cheddatom

Duffy's bar in Leicester on Saturday night. It was rammed and super sweaty. I'd annoyed the sound engineer yet again! This time I moved the drum monitor before he'd arrived. It turned out this monitor was knackered, and rather than fix it, he'd found just the right angle to balance it on a bar stool and keep it working. It'd been working for months apparently! After the show I politely recommended that if he didn't want to fix it, he should put a "do not move" sign on it. 

Anyway, I played without a monitor and it sounded fine on stage. Great gig!

2 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Can't have been too bad then as quite a decent sized crowd and they look as tho they are well into it.

Sound Engineers are a hit or a miss and this guy sounds as tho he doesn't really know what he's doing.

Just move on and if you return there either take your own SE or just accept its gonna be a difficult sound check again. Maybe whoever he was on the phone to could come along and do the sound for you. 

Apart from the fact your vocal mic was muted i'd put this down as a successful gig.

Dave

Yeh it was definitely a successful gig!

This soundguy normally works at the other local venue, which was his excuse for all the problems, although both venues have the same desk... Anyway, issues with the bar and door staff mean that our fans would never go to this venue again (even longer story!), so it's not going to be an issue for us in the future

We played at The Sugarmill in Hanley (Stoke) on Saturday night. It's our first headline gig here and the local venue so it felt like there was a bit more pressure than usual, that plus the lack of gigs since November, and it would be my first time on BVs, all gave me some nerves

When I arrived, I greeted the soundguy. We're on first name terms and I thought we were pretty friendly, but the first thing he said is "what ridiculous gear have you brought this time then?". I explained it's just my usual stuff but he seemed really annoyed for some reason. I set up the kit and the whole band were ready to go in 10 minutes as usual. Then the soundguy spent 30 minutes plugging everything in. While he was mic'ing the kit I showed him my nice new cymbal. He's a drummer so I thought he'd be interested. He said "oh, so that'll be dominating the whole room then!". I said "not really mate, it's the way you play them" to which he replied "Yeh, which is F&*KING LOUD!!!". I asked if he'd ever done the sound for us before, and he confirmed he hadn't, so he'd have absolutely no idea how loud I'm going to play my cymbals. I just let it go. 

So, all mic'd up, he tried to get sound. He had the main outs from his mixer routed to the centre vocal wedges. I explained that it all sounded weird and that my drums shouldn't be feeding back but he just cracked on, sweeping EQ on the drum mics for a solid 15 minutes. Bass was checked just fine, but guitars (just DI'd) sounded weird and kept feeding back. I asked him to turn the stage monitors off just to check there wasn't an issue, and this is when he finally figured out the mains were routed to the two centre wedges. Half an hour to who knows on the phone and he reckoned it was sorted, so we went back on to sound check. All fine except the lead singer can't hear himself. There's sound out of the centre wedges, but it's quiet and muffled. The soundguy told me I needed to play the drums quieter. I explained that it's never an issue and we play similar sized venues all the time. He finally came up to hear the vocal in the wedges and agreed it sounded wrong, and so after another long phone call figured out that he should have used a different cable for these wedges. FINALLY everything worked and we did our check in less than 10 minutes, but from setting up to completing sound check was pretty much 2 hours. 

After this check the soundguy approaches me to tell me that my bass drum is a nightmare. "oh, what's the problem?" I ask and he complains it has "no top end". I screwed up my face and said "we're not playing metal mate". Then I went home to change and try to forget the sound check

The actual gig was awesome, loads of people in, loads of people singing along, an encore... just an awesome gig all round. A couple of my mates were there, and they said it sounded OK but that my vocal mic was muted! All that practise and all those nerves for nothing!

A wonderful session of lead vocals yesterday. This singer hates headphones and asked if there was a way to record without. Some engineers would refuse, others would try to set up a super accurate out of phase monitor system, I just handed him the SM7b, put my earplugs in, and turned the monitors up loud. He was nervous that it wouldn't work as he's never seen it done like this, but I know the guy, and he's LOUD, so when I played it back with the vocal solo'd, you can hardly hear the track at all, just his screaming voice! Ditching the headphones really loosened him up and we got some very "live" performances

1 hour ago, nilorius said:

Some one - please don't take it personal, but what is it so bad with those small energy drinks ?

