Tävling

Prata om vad du vill (behöver inte beröra bas-världen), här är alla ord välkomna!
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fieldflower
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Per skrev:Nej, ff, nu tycker jag vi sätter punkt och drar ett streck...
Fantastisk film!!
Man minns ju hur det var då den kom ut, och ärligt talat håller den sig rätt bra fortfarande.
Då de cyklar upp i luften med honom i cykelkorgen var ju magiskt, och är det fortfarande trots att det är så cheesy gjort med dagens mått.



Alt 2:
Per skrev:Nej, ff, nu tycker jag vi sätter punkt och drar ett streck...
Nej, har du sagt .- får du säga -...
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Per
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--- -.-
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fieldflower
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Per skrev:Ok
-. .--- .- --..-- / --- -.- --.- ---.. / .... . - . .-. / -.. . / .--- ..- / -. ..- ..-. ---. .-. - .. -.. . -. .-.-.-

. .-.. .-.. . .-. / -.. ..- / -.- .- -. ... -.- . / -- . -. .- -.. . / -.. . -. / --. .- -- .-.. .- / --- -.- / -.-. --- .-. .-. .- .-.. .-.-.- .-.-.- ..--..
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Nej, nu orkar jag inte längre. Tjena morse!
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Bild
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Aah... Endeavour!
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Åjo, jag känner igen Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse.
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Nja... Nä.
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Yes, I can!
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The Daily Adventures of Mixerman: Week 1:

Los Angeles, California
Posted: July 27, 10:33 a.m.

On Monday, July 29, I begin a new project. I will be recording an album of a band for a very famous producer. The band is relatively unknown other than within the record industry, which, for the most part, is currently filled with bitter losers of the biggest bidding war in the his­tory of the music business.

I am an acquaintance of the producer-although "acquaintance" likely exaggerates the depth of our relationship. I did record for him once, but only for two hours, and I'm not entirely confident he'd even remember that. I can assure you, he would have never thought to hire me if it weren't for the band.

You see, I know the band. Or perhaps I should say I know half the band. Regardless, the band members are fans of my work.

The bands are often fans of my work. Hell, they don't know any better. They listen with the innocence of a person who enjoys music and musicality. They are still, to some extent, pure as listeners. They do not have the baggage of needing a hit affecting their judgment.

Yet.

If I could describe what I know of the band in just two words, those words would have to be supreme negotiators. The label wanted them to use one of a short list of producers. From what I understand, there were two names on said list. The band members, understanding the ways of the world, pointed out to the label that it was really their choice as to what producer they hired. After all, they were the ones who would ultimately pay the producer's advance and royalties. Hell, they'd be paying him a balloon payment for their sales before they made a dime in royalties, setting them even further in debt. Of course, the record company pointed out that it was the label's up-front money that would allow the record to be made in the first place.

Just in case that wasn't enough of a reality dose, the label also explained that, although it paid over two million dollars for the right to have them, it would be perfectly content if the only purpose for spending that money were to prevent the other "children" from having them. Ouch! The band looked at the short list and made the obvious choice.
The first name on the list.

As I said, the band members are supreme negotiators, and while they lost their first big negotiation where the making of their album was concerned, they had an alternate plan. They would get an ally in the room. That's where I come in. They insisted in their negotiation that I record the album. Oh, yeah. You can imagine how that went over. Mixer who? Mixer what? The label, not wanting to seem completely unyielding, and firmly believing that the tracking engineer has little power in the direction of the album (heh, heh), agreed, so long as the producer was cool with it.

As it turns out, the producer is familiar with my work, which I suppose isn't so hard to believe. After all, we are acquaintances. Countless times we have passed each other in the halls on the way to and from the loo. Perhaps that was the clincher, I don't know. Regardless, the producer agreed to meet with me and ultimately agreed to the band's terms. Now the band has its ally.
Of course, the band is overlooking the fact that in the next three years, the producer will probably record in the neighborhood of twelve albums, while the band is God knows where, playing the same fifteen songs every night, wondering why they would ever write such trash. And if I were to connect the dots for you, the producer could offer me a hell of a lot more work in the coming years than the band could. But yes, despite this, I am surely the band's ally.

And so I have decided that in the coming months, I will be documenting my daily adventures in recording an L.A. bidding-war band with a famous producer. Romance novels have been written on the basis of less, so why not? It's entirely possible this documentation will be complete come Tuesday. You never know, I could be fired. But for now, I'm hired, and we start Monday. Each morning, I will supply you with documentation of the past day's events. The identities of those involved will not be revealed, so as to protect the not-so-innocent.

Knowing the band (or at least half of it) and having some knowledge of how the producer operates, I expect it could be an interesting read. Add in the cast of characters that work for the label, who are not without their own fame, and we have the makings of a veritable soap opera. Or it could be the most uneventful album I've ever made.

But, somehow, I doubt that.

Mixerman
Day 1
Uh-Oh . . .
Posted: July 30, 12:01 a.m.

According to most of the world, the crack of dawn would be just about the time the sun peeks above the eastern horizon. In studio terms, however, the crack of dawn is approximately 10 a.m., and this is precisely the time that I arrived at the studio today. I can assure you that in the world of record making, 10 a.m. would be considered a downright obscene time in which to start a session. But today was setup day, and an early start was absolutely critical. Although, in retrospect, I wish I had shown up at noon.

In setting up a session I have two main goals. First, I want to make certain that the session can move forward without a hitch. The more organized the session, the more readily available instruments and microphones are, the faster the session can move. Second, I take great pains to be sure that everyone is as comfortable as possible, including me. A little extra time, care, and effort in the setup can go a long way toward these goals-hence the early start.

Upon my arrival, I headed immediately to the recording room, which, from this point forward, will be referred to as merely "the room." The room was, as expected, in complete disarray with instrument and recording cases strewn about. It is a very large room, approximately forty feet wide, fifty feet long, and with twenty-five-foot ceilings. There are also several decent-size isolation booths1 attached to the room, two of which flank the control room.

The cases contained all manner of instruments-amplifiers, drums, and general recording gear-that were to be used for this session. The cases were to be removed from the room and stacked against the enormously long wall lining the hall. The gear within the cases was to be set up in assigned locations-assignments that I had planned out well in advance and supplied to the studio via fax.

Among the stacks of cases stood a not particularly handsome young lad, whom I assumed (correctly) was the drummer. He was methodically assembling his drums smack-dab in the middle of the room. The way I figured it, this was likely more positive than had he not been there at all, but certainly less positive than had he actually been setting up his drums in the correct spot, which, in this case, was not in the middle of the room.

As I watched him, another young lad entered the room carrying a load of cables and some microphones. He was a tall, lanky kid, laden with acne, with but a single eyebrow running across both eyes, neglecting the usual break above the nose. He wore the fairly typical nondescript studio garb of a washed-out pair of jeans, no belt, and a severely faded T-shirt, bearing the name of the studio upon it. Saving his pathetic ensemble were a beautiful necklace made from beads of rosewood and a rare '70s-era stainless steel Rolex Explorer watch. I can only assume the watch was some sort of hand-me-down-style graduation gift given to him to celebrate his completion of a two-year course in audio engineering-a course in which I'm quite certain he learned nothing of any real value. Still, I suspect he had a good upbringing, partly for the watch and partly because he immediately stopped to acknowledge me.

"Hey, I'm Lance," the lad said, holding out his pinky finger, as his arms were too full to offer his entire hand.

"Hey, I'm Mixerman," I replied, helping relieve him of some of the cables. "Are you my assistant?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"You didn't happen to get my fax with the instructions and the locations of the players, did you?"

"Yeah, thanks."

Thanks? Thanks???

I looked around the room, half wondering if I were on Candid Camera, as I noticed that there were no mics2 set up, and there were no headphone boxes, no music stands, no A/C strips.3 Nothing was set up, save a rug and some drums-in the wrong place, no less. I had taken several hours of my time putting together instructions to have all of these things set up, or at least nearly set up, before I had arrived. I had marked a to-scale map of the room, notating where each member of the band should reside, taking into account the acoustics of the room and the sight lines.

Thanks? He thanks me for my fax that he has thus far ignored?

"Did you happen to get the diagram of where I wanted the players to be placed?" I asked.

"Yeah, I got it. But no one ever puts drums where you wanted them."

MOTHERFUCKER!

I hate to say it, but under normal circumstances, I would have just fired his ass. This session will be costing the label, and ultimately the band, thousands of dollars per day, and it's my job to make sure the session flows smoothly. If the session is not running smoothly, I will get the blame. Not my assistant.

Unfortunately, the producer spends a significant amount of the year in this room. It could prove problematic if the producer found out that I went off half-cocked and fired his favorite assistant. My every instinct said that I was on shaky ground to begin with on this session, so for the moment, I chose the diplomatic route. I calmly and carefully explained to Lance that I would like the drums set up where I had originally planned, regardless of what anyone else had done prior to my arrival.

"Let's just set them up over there, okay?" I quipped.

"Okay, whatever you want. All I know is this is where the producer likes them."

I stared at Lance, unable to respond partly for fear that I might say something that I would regret, partly because I never actually saw a person with one eyebrow, and mostly because I had not yet consulted the producer with my setup plan. This was a fact that I was now painfully aware of given Lance's comment.

I chose to abruptly drop this line for a moment and focus my attention on the drummer. For the most part, his drums were set up, as he was obviously making some final adjustments. Not wanting to disturb him, and in an effort to keep the session progressing in some manner, I leaned down next to his snare drum to investigate the spacing in which I had to thread a mic. Typically, this procedure is a relatively safe exercise. Today, it was an exercise fraught with danger, as the drummer suddenly and inexplicably began whaling on the snare drum.

Fuck! That hurt.

Startled would be an understatement, here. Were I a cat, I would have been on the ceiling holding on for dear life. To make matters worse, I stood up so quickly I hit my head and my shoulder on his cymbals, just barely retaining my balance enough to grab his drumstick in mid-strike as I steadied myself with my hand on his snare drum. All in all, this was a dangerous maneuver, for had I not managed to grab the drumstick, he would have likely cracked several bones in my hand with the pending whack.

