: I can change the pitch and edit the timing some. I don't think it'll sound exactly the same. Your voice is just too deep and rough.
Rapper: Then how does Ludacris do it?

[grantis]

I was talking to a kid on myspace.....read from the bottom up....I almost
fell out of my chair!!!  Sorry this had nothing to do with engineering, but it was funny .


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i have no clue of what your talking about
melody meter,vive, freehand prose?

tropical idea?