Not mastering sessions, but bizarre moments nonetheless from my recording days:
1- I worked with a local band who's purpose for recording a CD was to get their songs on the radio. They asked me to also help produce their stuff and gave me a previously recorded CD of the same tunes that they wanted to redo so I could get an idea of what to expect. I discovered that these tunes were in no way airworthy but did have plenty of potential - I could tell it was gonna be alot of work.
On one of the rock tunes, there was a place for a bass solo. As we were getting ready to track that song, the bassist pulled me aside and asked if I could teach him a solo to play. He said something like, "Make it cool, but don't make it too hard for me to play!" So I spent the next 1/2 hr -
on the clock - giving bass lessons...
In that same song there was a part that was just screaming for a couple of really easy 2-note blues chords. When I suggested it to the gtr player he just sort of stared blankly at me and said he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. So I went in there and taught this guy how to play a couple of blues licks and he was like, "That's so cool!!"
2- Another local band had 2 guitarists - one who was pretty good and the other who was not so good. The lesser of the 2 (we'll call him Gtr2) was up for overdubbing his parts on one of the songs. It was a rather easy part to play but for some reason he just couldn't get it down. After about 30-45 minutes of trying and trying and trying again and again and again, we finally discovered what the problem was. He was having trouble playing a couple of the chords w/o letting some "extra" notes muddy up the sound. These were really easy rock power chords. He just couldn't for the life of him keep the low E string from singing away while he was playing the other chord - and it clashed really bad.
We ended up having to have Gtr1 go into the room and pull up a chair behind the neck of Gtr2's guitar and lightly put his finger on the E string to keep it from ringing whenever Gtr2 played the problem chord and then let go at just the right time for him to play the other chord.
Gtr1 was doing way better at that than Gtr2 was at playing his easy part.
On yet another song, Gtr2 just flat couldn't play his part so after wasting what seemed like an hour, I taught the guy who was producing how to run the Auto Locator (MCI JH24 2" machine) and how to adjust the cue and went out into the cutting room and strapped on my guitar and played Gtr2's part and then stacked it -
all on the clock of course.
These kids, I tell ya...