Something about the smell of them makes me nauseous but I'd rather not impose my weirdness on clients... will do the "no hot food" thing though

It's a bit of a weird setup, very little chance of any spillage

7 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

Why not a sign saying "No food or drinks in the control room"? It's safer if there aren't cups of tea and drinks cans waiting to be knocked over the gear. As long as there's an area where people can eat and drink, that's quite reasonable. 

The problem is that I'm addicted to tea, and constantly have a brew on the little coffee table in the control room

The band played lots of Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Bruno Mars etc at the last wedding I went to, it was great!

There's a kitchen but it's small and no seating... I'll buy some stools and print some signs

16 hours ago, tauzero said:

Back on the subject of etiquette, has anyone mentioned personal hygiene? Also consider what to eat on the night/morning before going into the studio - garlic and onion sandwiches might not be appreciated, nor anything flatulence-inducing.

The drummer on Saturday dropped a terrible fart in the control room, flat out denied it, then asked where the toilet was and disappeared for 20 minutes 🤣

The smell of energy drinks and rustlers burgers really gets to me, and this is the diet of the modern greebo. Subsequently, the greebos have corresponding BO. I try to avoid these bands but it's tough when I've not met them before, and I need the money.

Would a sign saying "No hot food or energy drinks in the control room" come across as rude?

45 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

My daughter has one of his sticks from a recent gig in Bristol. She really enjoyed them. A bit emo for my tastes but very good at what they do

He's one of my best mates, but honestly without bias he is my favourite drummer to watch. The guy's an absolute monster and capable of so much more than he shows with Static Dress, impressive as that is. His youtube is pretty cool https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLscwUeSlpdZdDUa86tx46g/videos 

20 minutes ago, Erax Sound said:

...Most modern metal (especially if it's djent) will have been quantised within an inch of it's life...

I really don't get why they don't just program the drums for this sort of stuff. Loads of producers replace/layer samples and it's all so quantized and consistent it might as well have been programmed, and surely would have been quicker and cheaper!

My mate is the drummer in an up and coming metal band Static Dress and they make a point of leaving his real performances alone. I personally think it helps set them apart

2 hours ago, WinterMute said:

...I always track at least drums and bass together with guide guitars and vocals if possible, I'll only OD bass if really necessary, but the groove has already been established between the players, it fells better generally. If I can get the whole band together then the majority of the backing track goes down in one go and the overdubs are done to fix errors or add parts. Generally vocals are the only exception.

 

This does mean musicians have to be good enough tp play a whole song all the way through without errors however, this is not a given.

I take the same approach, if the band are up to it

Another day, another session, drummer turns up without a ride, no worries, I'll loan a cheaper one from my collection, even though I specified to bring cymbals. Wants to play to a click but can't do it. Hits one of my clip on condenser mics and tries to fix it himself, won't admit to hitting it. Thankfully the mic is fine else the session fee would be wiped out!

Oh well, it takes all sorts and I've got to pay the rent! 

31 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

I was recording at one studio, in the control room, which had a lot of electronic equipment in it and the active bass I'd taken was picking up interference. The engineer offered me the studio bass, a Squier P,  which would have been fine if I played a 4-string not a 5-string and liked playing basses which would be better suited to firing arrows. So I got my passive bass out and it was fine (I preferred the neck on the active one). An alternative would have been to go into the main studio - in fact, I'd rather have gone out and played on the street than play the studio bass.