A well-timed snare hit could do untold amounts of damage to my hearing. It could end my career. At the very least it could shorten it significantly. One should NEVER play the drums when the engineer is standing next to him, certainly not without fair warning. This is Recording Etiquette 101. It's a rule. Perhaps an unwritten rule, until now, but a rule just the same. I, of course, explained all of this to the drummer. I suppose I made some sort of impression upon the guy, because the next time I entered the room, he stopped playing.

Very good, I thought to myself, easily trainable. Still, it was unnecessary for him to stop playing if I walked into harm's way, but I saved that discussion for another time, as I didn't want to confuse the issue.

"Thanks for stopping," I praised, "but I want to hear what the drums sound like in the room, so you can play now." And he did just that.

For the briefest of moments, I thought that the drummer was actually playing a practical joke on me. I say this because I can only categorize the sounds emanating before me as some of the most god-awful drum sounds I've ever heard. Ever! Believe me when I tell you, I've heard some awfully bad-sounding drums. I mean, these drum sounds weren't bad in a cool sort of way. These drum sounds were bad in every way imaginable.

Perhaps it was the drums, I thought to myself, if only to stave off the actual truth of the matter from my fragile brain.

"I think these drums are probably better for playing live," I said aloud.

This was a standard line that I, and just about every other recordist in the history of the world, uses when a drummer's kit4 sounds like shit. While I generally prefer to be as straightforward as possible with people, this little white lie is sometimes necessary and works far more effectively than copping to the drummer on the first day of a session that his drum set sucks-live or otherwise. Believe me-if the drum set sucks in the studio, it sucks live too.

"What would you think about playing a nice set of rental drums that are designed specifically for recording?" I asked him, as admittedly it is very difficult to stop telling white lies once you've started.

The drummer sat there following my inquiry, with nothing more than a blank stare upon his face, as if I had asked him this question in Chinese, which I'm assuming he doesn't understand. I know I don't. I considered waving my hand in front of his face, but chose rather to rephrase my question into a statement.

"I think we should probably rent some recording drums," I stated, a little more slowly this time, as emphatically and with as much conviction as one can muster while using words like think and probably.

"Okay," he snapped quickly with this odd little smile that I could only assume was his best impersonation of Jim Carrey in the movie Dumb & Dumber.

By 10:30 a.m. the drums were in the wrong spot, my assistant was anything but assistive, and my confidence over my planned placement of the instruments had been shattered. Oh, joy. A call to the producer was in order.

In our phone conversation, the producer and I discussed a variety of topics germane to the setup for the recording. For the most part, he gave me carte blanche to place the players where I saw fit, so long as the sight lines were good for everyone. We also discussed a few sonic and directional concepts for the record, picked a song to start out with, and broached the subject of the rental budget, which, as it turns out, is quite sizeable.

"Get what we need to keep the session moving, regardless of cost," the producer said. Sizeable, indeed! Unlimited, more like!

All in all, it was a very positive conversation, until the producer dropped a bomb on me, coming in the form of both confession and request.

"One last thing before you go," he said. "You might already know this, but Lance is my nephew, and I want him to get some actual hands-on experience recording. If you wouldn't mind, any time you can let Lance take the reins and get some time behind the console, I'd really appreciate it."

Great! I thought to myself, as my mind flashed into the future to the record-release party where I was ceremoniously given my copy of the manufactured CD. I imagined myself sipping champagne and guffawing with the band, as I came to find out that there had been one million preorders for the album, an unprecedented event for a new band-hell, an unprecedented event for an established one. We toasted the huge success of a record that wasn't even for sale yet. Then I watched myself opening up the CD much like Charlie opened up his chocolate bar in search of the golden ticket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I remember being vaguely conscious of the bandmates each nervously and expeditiously excusing themselves from my presence, as I made my move to open the CD. Momentarily ignoring their peculiar exits, I opened the booklet to gaze proudly upon my name as the recordist of such a successful work, only to find in bold print the following text:
MSG

Engineered by Lance Nephew
Additional Engineering by Mixerman

/MSG

Of course, that particular dream sequence was ludicrous on more than one level. Such an obviously overblown scenario would likely be the least of my problems, as my assistant was supposed to be my ally, watching my back for possible mistakes or potential problems. Not a relation to the producer!

"Sure, no problem," I gulped.

Despite the distressing news of the nepotism and the fucked-up dream sequence in which I was deprived of a well-earned credit, I had established my needed authority to set up the session as I saw fit. At the moment, this was all the ammunition I needed.

I found Lance and explained to him that I'd had a long conversation with the producer and that I would like to set up the room as I had originally laid out in my fax. Then I asked Lance, as politely as I could possibly phrase such an inquiry, "Are you planning to set up the mics in the near future?"

Without so much as a grunt, he rolled his eyes, picked up my setup sheet, and exited the room as I remained wondering what the fuck he thought his gig was.

By this point in my day, the rental drums had arrived, and I had managed to sample a few of the kits. I finally settled on a vintage Ludwig kit, which seemed the most appropriate for the song we were starting with. The producer had expressed a desire to use a few different drum sounds on this album, so I had the rental company leave a couple of other kits as well. I also kept about ten extra snare drums. It's very expensive to keep this amount of drums on hand, but I just couldn't get the phrase "get what we need to keep the session moving, regardless of cost" out of my head.

I asked the drum tech from the rental company to set up the drums in the area that I had originally selected. He obliged and proceeded to fine-tune the drums. Being a seasoned pro, the tech asked my permission to play while I was in the room, which I happily granted. The drums sounded great! I was elated. Relieved, even.

Then the drummer took a turn. He adjusted some positions of the toms and cymbals to his liking, settled into his throne, and unceremoniously commenced playing the drums. My feelings of elation instantly turned to dejection. This drum kit, which I have actually recorded with great success on numerous occasions with drummers of every ilk-a kit which had sounded fantastic just moments prior-now sounded like absolute dog shit.5

As I listened to the wretched tones bombard me, I confirmed what I could only have defined prior to that moment as a super-strong suspicion. The drummer sucked.

To be perfectly honest, I should have known this coming in. I think that perhaps I did, but was trying to convince myself otherwise. The drummer didn't sound very good on the demos. But drums rarely do sound good on demos. I'd seen the band live once, but that was with a different drummer. The fact of the matter is, I didn't know this drummer. My relationship with the band was with the lead singer and the bass player. I was surprised that they would accept playing with such a lousy drummer.

Regardless of my feelings on the quality of musicianship sitting before me, I resigned myself to setting up the mics, which were still trickling in at a snail's pace. After some prodding, I finally got Lance to get all the mics in the room, and I proceeded to set them up around the kit.

Aside from the actual instrument in the room, mic placement is probably one of the more important steps to a good recording. Where a mic is placed can make a huge difference in what it picks up. Even what appears by eye to be the tiniest of movements of mic position can cause a dramatic improvement or degradation in sound by ear. In the initial placement of mics, I am merely making an educated guess as to where I think they will sound best. I must go through the listening process in order to determine where they will ultimately end up. To some extent, that's a hit-or-miss process.

With mics in their initial placement, I had Lance get the drummer behind the kit, as I made my way to the control room, where I had the most mind-numbing communication that I've ever experienced with a man. And no, I am not a chauvinist. But if you're a woman, you must realize by now your propensity toward largely complex and seemingly illogical thought processes, making you capable of inflicting unusually cruel amounts of distress upon the relatively simple mind of a man. Personally, I'd take that as a compliment.

"Play, please," I said over the talkback, which is much akin to a walkie-talkie, allowing the players in the recording room to hear me when I hit a button.

"What?" the drummer yelled, as if he couldn't hear me.

"Can you hear me?" I asked. It's quite possible that he couldn't hear me, although the talkback volume was way up, and I could hear a momentary feedback, which told me that my voice was probably pretty loud in the room. As if this wasn't enough to convince me, I recalled having heard Lance communicating earlier to me in this manner.

"YEAH, I CAN HEAR YOU FINE!" he responded, yelling as if I couldn't hear him.

"I want to hear the drums in here. Could you play?"

"What song do you want me to play?" At which point I told him the name of the song that the producer had requested we start with.

"Okay!" he replied. Ten seconds went by.

"Are you going to play?"

"Do you want me to play now?"

"That would be helpful."

"Which drum do you want me to play?"

"The whole kit!"

"Oh, okay!" He started playing and then stopped after barely a measure went by.

"How long do you want me to play for?" he asked.

"Until I ask you to stop."

"Okay!"

He started playing again and then stopped after a whole two measures this time.

"What?" he yelled out.

"I didn't say anything!"

"Oh, I thought you yelled to stop."

"No. I want you to play for a while."

"Okay!" Ten seconds of absolute silence went by.

"Play!" I yelled. The drummer jumped in his seat, and immediately started playing again. As I listened, I realized that he was playing the wrong song.

"Stop!" I yelled in the talkback, but he didn't stop. "Stop!" I yelled louder and closer to the talkback mic. "STOP!!!!!!" I yelled at the top of my lungs directly into the talkback mic.

"What?" he replied with a stupid-assed look on his face.

"Yes, could you play the song we discussed?" I was close to exasperation.

"You want me to play it now?"

No, I want you to play it tomorrow!

"YES!!!"

"Okay!"

These brilliant exchanges went on for the entire day. This guy was easily the dumbest schmuck that I've ever had to deal with, and I've dealt with some serious idiots. I swear to you this drummer is only one notch above being a retard, and I've come to find out through the course of the day that he is the butt of the band's constant jokes and haranguing. At one point, I began calling him Cotton, and the bass player asked me why I called him that.

"'Cause he's dumber than cotton," I said dryly.

I guess he thought that was funny, because he fell off his chair and ran to tell the singer. To me, however, the name Cotton doesn't really do the drummer justice. Personally, I much prefer what I've been calling him out of earshot and between exchanges on the talkback.

Dumb Ass.

After about six hours of changing drums, moving mics, trying out compressors-which are tools that engineers use to even out an overly dynamic volume differential of an instrument-and anything else that I could do to somehow make Dumb Ass's drums sound acceptable, I finally got a sound that I thought was fairly decent considering what I had to work with.

