spanked
I had a recording session yesterday that was a total disaster. Granted, I have been very busy lately, and this session sprang up out of nowhere, but I made so many mistakes AND I KNOW BETTER, so I'm writing down these lessons, in hopes of NOT FORGETTING THESE THINGS IN THE FUTURE.
1. NEVER UNDERSTIMATE THE GIG. The project was to do some hard-driving sax, drums, and rock-n-roll. I figured this was gonna be a piece of cake -- the charts were gonna be simple, we could track everything at once, and I didn't need an engineer -- me and one of the other composers could handle it. Riiiiiiiight.
2. BE A GOOD BOY SCOUT. And I'm not talking about walking old ladies across the street here, I'm talking BE PREPARED. When the drummer showed up, the studio was not prepped for a recording session, and I still hadn't finished writing out the parts. So I sent the other composer to set up the session, while I frantically wrote the last bits.
3. DO IT RIGHT, OR DON'T DO IT AT ALL. In order to finish the parts quickly, I started skipping steps -- leave out a dynamic here, oversimplify a drum fill there -- I needed to get these done and get into the studio, and I figured I could explain it to the players as we went. All this did was make my musicians look at me more and more disparagingly as I said "oh yeah -- one more thing..." over and over and over and over again.
4. PLAN FOR THINGS TO GO WRONG. That way you'll know what you're gonna do when they do go wrong (and don't worry, there will always be things you DIDN'T think of that'll keep life entertaining). I didn't plan for anything. The drummer didn't bring the baby splash I wanted (because I didn't ask him to ahead of time). One of the mics wasn't working, and we didn't have a spare. The 9V battery in my bass guitar was on death's door, and once I'd figured out that the battery was the problem (actually, the drummer figured it out), it took me another 10 minutes to go get another one and install it.
5. ONLY COOK WITH THE BEST INGREDIENTS. My buddy is a great composer, but he's NOT a professional engineer. It took him a loooong time to get set up, and he had to ask two more guys to help him figure out why the board and the patch-bay weren't working (I would've helped him myself, but I was busy explaining the music to the other musicians. See rule #3). By the time we were set up and ready to go, we only had one overhead mic on the drums, no room mic, no hi-hat mic, and we'd wasted at least 45 minutes of precious studio time.
6. DON'T WALK AND CHEW GUM AT THE SAME TIME. I figured I could manage the bass part AND run the session at the same time. BIG MISTAKE. I was so busy making sure I played my part well, I couldn't see the big picture, which was that THINGS WERE NOT GOING WELL AT ALL. I should've either tracked my part beforehand, or overdubbed it afterwards.
7. HE WHO SMELT IT, DEALT IT. The groove was swinging like a rusty gate, and I couldn't figure out why. I was playing MY part right, but it just seemed like the sax player and I were not locking up. Was he playing his part right? Maybe it was his phrasing or his slurs, or maybe he has a bad sense of time... no, he's a pro studio musician... can he hear the click OK?... or did I notate what I wanted correctly or incorrectly?... am I playing my part wrong?... turned out that in the process of whipping through the sax player's part, I'd left off a dot on one of his dotted-quarter notes, and it was a repeated rhythmic figure. The moral of the story: if something stinks and you can't figure out what it is, it's probably you.
8. LISTEN FOR THE MUSICS. We were running so far behind, we didn't do a sound-check. I never went into the booth to listen to what we had until we were finished, and at that point, I was concerned with making sure my client was happy and that I could cut the drummer loose so we could get him off the clock. And sure enough, when everyone was gone and I sat down to mix, I couldn't believe my ears. The drums sounded terrible -- they sounded like corrugated cardboard, only with less personality. The bass part was totally out-of-control -- it sounded OK on the headphones, but it wasn't working over speakers. And some of the doubled sax parts were phasing out and creating weird cancellation. What was I gonna do with this slop?!?
The bottom line? I could probably get away with just mixing this down and calling it art -- the client LOVED what he heard at the session, and seemed to take no notice that the whole process was limping along like a three-legged dog. But instead I'm going to bite the bullet: I'm going to have the drummer come back in to re-cut his tracks, and this time, have a professional engineer come in to record and mix everything. I'll put it up here when it's finished.
1. NEVER UNDERSTIMATE THE GIG. The project was to do some hard-driving sax, drums, and rock-n-roll. I figured this was gonna be a piece of cake -- the charts were gonna be simple, we could track everything at once, and I didn't need an engineer -- me and one of the other composers could handle it. Riiiiiiiight.