I'd have let you record on the street! Whatever it takes to get the best performance is my mantra 

Mix notes/revisions can be good. I once had a band record 4 songs with me. I'd double tracked each of two guitarists' rhythm parts. Guitarist A was hard left and slight right, guitarist B was hard right and slight left. The band sent me a 4 page PDF document of mix revisions, one page per song. For each song, they'd just copied and pasted the same 4 bullet points. One of the points was "The guitars should be stereo". Having explained the concept of "stereo", and after explaining that it's not possible to turn up every component in a mix, I thought we were making real progress. I was pretty happy with the result, then I got another message "Now that you've mixed the instruments correctly, we can concentrate on the vocals. We'd like you to give them more of a hard rock edge"

great points there BRX

On the first proper session I did as a bassist, the engineer wouldn't let me use my own distortion pedal. That was a big influence on my attitude to the whole process. I'll basically do whatever the client wants, within reason. I've done whole albums in a day, recorded totally live, and I've spent several days all on one single. I don't want to impose my views/sounds on other people's music

13 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

Do you get a lot turn up not knowing how to play their own songs? Or have instrument faults? Or no spare guitar strings?

Loads, I really don't mind the instrument faults, I have decent guitars and basses for people to use, and spare strings. It is tough when they can't play what they've written though. It can be so frustrating for the player, and obviously I want to offer to play it myself, but don't want to offend or patronise. It can be quite a tense situation. Quite often the parts will get simplified. 

1 minute ago, Rich said:

Well who was it then, and why on earth did he need all the room above the drum kit? Was it a Morrissey tribute, and he needed the space clear for swinging the gladioli around?

A keys player, it was a "live" session to be fair, and he needed a fair bit of room. I didn't mind making more room for him! I just figured musicians would know not to move mics in a recording studio

I was working with a metal band once, and the drummer insisted on tempo changes for every different riff. Basically he wanted the tempo for each beat to be as fast as he could possibly play it. I tried my best to get them (the whole band) to agree to a more consistent tempo but they wouldn't be told. This same drummer then went out of time with the metronome. When I stopped the take he asked why I'd stopped it, and I explained that he'd crossed the bar and was nowhere near the click. He said "the click must have gone out of time"

4 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said:

Any other other situation I am the same. But I am not a complete recording novice and I know in studios instruments are routinely subbed in from the studio stable so my thought on seeing one left out during my session is it is there for my use.

 

Just my representative 10c as a generally very considerate person on what a studio owner should expect from a band showing up. Carte blanche on the studio instruments. Don't leave personal instruments laying around a recording studio if you are going to be precious about someone picking them up and playing them.

My guitar was on a guitar stand next to me in the control room. I use it to work out notes when I'm tuning vocals. I was doing that with this guy's vocals. I'd put it down for a minute while I carried on synchronising the double-tracked vocals, and that's when I heard him playing it behind me. No big deal it just seemed a bit rude.

If it was on a stand in the live room next to the other studio instruments I wouldn't expect anyone to ask before playing it

1 hour ago, Buddster said:

I'm afraid in this case (and I hate to say it) the drummers right. His need to play how he plays overrides your need to place your mics. Always ask if the mics are in the way. Having said that, he should have asked you if you coud move them rather than do it himself. 

It wasn't the drummer! 

I had a singer tell me there was none of his mic in the headphone mix. He insisted, "come and try for yourself!!!", took the headphones off, and feedback screamed because I'd pushed the mic so high in the headphone mix.

Another guy this weekend moved my drum overhead mics because they were in his way. When I explained that they needed to be where they were he said "What, exactly there, right in my way?", even though he had loads of other space to use

I run a recording studio in Stoke and I thought it might be good to document some of the more amusing episodes, and get other perspectives on it too

I've done some work with a local band. They book me as a producer, but as soon as they arrived, their frontman said "You've got your work cut out for you today, you'll be recording 7 full tracks". Not long after, I clarified "so, you're the producer today, right, I'll just be the engineer?" and he was quite happy with that. He wasn't very happy with the end product and so had to book back in to re-do rushed vocals etc. which was predictable. After every vocal take, I would say something like "cool" or "OK" just to indicate the end of the take. He would take it as a compliment and thank me. Towards the end of the vocal session, he picked up my guitar and started to play it without asking.

Is this normal behaviour?