By this point in the day, the other players had been at the studio for some time, and they had been setting up their instruments and their playing areas. Lance Nephew was on "vibe" detail and had been busy hanging my tapestries, arranging lava lamps, candelabras, candles on plates, string lights, and Magic 8 Balls (of which I have three varieties). He also took it upon himself to place the studio's wool Oriental throw rugs throughout the room, a service for which I was most grateful. For the moment, Lance was doing what he was supposed to and wasn't causing me too much grief.

With drum sounds relatively complete, I could focus on the other instruments. I rented a bass head and cab,6 because I wasn't particularly enamored with the rig7 the bass player was using. I rented a few guitar amps for the sake of variety, and the producer had several amps of his own that were delivered along with a large assortment of percussion instruments and guitars. I set up a wall of guitar amps in the large iso booth so that the guitar player could plug into a variety of amps, depending on the song. All in all, I would say there were about fifty guitars in the room, some rented, some newly acquired by the guitar player, some belonging to the producer. I rented a few of these big twelve-banger guitar holders, and we got the cases out of the room.
I set up the bass cab (the speakers) in another decent-size iso booth, and placed the bass player's head (the amplifier) in the room with the drums so that he could stand next to Dumb Ass while they were playing. Bass players usually like to stand near the drummer, as these two instruments supply the groove of a song. I set up large baffles8 to cut the players off from the drums and to give the band members their own kind of space. Each player had his own little "Apartment," or "Living Room" garnished with his choice of furniture, gear, and assorted vibe paraphernalia.

After about ten hours, the room was finally completely set up, the players had been placed, and their instruments were accessible to them. All the empty cases, racks, and extraneous gear were piled up in the hall. The room was beautiful. It was a sight to behold!

I got a bass sound and a few guitar amp sounds. I had mics throughout the room so that I could readily hear each band member, and they could readily hear each other in their headphones. Each Apartment got a set of headphones and small mixers, where each player could set up his own little eight-fader mix for himself (very handy). We ordered dinner, which is a complete story in and of itself that I'll reserve for another time, and I set up the vibe in the control room.

Post-dinner, we were ready for the producer. So I called him and left a message telling him same. But the producer never made an appearance, even though he had expressed a desire to make some takes tonight. I guess he was too busy.

Not wanting to sit around doing nothing, I had the band play down the first song a couple of times, as I laid it to tape and made a few adjustments. All in all, I'd say the test recording sounded okay, but quite honestly, Dumb Ass really sucks balls as a drummer. He has no feel, no time, no talent, is stupider than fuck, and has an incredible knack for making great drums sound like ass.

Other than that . . .

Mixerman


Day 2
Dandy Day
Posted: July 31, 1:23 a.m.

Today gives the term "dandy" new meaning. That's because today was definitely a dandy.

About thirty minutes before the crack of dawn, I received a call from the producer. Apparently, he had mysteriously been stricken with a great idea. He wanted to use a PA system9 to amplify the drums in the room, so as to get a really "big and fat drum room sound." He referenced another producer who was a friend of his that swears by this. He then proceeded to tell me that he'd had his personal assistant (a relative, I'm sure) hire a sound reinforcement guy to come to the studio and set up the system.

After dropping the little PA bomb on me, he decided to ask me how everything sounded.

What's it matter? It's all going to change now! I thought to myself.

Regardless, since I wasn't 100 percent happy with the drum sound, thanks to Dumb Ass's less than stellar coordination of multiple limbs hitting skins, I decided to fill the producer in on my disappointment with his drumming skills.

"I think the PA is a good idea. The drummer could use some help," I said in an exaggerated, half-laughing way so as to get my point across.

"He could? I'm surprised to hear that," replied the producer.

Surprised? Didn't he do rehearsals with this band? How can this be a surprise to him?

"I thought he was a really good drummer," the producer continued.

As if I wasn't fucked before!

I intimated that I thought the PA system was a good idea, and, in an attempt to perform some damage control, I told him that the PA would probably solve the small problems that I was having with his drumming.

"When will you be coming in?" I asked innocently.

"I'll probably be there by late afternoon-early eveningish, to listen to sounds."

"Great, see you then," I replied as the producer abruptly hung up the phone.

I drove to the studio for a noon start. When I arrived, I saw the sound reinforcement company's truck in the parking lot and Dumb Ass sitting on the patio smoking a cigarette. Dumb Ass informed me that he always likes to get to the studio early. Oh, joy! I decided that I'd make a beeline for the room, since that was where Dumb Ass was not.

Normally, I would expect to see the room exactly as I had left it the night before. Expecting this would be as usual as expecting summer to be hot, birds to fly, dogs to bark, or any manner of everyday occurrences that have few exceptions. Unfortunately, today was one of those exceptions.

Rather than walking into a well-organized, fully prepared recording session that I had spent ten hours of my time preparing, I was greeted by a half-dismantled, unorganized clusterfuck. You see, when I arrived at the room, the microphones that were only fourteen hours prior to this tightly locked down and surrounding the drums-microphones that I had spent hours painstakingly positioning in order to somehow gain even the slightest edge on the poor drum tones I must somehow present in a flattering manner-were now completely removed from the drums in an arbitrary and seemingly random fashion. At first, I was stunned.

As I said yesterday, mic placement is the single most important part of recording, aside from what you are recording and the room you are recording in. Lance had made movements of centimeters (per my direction), as I listened in order to get the mic to pick up what I wanted it to "hear." To move the recordist's mics is the cardinal sin which anyone who has spent more than a day in a studio knows you never commit under any circumstances-certainly not without first consulting the person who placed the mics.

As I stared upon the disastrous scene before me, I became consumed with anger-anger so great that I could not accurately describe in words the extent of it. In fact, there is really no way that I could accurately describe the magnitude of the microphones having been removed from the drums, as certainly no one in the history of the world has died from such an event. Still, I'll try my best to put this into perspective.
If you have ever spent hours laboring over anything at all, in the hopes that you will derive some fruits from that labor, even if those fruits are merely the self-satisfaction of accomplishment; if you have ever created anything that in and of itself is intended to have no permanence, but by its nature serves as a painstakingly critical first step toward the accomplishment and free flowing of a creative endeavor; if you have ever created anything, even as mundane and unimportant as a jigsaw puzzle or a sand castle, or even a domino trail, only to have it destroyed in one fell swoop by an idiot with no consideration toward common sense or human decency, then you have a firm grasp on the aggravation and pure unadulterated hatred of mankind that I was feeling at that particular moment. Put another way, I was about to fucking lose it!

Knee-deep in the carnage before me stood a disheveled Mountain Man sporting a full-on Grizzly Adams do, wearing a torn tank top, shorts, hiking boots, and a trucker's baseball cap with a perfectly straight brim-a fashion faux pas of the highest order in some circles. He was casually plugging a whole new set of microphones into a live PA console parked, no less, in the middle of the singer's Apartment, destroying every bit of vibe that I had worked so hard to achieve. This, of course, was the least of my problems.

"What are you doing?" I asked, practically shaking, half thankful I didn't have a gun, half wishful that I did.

"Oh, hey," the Mountain Man replied obliviously. "Just setting up my mics for the PA."

Getting slightly distressed I asked, "Why did you move my mics? You moved my mics! Where's Lance?"

"Who?" he asked.

"Lance-where's Lance-who let you in?"

"I don't know, one of the staff or something," he answered. "I hope you don't mind, but I had to move the mics to get my mics in on the drums," he continued. "Ah, you're a pro. You know how this works."

I stood there for a moment in absolute disbelief at what this Mountain Man had just said to me. My mouth hung wide open. Were there a fly in the room, it would have likely flown right in. I would guess that I looked more stupid than Dumb Ass looks on a regular occasion. For a moment, I understood what it was like to have an out-of-body experience. My consciousness was floating above me, looking at myself and the room, wondering how this could possibly happen. I watched myself gazing vacantly at the drums with a feeling of helplessness, much like one feels when he's lost something important to him. Thoughts of physical violence as a means toward retribution entered my mind, but I quickly dispsensed such ideas, for a studio and the ridge of a volcano are two of the last places where one wants to get into a physical altercation.

"Excuse me," I retorted, as I made a quick exit from the room for fear that I might say or do something that I could regret. In retrospect, I can think of plenty of things that I wish I'd said, but one always comes up with the best comeback material after the fact.

At that point, I had pretty much decided that it was time to meet the studio traffic manager. Unfortunately, I was way too pissed at that particular moment to express myself clearly and without sounding like a raging lunatic. I decided it would be best for me to take a drive, which is what we do instead of take walks here in La La Land. Dumb Ass offered to come along, an offer that I turned down flat.

After allowing myself the opportunity to calm down, I returned to the studio complex and headed directly to the office. It was time to introduce myself to the traffic manager, Magnolia, whom I've never actually met. While I have worked at this particular facility before, it has been many years, and Magnolia has only recently accepted the position as traffic manager. Oddly, despite the fact that we have many mutual friends, circumstance has prevented our paths from ever crossing. But then, circumstance is like that.

Magnolia seemed happy to meet me as she immediately wanted to kibitz, a skill that seems to be a requirement for becoming a studio manager. Personally, I desired to get right into the circumstances of the disaster but couldn't do so effectively with all of the kibitzing going on. I grudgingly exchanged some niceties, but I quickly and awkwardly segued into the disaster in the recording room.

"All of my mics were torn down from the drums," I stated.

"Wow, I'm surprised to hear that," she replied to my complaint.

Surprised? I've lost hours of work and she's surprised? How about appalled? I would have been happy with appalled. Appalled would have been a reaction that I could live with. She gives me surprised?

Motherfucker!

Upon investigation into the matter, Magnolia informed me that Lance still hadn't arrived yet, so a runner had let the Mountain Man into the room. She apologized and promised to speak with the runner, but she attempted to remove some of the blame from herself and her staff by pointing out that the Mountain Man should have known better. In some small way she was right-he should have known better. But certainly one of the purposes of an assistant and a studio staff is to prevent the clueless, under the guise of being professional, from infiltrating a session and moving the microphones! Doesn't she know that?