2. BE A GOOD BOY SCOUT. And I'm not talking about walking old ladies across the street here, I'm talking BE PREPARED. When the drummer showed up, the studio was not prepped for a recording session, and I still hadn't finished writing out the parts. So I sent the other composer to set up the session, while I frantically wrote the last bits.
3. DO IT RIGHT, OR DON'T DO IT AT ALL. In order to finish the parts quickly, I started skipping steps -- leave out a dynamic here, oversimplify a drum fill there -- I needed to get these done and get into the studio, and I figured I could explain it to the players as we went. All this did was make my musicians look at me more and more disparagingly as I said "oh yeah -- one more thing..." over and over and over and over again.
4. PLAN FOR THINGS TO GO WRONG. That way you'll know what you're gonna do when they do go wrong (and don't worry, there will always be things you DIDN'T think of that'll keep life entertaining). I didn't plan for anything. The drummer didn't bring the baby splash I wanted (because I didn't ask him to ahead of time). One of the mics wasn't working, and we didn't have a spare. The 9V battery in my bass guitar was on death's door, and once I'd figured out that the battery was the problem (actually, the drummer figured it out), it took me another 10 minutes to go get another one and install it.
5. ONLY COOK WITH THE BEST INGREDIENTS. My buddy is a great composer, but he's NOT a professional engineer. It took him a loooong time to get set up, and he had to ask two more guys to help him figure out why the board and the patch-bay weren't working (I would've helped him myself, but I was busy explaining the music to the other musicians. See rule #3). By the time we were set up and ready to go, we only had one overhead mic on the drums, no room mic, no hi-hat mic, and we'd wasted at least 45 minutes of precious studio time.
6. DON'T WALK AND CHEW GUM AT THE SAME TIME. I figured I could manage the bass part AND run the session at the same time. BIG MISTAKE. I was so busy making sure I played my part well, I couldn't see the big picture, which was that THINGS WERE NOT GOING WELL AT ALL. I should've either tracked my part beforehand, or overdubbed it afterwards.
7. HE WHO SMELT IT, DEALT IT. The groove was swinging like a rusty gate, and I couldn't figure out why. I was playing MY part right, but it just seemed like the sax player and I were not locking up. Was he playing his part right? Maybe it was his phrasing or his slurs, or maybe he has a bad sense of time... no, he's a pro studio musician... can he hear the click OK?... or did I notate what I wanted correctly or incorrectly?... am I playing my part wrong?... turned out that in the process of whipping through the sax player's part, I'd left off a dot on one of his dotted-quarter notes, and it was a repeated rhythmic figure. The moral of the story: if something stinks and you can't figure out what it is, it's probably you.
8. LISTEN FOR THE MUSICS. We were running so far behind, we didn't do a sound-check. I never went into the booth to listen to what we had until we were finished, and at that point, I was concerned with making sure my client was happy and that I could cut the drummer loose so we could get him off the clock. And sure enough, when everyone was gone and I sat down to mix, I couldn't believe my ears. The drums sounded terrible -- they sounded like corrugated cardboard, only with less personality. The bass part was totally out-of-control -- it sounded OK on the headphones, but it wasn't working over speakers. And some of the doubled sax parts were phasing out and creating weird cancellation. What was I gonna do with this slop?!?
The bottom line? I could probably get away with just mixing this down and calling it art -- the client LOVED what he heard at the session, and seemed to take no notice that the whole process was limping along like a three-legged dog. But instead I'm going to bite the bullet: I'm going to have the drummer come back in to re-cut his tracks, and this time, have a professional engineer come in to record and mix everything. I'll put it up here when it's finished.
2 Comments:
What? Do we not get to see the after AND the before?
I think that Jim's posting the sordid tale of how the ill-fated recording session came to be was embarrassing enough for him, I can't imagine how horrible he would feel if more people than necessary heard what came from that session. IMHO, an artist has the right to share/keep private ANYTHING they wish. If I write a piece of music that I don't think is very good, nobody hears it but me. Period. There are a few people who really like my music, and I always felt that there was an obligation to my audiences that I consistently give them the *BEST* I have to offer, no ifs, ands, or buts.
This means that nobody has heard everything I've written. The choral piece that has an awful ending, and a better one eldues me. The wind quartet that couldn't be salvaged. The orchestra piece I probably never should have attempted in the first place.
Were I in Jim's position, I would not want to make available to the general public anything other than the best I have to offer, and Jim made it clear in his post that what he oversaw failed to meet his expectations.
It's just my two cents...agree/disagree at your leisure...
-Howlett
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