By now, I had come to accept the fact that I couldn't change what had happened and that my only recourse was to prevent it from happening again. I told Magnolia that in no uncertain terms was anyone allowed in the room without myself or (gulp) Lance being present. I'm not 100 percent convinced that had Lance been there, this disaster would have been thwarted, but at least I could have held him accountable. Perhaps then I could have hired someone not related to the producer to assist me!

Having resigned myself to getting drum sounds again and convincing myself that I probably would have had to approach the drums completely differently anyway with the addition of a PA system, and having temporarily shelved my hatred of the entire world for how it happened to affect me, I was able to face the situation at hand in my usual happy-go-lucky manner.

The first step in the healing process, since I was probably the only one in need of healing, was to introduce myself (officially) to our beloved Mountain Man/sound reinforcement specialist.

"Mixerman," I announced.

"Buck," the Mountain Man replied, as he held out his hand momentarily and then sneezed into it.

"Charmed, I'm sure," I quipped sarcastically, neglecting to accept his hand as he was now wiping it on the rear of his pants.

"You know, you moved mics that I had spent hours setting in place. In general, that's considered really bad form."

He seemed unfazed by my admonishment as he continued to patch cables into the monstrosity that sat obtrusively in the middle of the singer's Living Room.

"Uh, do you think we could move this beast?" I said as I placed my hand on the console.

"Oh, I thought that would be the best place for it," he said after briefly glancing up to see what I was referring to.

"Well, it's right in the middle of where the singer is going to be for takes."

"You're not going to keep those vocals are you?"

"That's somewhat irrelevant," I replied, as I was beginning to lose my patience with his obtuse nature.

I can't for the life of me understand why I ask a question when what is really called for is a statement-note to self: Consult with shrink about this.

"I'd like to move the console to here," I proclaimed as I held out my hands, as if they were on the sides of an imaginary console and walked to an unobtrusive corner of the room.

"But I won't be able to see," he replied, bewildered.

"Why do you need to see?" I responded, even more bewildered, "You're not even going to be here once we get audio passing."

"Oh, I thought you would need me to be operating the board."

What???? I almost choked on my own saliva I was so taken aback by the absurdity of this statement. What was he talking about? Why would we need someone to operate the board? This wasn't some live mix gig. This was a PA to be used to boost the level of sound of the kik10 and the snare drums in the room. It was for an effect. "Set and forget" is what I do in a case like this. And if I do make changes, it's between songs, and those adjustments can be made by me and/or Lance, depending on the situation.

"No, we definitely won't be in need of that!" I replied bluntly.

Lance had finally arrived, nary an apology for his extreme tardiness. He seemed raring to go. Yeah, right! After some coaxing on my part, I convinced Lance to help Buck move the live board to the corner of the room, out of vibe's way.

I took a moment to go through Buck's mic collection in the hopes that I could avoid having two sets of mic stands and two sets of clunky microphones on each and every drum. In reality, I didn't need a second set of mics at all. It would have been just as easy, if not easier, for me to use the same set of mics for the recording as for the PA, which I won't get into the technical details of here. But there were valid arguments for using two sets of mics, although at the moment I can't think of one. Buck had a plethora of clip-on mics in his arsenal. I managed to convince him to use those instead.

Since all of the mics had been removed and since there was now a PA in the room, I decided to reapproach my own mic selections for the purposes of the drum recording. Upon completion, I gave Lance my new and improved list of mics and asked him to set them up instead of what we had set up yesterday. Lance sat down to examine the list, which leads me to suspect that Lance's father may have berated him one too many times for walking while reading, an act I would have much preferred. But I guess that's not how Lance operates.

In the twenty-four hours that I've been around Lance, I've not once seen him make what could be construed as an accelerated motion of any part of his body. The guy would never be mistakenly shot by police officers thinking that he was somehow "going for a weapon." Since this operation would likely take awhile, I decided to go out and eat lunch with the band. Of course, even my lunch was ruined, what with the presence of Dumb Ass.

I realize that I may seem a bit harsh with Dumb Ass, but honestly, I'm nice to the guy, particularly compared to the rest of the band. In fact, they've taken to calling him Cotton to his face. Certainly, Cotton can frustrate me endlessly to the point that I either want to choke the living shit out of him or just give up on life in general. But I do remain calm, I never put him down to his face, and I'm always extremely careful to let go of the talkback button when I call him Dumb Ass. He is the definition of a boy that only a mother can love. I am thoroughly convinced that, were Cotton and the Pope in a room together, it would only be a matter of minutes before the Pope would begin insulting him. There's just no way around blatantly stating your disdain for him. I mean, if the Pope can't refrain, you certainly can't expect me to, right?

As if Dumb Ass's incessant idiocy isn't enough, the guy has this whole retard act. I mean, he'll act like a retard. I would greatly appreciate for someone, anyone, to tell me why a retard would act like a retard. I posed this in the form of a question to the singer, but he kept repeating the question as if attempting to decipher the answer to some complex, deep philosophical question. "Yes, why would a retard act like a retard?" "Why would a retard act like a retard?" "Why would a retard act like a retard?"

Ya got me!

After returning from lunch, I watched as Lance was putting the finishing touches on his mic setup in a manner that one might imagine Michelangelo touching up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Dumb Ass was kibitzing with Buck, getting along like one would expect two retards to get along. I placed my mics on the drums, went through the painful exercise of getting Dumb Ass to actually play the drums when I wanted him to-as opposed to when I didn't want him to-and got Buck to get the PA pumping (like I needed him for that). After a couple hours of tinkering with subtle mic movements, I got the drums to sound okay again.

You have to understand, okay drum sounds are not what I'm going for here. With a great drummer, drum sounds take all of ten minutes. With a shitty drummer, if you actually give a shit about your craft, drum sounds can take hours. I suppose one could argue that I'm earning my money. Admittedly, sometimes the recordist's job is to take a less than stellar source11 and make it acceptable. This is what I'm spending my time doing thus far, so in this case, that is my job. But personally, I prefer the other side of the coin, which is to stay out of the way of what is inherently great or, in other words, to do everything in my power not to fuck things up. To me, that's a far more valuable service than the first, as anyone can stomp the snot out of drums with compressors in order to make a crappy drummer seem slightly consistent, which I am already doing to arrive at just "okay."

At this point, I wasn't sure if my new drum sound was better than last night's, so I recorded a little bit and compared. While the PA was slightly different, it didn't really improve Dumb Ass's sound very much. At this point, I had come to the realization that there was no way for me to avoid reality anymore. He just sucks! How can drums sound good when the guy just plain sucks? The answer is, they can't. I was dejected and needed a producer because I was out of answers. The drum sounds were fine. It was the drum playing that was fucking things up to this point, and until the producer could come to that conclusion himself, there was little more that I could do on this front. The fact that the producer perceives him as a good drummer is not a good sign. I can't help but wonder if I'll make it past tomorrow.

I dismissed Buck, and he exchanged numbers with Dumb Ass. I believe I overheard that Buck thought Dumb Ass was a really good drummer. [Sigh]. Is it just me? Have I lost my ability to judge drummers? Perhaps I've set my standards too high. If this guy's actually a good drummer (and he's not!), then I'm toast.

It was dinnertime again. When I have a less eventful daily log, I'll be sure to fill you in on how such a benign thing as ordering dinner can turn into a fucking fiasco of epic proportions. Finally, we ate our dinner and still no producer. I had the band play the first song again, this time with the PA drums, and I recorded it. The band enjoyed the new sound. Dumb Ass thought it was the most rad drum sound he'd ever gotten. Funny, it's one of the more pedestrian drum sounds I've ever gotten. I suppose it's true. . . .

Perception is reality.

Mixerman
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fieldflower
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Day 3
Operation Control (& Will He Show?)
Posted: July 31, 11:38 p.m.

Today, I decided I was going to take some control of my life. It is typical for me to constantly evaluate how I am contributing to the well-being or degradation of a session. By not taking control of the assistant and the studio-and in some respects Dumb Ass-I have come to the self-critical conclusion that I have contributed to the degradation of this session. At the very least, I have not been improving upon the situation and therefore I needed to make a tactical change in how I was handling myself. Of course, not having a producer show up has not helped matters. Still, considering the fact that we haven't even made a take yet, the damage should be easily rectified.

Take control was the plan of the day. Thus, the name of my plan: Operation Control.

The first thing I did today after drinking a cup of coffee, taking a poo . . . Okay, forget about all that! The first thing I did today was to call the producer and ask him if he'd be coming in today.

"Yeah, man. Definitely. Sorry about the delays. Drama. You know how it is. How's the PA working out?" he asked.

"It's fine. I recorded one take with the PA and one without, and you can be the judge."

"Great, you're the best! I'll see you later today." And with that he hung up the phone.

I wasn't quite sure how to take "later today." Regardless, I chose to be optimistic and assume that I would have a producer later today.

Now I needed to implement Operation Control. First up on the agenda was Lance Nephew. Phase One of Operation Control began, unwittingly on my part, last night.

Phase One: Train Lance to be a worthwhile assistant.

At the conclusion of yesterday's session, ahem, I explained to Lance what I meant when I used the term "start time," expressing very plainly that if we call the session to start at 10 a.m., then I wanted him there at 9:30 a.m. Among other duties, he was to double-check all the documentation from the day before (he was a bit confused by this one, as he still hasn't documented one thing); fire up the "tube" equipment,12 which takes time to warm up; make sure the Apartment environments are neat and clean; organize notes, messages, and receipts; remove obvious trash; and untangle cables, lines, etc. Some of this was being done by the cleaning staff, but Lance was not without his own obligations. I explained to Lance that his job was to help me keep a session running smoothly and quickly, and I asked him if he was going to be able to do this. He assured me that he would.

Lance was only thirty minutes late this morning, which was incredibly encouraging considering that, to date, he has not been less than an hour late. As encouraged as I was, this wasn't good enough. So I decided that he needed to meet the wrath of me. After all, an important Intelligence Operation cannot always be implemented without the use of some force. In a nutshell, I tore Lance a new asshole-a tactic I reserve for when all else fails.

Lance was shocked, nay, flabbergasted at the way I laid into him. But at least I think he's starting to get the picture now. No more Mr. Nice Guy! I was either going to have an assistant I can use, or one of us was going to go. At this point, I didn't care which one of us went-although I was hopeful it wouldn't come down to that. Lance wasn't a bad kid by any stretch of the imagination. Phase One would have to remain a work in progress. I moved on to Phase Two.

Phase Two: Put the studio on notice.

I went to the traffic manager's office, exchanged daily niceties, and allowed Magnolia her mandatory kibitzing time, which I found quite painful as I abhor kibitzing when I'm in the middle of a mission. I then reiterated to her that ours was a "closed session." Only the band, the producer, Lance, and I were permitted in the room. She agreed to my terms. I also explained to her that I wouldn't tolerate Lance's being late any longer, and that I wanted him there before the session started, regardless of nepotistic relationships that may exist. She was noticeably taken aback by my bluntness on this matter. She quickly regained her composure and assured me that it wouldn't happen again. I was reasonably sure she "got it" now. Phase Two of the plan was complete. Back to Phase One.

I took Lance into the room, grabbed a clipboard with a pad of paper, and demonstrated to Lance how one documents the settings on a guitar amp. I drew a little circle for each of the knobs on the guitar amp, and I drew a line, like the hands of a clock in each of the circles, which indicated where the knob was set on the amp. It was kind of like kindergarten class, but this was an important step in implementing Phase One.

I explained to Lance that on every song, and even every take, if we're switching instruments and amp settings, he was to write down the guitar that was used, the amp that was used, the settings of the amp, the pickups, tone and volume control settings on the guitar, pedals used with their appropriate settings, mics used, snare drum used, kit used, bass used, head settings, compressor settings, mic pre-gain settings, EQ settings, tempo, etc. I suggested he make some templates and photocopies of those templates, so he didn't have to constantly redraw the guitar amp knobs every time we changed the settings on the guitar.

I showed Lance how to use a pencil, as opposed to a red Sharpie marker, on a label directly on the two-inch tape13 box, much like the marker that he used to sloppily write what I believe said "Test Drums & Test Drums II"-even he wasn't quite sure if that's what it actually said. I explained to him the importance of using details in order to prevent assured confusion later on down the road. I counseled him on the importance of trying to use neatness in his documentation, so that we could read what he had documented at a later date. There is one studio in town that actually runs its future assistant engineers through a course in penmanship. Obviously, this wasn't that studio. It was then time for Phase Three.

Phase Three: Teach Dumb Ass to play drums like a man.

I took a listen to Test Drums and Test Drums II, as Lance was affixing labels to the two-inch box and writing a novelette on the origins and purpose of each take.

In listening to the takes, I determined that I would need to make some more adjustments with the PA, but more importantly, with Dumb Ass. He hit the toms like a pussy but would whale on the hat14 as if he imagined it was the guy who raped his sister. I gave him the short lesson on hitting his drums and then had him practice while I made my adjustments with the PA.

The sound improved tremendously. The toms were singing in the room a little better. In fact, the drums were starting to sound pretty good overall. I gave him some more encouragement-yes, I do encourage Dumb Ass-and recorded "Test Drums III," labeled as such by my newly inspired literary scholar of an assistant, with a three-page dissertation written on a label designed for, at most, a sentence or two. (Sigh.) Should I tell Lance he's gone too far? Or should I just send the runner out to buy a quality magnifying glass on the band's dime?

Dumb Ass's drums were actually halfway decent, although the guy has this very odd loping feel. It's like riding a galloping horse with its push-pull motion. I see Alsihad in my future.

Alsihad (pronounced AL · see · hod) is my own personal name for what is currently the most widely used computer program for recording in the industry. I created my own name for the platform, partially because I don't think the real name fits the product, and partially because I wouldn't want to be responsible for even one sale of the product.

For years, albums were recorded to tape. To date, many rock albums are still recorded to tape. But many albums are recorded to computers. In order to record to a computer, one needs both software and hardware aside from the computer itself. The hardware converts sound into the digital format of 1s and 0s. The software is the platform in which an operator can manipulate the sound. Alsihad is both the software and the hardware. Some people in this industry feel that Alsihad sounds fine, and some people in this industry feel that it sounds awful. Some people don't think it really matters, since all records end up in the digital format of a CD anyway. I'm in the camp that thinks it sounds awful.

Regardless of my feelings on the issue, when a drummer comes in and has such poor timing as is prevalent in Dumb Ass's playing, Alsihad is typically the first choice to fix the timing anomalies. At that moment, I didn't see Alsihad in the room, and this was just fine by me.

When the singer and the bass player entered the control room, they immediately noticed the improvements on the drum sound. I requested that they go back in with the guitar player and play down the song, which they readily obliged. It was late afternoon, and the producer still hadn't made an entrance. As they played down the take, I remember having these unusually insecure thoughts come through my head.

This drummer sucks, regardless of how I improved his tone, I thought to myself. Sure, I'm hearing an improvement, and it actually sounds pretty good to me. But perhaps I've lost perspective. Perhaps the tones still suck, but I think it's okay because of the improvements I've made. But what will the producer hear? The producer is under the impression that Dumb Ass is good, and he's heard Dumb Ass play. But it's sooooo obvious to me that Dumb Ass is not a good drummer. Will he hear that the drumming is subpar, or will he hear that the drums just don't sound good? After all, you never can tell with producers. He might not recognize something so painfully obvious. Just because someone is a successful producer doesn't mean that he has the skills to go with his success. This industry is fraught with people who have no business being near a studio. Would that be the case here? "Wait a minute!" I thought to myself, as I snapped from my trance of doubting thoughts.

I was in the midst of Operation Control. I couldn't allow insecurities to overcome me. I've been in this situation countless times before. I must think positively and overcome any obstacles that present themselves. It was useless to worry about the producer's reaction. I just needed to be prepared to convince him of where the problem lies. Operation Control was about taking control of the situation. Not fear.

With that little episode behind me and with a renewed sense of confidence, I decided to mic up the rest of the guitar amps and get the mics positioned so that I wouldn't have to move mics every time we switched amps. The more I can avoid moving mics, the faster I can keep the session going. With the rental of several microphones, all of the amps and cabs had their own mics placed in front of them. The guitars were sounding great. I also had two EQ/compressor chains set up, which I named Chain A and Chain B.

As an engineer, two of my tools are equalization (EQ) and compression. When one uses these tools in series, they form what's called a chain. The entire chain in this case would be the following: the source (the player, the guitar used, and the amplifier used), microphone, mic preamplifier (which amplifies the microphone), EQ, compressor, and tape machine.

The treble and bass boost in your car stereo system is a simple EQ. I use much better and much more powerful EQs in the studio. I can cut or boost just about any frequency in the human range of hearing and beyond with EQ. This allows me to shape the sound of the instrument for the benefit of the recording.

A compressor allows me to reduce the dynamic range. You know the DVD of the movie that you watched at home last night? The one you had to turn up in the soft parts and down in the loud parts? That's an example of a wide dynamic range. A compressor reduces that dynamic range so that the soft parts are closer in volume to the loud parts. If you strapped a well-set compressor onto the output of your DVD player, you could put your remote control away. I have engineer friends that do just this.

A compressor, however, can alter the sound quality of the source dramatically. Learning which compressor to use, how much compression, and even when to use compression can take years to master, and the selection of which can take years to master and can still be a somewhat hit-or-miss process.

Lance's job was to document accurately not only the settings of the entire chain, but also the settings of Chain A, while I was recording with Chain B. The reason for this is sometimes we have to go back and fix something later on in the session and for any number of reasons. If I don't have all the settings in the chain documented, we would have to redo the entire track, rather than a small section of the track.

With my guitar chains in place and Lance prepared to document everything, I was ready to go. Unfortunately, something, or shall I say someone, was missing.

The evening went pretty much as the previous evenings had-some dinner, some billiards, some foosball, some resting, and yes, some clandestine diary writing. I took the measure of calling the producer and leaving a message telling him we were 100 percent ready for him. The way I figured it, he might have been waiting for this information before he planned to make an appearance. But much to my chagrin, he didn't call back, he didn't come by. Nothing.

I was half tempted to start making takes, but thought better of it, as I couldn't be sure what the reaction to such a course might be. The band doesn't seem to mind too much at this point. They're happy to be in the studio: They were signed two years ago, and the record company has had them writing the entire time. They were just happy to finally be ready to make an album. Plus, as far as the band was concerned, we have been working the entire time. They are extremely happy with the tones. I'm getting along very well with everyone, even Dumb Ass, regardless of my disdain for him. So that's positive. In fact, all in all, it was a very positive day-mostly because I got back control of my session. I would venture to say that my first two days are a good reminder for all of us, regardless of our professions: We must run our sessions and not let our sessions run us.

With lesson in tow, all I needed now was our esteemed producer, who I have decided will no longer be referred to as "the producer," as I've named him for the purposes of this journal. His name henceforward?

Willy Show.

Mixerman


Day 4
Paulie Yore
Posted: August 2, 4:17 a.m.

Lance and I arrived at the studio simultaneously today! Of course, I was fifteen minutes late. I might as well have been twenty-four hours late, because Willy didn't show again. We didn't record. I didn't even make an attempt to put the reel on the machine.

I wish I could tell you some great recording stories from today. But I can't.

Essentially, I was paid my book rate to sit around and kibitz all day. Hey, I enjoy kibitzing as much as the next guy, so long as I'm not on a mission. As much as I'm happy to be paid highly for such activities, I chose to record and mix15 albums for a living because that's what I wanted to spend my days doing. If I just wanted to kibitz, I would have chosen kibitzing as my profession.

Sometimes, however, I feel that I'm irrational on this subject. Why should I give a shit if I'm actually recording the album or not? Every day I'm at the studio I'm getting paid. But I don't want to be recording (or in this case not recording) an album for months on end for lack of momentum. Been there, done that. Discographies16 are the name of the game in this business. The deeper and hotter your discography is, the better. The recording biz is basically a small controlled lottery. The more albums I work on in the course of a year, the more lottery tickets I have in my possession. The more lottery tickets, the more chances of a hit. Once you have a hit, you get even more lottery tickets. I just hope I didn't get the piece of paper with the black spot on it, as I have a marked aversion toward being stoned to death.

If I'm locked up spending months on this record because Willy Show never shows, then, overall, that's not a good thing for my career. The more this record costs to make and the longer it takes, the more unlikely it is that it will ever sell more than 10,000 records. For an individual, that number is decent. For a major label, that number is abysmal. The fact that this band was a bidding-war band and that they've been basically on the shelf for two years does not bode well in the first place. So yes, I want to be recording right about now.

I called Willy Show again this morning. He an­swered his phone, and he apologized again for his no-show. This time he decided to give me a little information teaser. He alluded to having trouble with the contract, and he was confident that it would all be worked out by this afternoon, after which he would be in to take a listen. I told him that I was looking forward to finally meeting him again, and I felt like an awkward idiot in doing so, but I'm over that.

I was considering asking Willy if he wanted me to make some takes, but the fact that he intimated a desire to listen to where we were convinced me to abandon that thought. There are plenty of producers who expect their engineers to do the nuts-and-bolts work as the producer acts more like an executive. I had a producer tell me once that my job was to make him look good. He wasn't kidding. I had to make all the decisions and take complete control of the session. In that case, the producer viewed his job as an overseer of sorts. He would come in and approve or disapprove of what we had done, and then it was my job to either move on or fix what he didn't like.

As with every high-profile producer, there were plenty of stories floating around about Willy Show. The word on the street is the guy is pretty hands-on. His not showing to the session would be, quite obviously, uncharacteristic for a hands-on-style producer. Asking him if he wanted me to make takes seemed counter to getting our relationship (can I call it that yet?) off to a good start. I know that if an engineer I hired asked me that, I'd be immediately distrustful and probably dislike the engineer.

On the other hand, I know several producers that just expect you to start making takes. But those tend to be hands-off, music-supervisor-type producers. They won't even tell you that's what they expect. I knew that Willy was going to eventually show, and we would be working on the album. I also was reasonably confident that he did not want me to start making takes. So that was the tack that I would continue to take.

The band seemed pretty happy by the end of yesterday. Unfortunately, after only a couple of hours of no-show Willy, their happiness swiftly eroded to discontentment. The guitar player called their management on the issue. Personally, if I were the band, I would have called my management two days ago. But that's me, and fortunately for me, I'm not in the band.

The mystery of Willy Show's nonappearance was finally revealed. Apparently, Willy's producer's contract wasn't complete. Furthermore, Willy had made it very clear to everyone involved in this project, who didn't happen to be in the studio waiting for him, that he would not start work on the record until the contract was complete. In my travels, this is nothing short of unusual. In fact, it is not uncommon to finish a producer's agreement in the middle, or even, remarkably, post-completion of the album. But Willy was holding out for some reason.

Hmmmmmm.

It's even more unusual, on those rare occasions that the producer is threatening work stoppage (or should that be work non-startage?), for the band to be in the studio waiting until the contract is done. In the rare instances that a producer is insistent on a finished contract before commencement of the album, the session will typically be put off until such contract is completed. At the moment, thousands of dollars are being spent every day with no music being recorded. As near as I can figure it, based on the information relayed to me by the guitar player, Willy Show didn't tell the label that he wasn't going to work without a contract until this past Monday, probably simultaneous to my reeling in pain from a snare shot to the ear.

Uy-yuy-yuy!

Producer contracts sometimes take weeks-actually months-to complete. Was the label going to actually fork over all that bread to have us sit here for weeks doing nothing? It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened. I'd be lying if I said I weren't somewhat suspicious of this contract story. I couldn't help but wonder if Willy Show was finishing up another album and not admitting to it? Or was it truly a case of wanting the contract complete? Perhaps the contract issue acted as his "beard," much like a gay man's girlfriend is intended to hide his sexual preferences.

I can't say the band was very happy about this news. They weren't. Neither was I for that matter. Their management told them that the contract was almost complete, and there were only one or two more negotiating points of contention. Apparently, the contract would likely be done by tomorrow, which begged the question, Why am I here right now?

Then there's the issue of my nonrefundable three weeks of work deposit to hold the time. I haven't even gotten that money yet. Fuck that! If they cancel or postpone this session, the label will only want to pay me for the days I've worked. With independent labels (indies) and international labels, I will do no work without a deposit. With major labels (majors), I've never gotten a deposit before I actually started a gig. So I hadn't given it much thought.

In receiving this information, I placed a call to my manager, who acts for me just as a band's manager acts for it. She promised me that she would get me my deposit "pronto." For as much money as labels go throwing around like it's disposable, they sure don't like giving it up.

I spent time with the boys in the band today, and I'm starting to get a good idea of their personalities. As I said earlier, the bass player and the singer I've worked with before. I mixed a record for them when they were in another band that was ultimately dropped. Unfortunately, mixing with people for seven days doesn't provide much time for developing super-tight personal relationships, and I wonder if I, perhaps, had overestimated just how well I knew these guys. Regardless, I wasn't there because I was buds with the band. I was there because they liked how I approached music and engineering. That's nice, but I wish they would have told me about Dumb Ass before I took the gig.

I continue to marvel at the depth of Dumb Ass's stupidity. Today he was running around the studio naked. I didn't even ask why. That would just encourage him. I just pretended like it wasn't happening. Don't feed the retards, I always say. All the band members have a certain distaste for Dumb Ass. He is probably the diversion that actually unifies this band. He's the scapegoat. I think if it weren't for the "pile on Dumb Ass" game that they have so regularly engaged in, this band would be broken up by now. I say that based on my recent determination that the singer and the guitar player really can't stand each other.

The two of them have been writing this album for two years now, and the label has been ruthlessly-with no concern for the band's general mental well-being or confidence-rejecting their demos outright and insisting that they keep writing. The label wanted hits. Remember, they were a bidding-war band. That means that when they were being bid on, the labels all thought their music was great at that time! So why two years of writing? That's like torture. Come to think of it, so is this session so far.

I also discovered that the band has gone through two A&R reps17 (now on their third), both of whom hated the band, mostly because they were a president's signing. Frankly, I wonder if this band might be a pain in the balls for the label. I could see that side of them in today's conversations-many conversations of which I was only half privy to. It seems that there is a serious history of problems in this band's marriage. As if that weren't enough, it also seems that publishing, which deals with how the writer's portion of the money is paid, is a major point of contention among the band members. I've been down this road before.

I'm starting to suspect that the singer is a megalomaniac, but I know the guitar player is completely tweaked. I can't cite anything too specific yet. Actually, I suppose saying that I know the guitar player is tweaked is a bit strong. Rather, I'll call it a super-strong vibe-a premonition based on years of experience dealing with people who can't hold down a job. Let's put it this way: I would vote for the guitar player to be "most likely to mow down a crowd with a machine gun" in the band. I think he's unstable, and I'm almost positive this guy is seriously depressed. I'm not a shrink, although after years of recording bands I might qualify for an honorary degree. All I know is that the dude doesn't seem very happy most of the time. He mopes, and he never seems to get excited about anything. We're going to be making a record for Christ's sake! Every new record is exciting for me. How could it not be for this guy?

Case in point, I'll record what I and the rest of the band think is a pretty killer guitar sound on our test takes, and he'll walk into the control room, listen to his part, and talk about it like his grandmother just died.

"Yeah, I guess that's okay," he'd say, followed by "I hate my life." I'd be lying if I say that didn't depress the fuck out of me. Shit, I put my best foot forward, and the tone I capture makes someone hate his life? That's certainly not good for one's ego. It's not as if he's playing poorly. He's a good guitar player. I just don't know. Perhaps he's depressed that Willy Show hasn't shown. I can only hope. In the meantime, the guitar player shall be dubbed, most appropriately, Paulie Yore.

As always, I wonder if Willy Show will come to the studio tomorrow. More importantly, will I be working on Saturday? Seeing as, to date, I can only reach Willy in the mornings, I'll have to ask him that question tomorrow. And seeing as it's almost 5 a.m., I'd better get some sleep.

As if I won't have plenty of time to rest during the day.

Mixerman


Day 5
The Question
Posted: August 2, 10:51 p.m.

I called Willy Show late this morning. As usual, he asked how I was doing. Why, I'm fantastic, Willy. I love sitting around all day waiting for you to never show, and how are you? This is what I wanted to say to him. For obvious reasons, I chose the more diplomatic route.

"Er, I'm fine," I replied, "but the natives are getting restless."

"I'm sure they are. I'm sorry about that. I'm pretty sure I'll be there this afternoon," he replied.

Ahem.

Days two, three, and four, he basically assures me he's going to be there. Today, he's just pretty sure? Is this some kind of sick joke? Can you place bets in Vegas on whether producers will show to recording sessions? Because I was ready to bet a bundle on today's outcome.

"Great, it'll be great to finally work with you again!" I replied as I reeled silently at my own response. I wanted to kick myself, not only for being a dork for having said this to him on four separate occasions in as many days, but also for using the word great twice in a sentence.

Upon completion of our morning niceties, it was time for me to ask the most important question of the week-The Mother of All Session Questions-the question that's been in the back of my mind ever since this project began and to date I haven't dared to ask and for good reason! I don't know Willy Show from Adam. So at my first opportunity, and without the use of a remotely clever segue, I took a deep breath, and I blurted out my question.

"Will we be working Saturday?"

My sanity and well-being as a person hinged on the answer to this very important question. In my experience, sessions that run six-day weeks go downhill at an alarming rate. One day of rest is just not adequate time for people to recharge their batteries after six twelve-hour-plus days of trying to record an album, something that to this point we have not done at all. I realize that the practice of working six days is commonplace in this business, and many others, as well. But I also know from experience that sessions with weekends off are generally more fun (ahem), less stressful, and, most important of all, more efficient than the dreadful six-day work week.

The phenomenon of losing the forest for the trees in the creation of a production is reduced drastically by taking two days off a week. The people involved in making records five days a week are generally more rested and happier than they would be if working six days. I've been on projects that we have worked both ways. Even the most seasoned engineer and producer are better able to judge takes, sounds-hell, just about everything-when they are well rested.

Sure the first week of a six-day-per-week project isn't usually too bad. But by the middle of the second week, people start to become testy. Starbucks runs become more frequent. Red Bull18 becomes a staple rather than a refreshing mid-afternoon boost. By the third week at the six-day pace, most people have no business even being in the studio. Why do people torture themselves so? I contend, (and this could never be proven for obvious reasons) that if I were to take the same band with the identical set of circumstances in parallel universes, and one band worked five days per week and the other identical band worked six days per week, the band that worked five days would actually finish the album sooner, even having spent less actual time in the studio.

As much as I dreaded the answer to my question about working on Saturdays, I was at the very least relieved to have finished asking it. Now I just needed to hear his answer.

Please let it be five days, please let it be five days, I thought to myself in the 500 milliseconds it took Willy Show to respond. That's half a second to those unfamiliar with metric conversions. To be honest, my greatest fear was that Willy would be a seven-day kind of producer. There's no way I could do that. I'd be dead.

"I don't usually work Saturdays or Sundays . . ." he started.

Yes! I pumped my fist like I had just scored the game-winning, sudden-death, overtime goal in game seven of the Stanley Cup finals. No matter how fucked this project is or becomes, I can handle it if I'm not working Saturdays. That means a good night's rest on both Saturday night and Sunday night! This is huge! My excitement knew no bounds as I jumped for joy at the news.

". . . but I think we need to work this Saturday," he finished.

"Okay," I responded. "That's cool. Whatever you want to do," I replied in an upbeat manner as my heart sank.

He proceeded to tell me that if all goes well, he'd see me today. With that, our phone call was complete.

Although I was elated with the news of a five-day work week, I was mildly bummed at the prospect of working this Saturday. I could only come up with two viable scenarios. Either I was going to sit there all day Saturday and Willy Show was going to live up to his name, or Willy actually would show, and we'd be working long hours for day six. Either way, this sucked. Disheartened, I got myself ready for my day and went to the studio.

I've been setting our start times later and later. Yesterday, I didn't even go to the studio until 2 p.m. I figured if the producer wasn't showing until late afternoon (as you recall he didn't show at all, as if anyone could forget that little fact), why should I go in at 10 a.m.? Regardless of what time I come in, I've been staying close to twelve hours a day. I don't know what the hell I'm doing waiting there for such a long-ass day. But any time I think that I should just split at hour nine or ten, another part of me thinks that if I do go, that will end up being the time that Willy Show finally decides to make his first appearance. So I wait-not wanting to risk missing the big entrance. And who could forget Lance Nephew's way of keeping me longer than I really thought I needed to be there, just by his mere presence as a relation to the producer. Although, I have come up with ways to manipulate Lance's sense of time, particularly as it relates to the beginning of the day.

With a planned 2 p.m. start, I told Lance that our start time for today was 1 p.m., and I told Dumb Ass our start time was 3 p.m. That worked great! According to Magnolia, Lance arrived at 1:30 p.m., half an hour early. Dumb Ass, at 2:30 p.m., was half an hour late, although he thought he was half an hour early, but still asked if he was late. Perfect! This would be my new method of making schedules work. It should be good for a while, until Lance figures out that he's always half an hour early or that I'm always half an hour late, at which point he'll likely start to come half an hour late to the start time I call for. Confused yet? Read it three times fast. But when he does that, I'll switch it up on him, and then he'll be really late again. He'll never know whether I'm giving him the real time or the fake time in order to get him there early. What can I say? When you're not recording for twelve hours a day, you have time to come up with these sorts of schemes.

The singer, the bass player, and I all arrived around 2 p.m. They told me that we'd definitely be recording either today, tomorrow, or Monday. Apparently, they had just gotten out of meetings with their management and attorney trying to wrap up the producer's agreement with Willy. There was only one sticking point, and that was being sorted out today. I surmised from my conversation that the band's been dealing with this all week; it's just that Willy kept saying he was going to come in, even though the contract wasn't done. It has become quite obvious that this was not, in fact, the case.

In anticipation of actually recording, Dumb Ass was asking me today about Alsihad. Actually, he asks me every day about Alsihad. He's scared to death of having himself edited. You'll recall that Alsihad is my fabricated name for a very common brand of recording software and hardware that uses a computer for editing takes. It is a very intricate program, and it requires a trained expert to operate it, which I call an Alsihah. Alsihah is actually the name of a Shriners' Lodge in Georgia, and Alsihad is a derivative of that word. There's no actual reason for my using that word, other than I liked the ring of it, and it was emblazoned on my friend Fletcher's fez.

Regardless, it seems that Dumb Ass doesn't want to have his drums edited, as he thinks it destroys the feel of the drumming. I couldn't help but think to myself that the feel of an unnatural galloping motion-much like the one caused from slowing down the beginning of the measure and then speeding up the end of the measure-is a feel best left for destruction. As I've intimated, I'm not a big fan of Alsihad myself, but I wasn't quite sure how his drum takes were going to be kept without some serious editing.

I pointed out to Dumb Ass that currently, Alsihad was nowhere in sight. But that fact didn't seem to calm him.

"Do you think Willy will use Alsihad on my drums?" Dumb Ass asked.

"I have no idea," I replied.

"Is Willy big on using Alsihad?" Dumb Ass asked a few moments later.

"Uh, I've never worked with the guy, so that would be pure speculation on my part," I replied.

We went around and around this subject. It was ridiculous. He kept coming up with different ways of asking me the same fucking question that I had no way of answering. I tried telling him not to think about it, but that was useless. So I told him that he needed to play the takes like they were performances, and if he laid down a good performance, he wouldn't need to be edited. That too was ineffective.

At this point, I was doing anything I could to get away from Dumb Ass. I even went into the lounge to play video games with Paulie Yore. That was about as much fun as visiting the urologist for a prostate massage session, but it was still better than trying to explain for the zillionth time to Dumb Ass that I DON'T KNOW THE FUCKING PRODUCER, hence, I couldn't predict what Willy Show would want to do about his drum takes.

At one point, I decided to take a moment to talk to Yore about Dumb Ass's insecurities. I couldn't figure out why the hell he would be so worried about being edited. These days it seems that most drummers want to be put into Alsihad.

"I think Cotton is worried about being edited in Alsihad." I explained to Yore.

"Fuck him. Cotton's lucky to even be in this band, so he should just shut the fuck up and do what he's told," Yore stated without hesitation. Nice.

I sat there for a while in silent and stunned disbelief as I attempted to hurl ninety-nine-mile-per-hour Randy Johnson fastballs past Barry Bonds in a virtual baseball game. I knew the band liked to razz Dumb Ass, but this was a whole new level of disdain that I was unaware of. Shit, do any of these guys like each other? I didn't even know how to react. I suddenly realized that Dumb Ass has an inferiority complex, and it's because of the band. Determining to what degree their dismantling of his confidence was degrading his performance was impossible to tell. That's like trying to figure out whether the chicken or the egg came first. Was he this bad before the band started laying into him, or was he halfway decent, and the band was bringing him down several notches with this attitude?

As I marveled at Barry Bonds' home run number 126 on the season flying out of the park off the most dominant pitcher in baseball, it struck me that Dumb Ass might also be nervous. This was his first record, whereas the others, including Yore, have all made records before. It was clear that I was going to have to talk to Dumb Ass and try to build him up. Acting upon this revelation would have to wait though. I had a call.

It was my manager. She had news. It was five in the afternoon, and she had just gotten off the phone with the band's management. I was free to go home for the day!

Halle-fucking-lujah!

Willy would be coming in at 11 a.m. on Monday morning to start work on the album. My manager said that everything was cool, the contract was complete, and Willy was ready to start work after the weekend. At first I was skeptical, but my manager offered irrefutable proof. My deposit was being couriered to my house as we spoke.

Yes! I thought to myself.

Labels don't give you a three-week deposit when there is some question as to the status of making the album. That is the reason that I had not gotten it before today. Willy is going to show on Monday, and we are finally going to start making this album. I could feel it. I sent the band and Lance home for the weekend, and I sent myself home too. My week of purgatory was over. No longer would I have to push the same large boulder up the same hill over and over again.

Of course, being that I was going home in Friday rush hour in L.A., it took me close to two hours to drive what takes me approximately thirty-five minutes late at night. But that just seems to be par for this course.

Now doesn't it?

Mixerman
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Day 6: Chocolate Muffins & Razor Blades
Posted: August 5, 11:48 p.m.

Today started like any other day on this project. I was brimming with anticipation as to whether I was going to be recording an album with the world-renowned record producer Willy Show. I could hardly contain myself. Not wanting to be late, I left myself extra time to get to the studio. This was the big day.

I didn't even tell Lance a false time on Friday. I just told him that his uncle was coming in, so he'd better not be late. Damn! I don't think I've ever seen anybody turn that red. You see, I hadn't let on to Lance that I knew about his familial relationship with Willy. After seeing his reaction, I'm glad I kept that to myself for so long.

I arrived at the studio half an hour early, and to my surprise, Lance was a mere five minutes later than I was. I congratulated him, telling him that by the end of this project, he was going to be a good assistant. He thought that was funny, but I was quite serious.

I asked Lance to put up the reel with "Test Drums" on it and to cue up the current drum take. I checked out how the tracks sounded and made sure that I liked the static mix of the instruments. I casually played with the balances, put them back to my marks, and decided to go get a muffin.

One thing that's great about the better studios in L.A. is that they supply you with a plethora of food. On any given day we could have muffins, bagels, croissants, fruit, or even veggie trays. At this particular studio, there were almost always muffins. I love the muffins, especially the chocolate muffins. But for some inexplicable reason, the runner only buys one chocolate muffin per day for the basket (he also only buys one onion bagel, which is even more dumbfounding to me). The longer I wait to go to the muffin basket, the more likely I'll have to eat a bran muffin-something that I was not in need of at that particular moment.

Today, I figured I'd get myself to the muffin basket early and guarantee myself the lone chocolate muffin. When I arrived at the muffin room, lo and behold, before me stood Willy Show himself! And he was eating a muffin. This had to be kismet! Fate! Willy Show liked muffins too! And he liked chocolate muffins. . . .

MOTHERFUCKER!!!

Willy Show was eating my chocolate muffin! Was this any way to start off our relationship?

As usual, I chose the path of minimal confrontation. I smiled and greeted Willy. He hugged me as if we were old buddies. That's what producers do here in L.A., they hug you. It was great. So we talked for a minute, and he asked how I was. I told him I was doing well, and that I was glad to spend the weekend with the family, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The band arrived one by one, and eventually we made our way to the studio. First, we went into the studio, where Willy checked out the setup. He commented how he'd never placed the drums where I had them (yes, I seem to have heard that before), and he commented on how great the vibe was. He liked the setup, complimenting it as musician-friendly. I was elated to have him comment positively on the vibe, as that's my pride and joy. I want the room to be so comfortable that guys are dying to get back in and play. I was very happy that he noticed the hard work that went into that detail.

After some kibitzing in the room, we made our way into the control room. Willy sat down, and we continued to shoot the shit for a while, until Willy asked if he could hear some drums. So I played him the last take we did. He listened for a verse and a chorus of the song, and he turned to stop the machine.

This was the moment of truth. To be honest, it sounded okay to me. But I hate just "okay." Okay might as well be shit. That's because I am at all times attempting to achieve the level of "magical," which I can assure you is many levels above okay. But the hard and cruel fact of the matter is that magical comes from the player, not from me.

"It's too room-oriented," he said with his finger still on the stop button, as if the tape could stop any more than it already had.

Okay, so what does that mean? He wanted a PA in the room. The way I figured it, that meant he wanted the sound to have a bigger-than-life room sound.

"I can make it less room-oriented within the balances," I said, as I made some fader adjustments.

"No," said Willy thoughtfully. "I don't know if the PA is right. Did you do a take without the PA?"

I had Lance put up Drum Take I, which I made a week ago with a totally different set of mics. He stopped the tape after less than thirty seconds.

"This is much closer to what I'm looking for," he said.

I couldn't help but laugh to myself. He liked my first instinct, without the PA. A sound, mind you, that took me hours to dial in for lack of a good drummer, and a sound that is now gone. Now he was going to want me to take hours to get that sound back again. Hilarious!

"Well, then, I guess we should go back to that setup," I replied enthusiastically.

Willy concurred, left me his cell phone number and split. I went to work.

I spent about three hours with Dumb Ass and Lance trying to re-create this sound. First Lance had to reset the mics that had been long ago pulled down. That took about half an hour, even with my help and haranguing.

After hearing the drums on the mics and fine-tuning the placements, I realized the heads were dead. Drum heads have only so much life in them before they're dead. In the studio, we typically prefer to replace drum heads often. Some producers prefer to change them daily. Some producers prefer to never change them, but if Willy liked the sound from the first day, then it would seem to follow that he liked the sound of new heads.

I called for the rental company drum tech to come down and change out the snare and tom heads. I guess between going for two drum sounds with tweaks, and the marathon drumming sessions that the non-drummers of the band were participating in throughout the week, we'd managed to kill the heads.

Finally, I managed to get reasonably close to the original drum sound. I had the band play the song down, and I made a take. I called Willy and told him I got it. He returned to the studio within twenty minutes.

Willy listened again and then stopped the tape.

"Yeah, it's good," he said as he rubbed his chin in thought.

Man! That was easy. But doesn't he hear the shitty-ass drumming? Perhaps he knows that it's going to have to be edited. Hey, the guy's a pro. He can tell the difference between a shitty sound and a shitty drummer, right?

"But let me compare it to something," he continued.

Uh-oh, I thought to myself. I've been down this road before.

We spent the next six hours comparing our drum sound to the drum sounds of mastered CDs which, for the most part, contained very pleasing songs that had no bearing whatsoever on this band or the song we were about to cut. We were comparing apples to oranges. None of the CDs was anything that Willy had produced, so it wasn't like he was knowledgeable about what was done to achieve the sound. Not only that, but many of the drums seemed to be doctored with samples.19

I pointed this out to Willy, backing up my claim with the fact that some of our comparisons were being made to songs mixed by Sir Arthur Conan Mixallot. Sir Arthur is well known for triggering samples on drums. This is all well and good, but the fact of the matter is, we were not using triggered samples. This made for wholly unfair comparisons. Unless we were planning to put in samples ourselves, it was unrealistic for me to match drum sounds to those mixes. Willy seemed unfazed. He felt I could get that sound regardless.

Throughout the day, I felt like a hamster on a treadmill. I was going around in circles. One of the CDs had tons of low end,20 another had no low end. How the fuck was I supposed to match a sound between two completely different sonic landscapes?

Willy liked the kik from one CD, and the snare from another CD, and the cymbals from yet another. The CDs were mostly insanely bright21 and loud.22 So I rented several sets of Pultec EQP1a EQs, which I consider to be my not so secret weapon to help me brighten the drums. Pultecs are forty-year-old tube EQs, that are very expensive as they are highly coveted and in limited supply. I like them because I can add a lot of high end without adding a lot of distortion, which is not the case with many, many EQs on the market.

I spent many hours A/B-ing23 CDs and trying to make Dumb Ass's drums sound like a conglomeration of what I suspect were some of Willy's favorite recordings. This process can be extremely fatiguing. So much so that it becomes difficult to tell what the hell you're listening to after a while. One can become extremely confused and frustrated throughout this process, and the only weapon to combat these maladies are breaks, of which I took many. After much hoop jumping, I finally came up with a drum sound that I thought might satisfy Willy, who was making my life miserable at this particular juncture.

He listened. He liked it! Halle-fucking-lujah!

The only obstacle that remained was for Willy to do a car check (the process of checking a recording in the car), which he did without incident. Just like that (nine hours later), we were moving on.

We spent about another hour changing out guitars and amps and trying to find a combination that he liked for the song. We ended up back on the original combo that I had arrived at with Yore, who seemed to have no reaction to any of the sounds, and at times seemed bored to be participating in the making of his own album.

"Yeah, whatever," Paulie Yore said, as if he had lost something important to him. "It sounds good enough to me," he would say as he hung his head and slunk out of the room.

Listening to Yore in a studio was as treacherous as listening to the Sirens as you sailed a boat through a rocky cove. Needless to say, I did my very best to avoid buying into his most unenthusiastic comments, as I moved on to some bass adjustments before we began making takes.

By the time we actually were making takes, I was thoroughly exhausted, yet pleased that after more than a week, we were actually recording the album. As I sat, nearly dozing off in the middle of the second take (which sucked ass), I was awakened by what I considered at the time to be an odd event. Willy reached toward the console and turned down the music.

"So you been having fun all week with these putzes?" he inquired from out of the blue.

What kind of play was that? He knows the band requested that I be on the session.

I chuckled rather uncomfortably.

What did he expect to gain from this question? He obviously was interested in my reaction. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he was looking for, and I had only a split second to give him one.

"They haven't been too bad," I replied shortly after my chuckle, looking away from Willy, but quickly darting my eyes to see his reaction, as he turned up the music again.

After I said it, I figured this was the best answer I could give. I wasn't acknowledging that I thought they were putzes, but I wasn't denying it either. Until I could determine his angle, noncommittal was the name of the game.

As take after take after take went by, I pondered what had just transpired. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Willy was right. These guys are putzes. I get along reasonably well with all of them, but if I had a day off, I wouldn't call any of them to go hang out. Dumb Ass drives me up a wall. Shit, he drives everyone up a wall. Paulie Yore is either full-on depressed or a total asshole. I don't think that guy actually likes anyone. The singer has proven himself to be a class-A jerk. He is the most self-centered, inconsiderate prick to walk the earth, which is somewhat inexplicable to me, because he wasn't this way the first time that I worked with him. The bass player is generally a fine guy when we're hanging out alone, but this group of personalities has brought out the worst in him. These days he seems to derive his greatest pleasure from fanning the flames of the singer's favorite pastime-the pushing of other band member reaction buttons. A bad combination, to be sure. This band clearly fits the definition of "dysfunctional."

As if that weren't enough, there was constant bickering over "Monopoly money," which songs would make the album, and who owned what share of which songs. "Monopoly money" is my term for money that doesn't exist yet. The money, for example, that would be made if an album should sell two million albums. Money that does not currently exist is the single most destructive entity in this business. For the most part, these kinds of arguments are preposterous, but no bandmate wanted to have another make more money than he. At the same time, nobody in the band wanted to split everything equally, in case his song happened to be the one that became a hit. "Happened to" being the operative phrase here.

Near as I could figure it, Willy wasn't making a play; he was expressing what I should have discovered by now on my own. He knew they were putzes, where I had been temporarily blinded by my relationship with two of them and their communal desire to have me in the room as some sort of counterbalance. On top of all that, I'm sure that my brain was somehow attempting to prevent me from actually hating the band I was recording-a condition you generally want to avoid at all costs. In one sentence, Willy had destroyed the protective bubble I was keeping myself in, and I was now on a project in which I hated the band and could actually express that. Once again, I was fucked.

Regardless of my revelation, we filled several reels with takes. He just let them play the song over and over and over again, sitting practically motionless in front of the speakers. As I sat next to him, I couldn't help but think that Willy must be trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to do. Somewhere around the sixth take, he asked me to solo the drums. He was shaking his head in disgust. "This just doesn't sound right," he confided, never looking me in the eye but rather staring blankly ahead.

I've been waiting for the opportunity to tell Willy what I thought of this drummer for the better part of a week. To this point, I have done little toward this front, mostly because it's pointless to debate over something that you cannot prove right then and there. If one person is arguing from the perspective of speculation, then I contend the other is a fool to try and persuade. I now had Willy in the room with the shitty drumming of Dumb Ass blasting out the speakers, and if Willy still was not convinced, I could now at least prove it to him. Without hesitation, I replied.

"Cotton sucks."

"Cotton?" he asked as he turned to look at me.

"That's my pet name for the drummer," I explained.

"Why Cotton?" he inquired.

"Because he's dumber than cotton," I said dryly.

That must be a funny line because Willy practically fell off his chair just like the bass player had after I said it. When he regained his balance, he sat perched on the edge of his chair, and he laid his head in his arms on the console with his body pulsating from silent laughter almost inappropriately, as my line really didn't warrant such a reaction. Just as the band was completing its fifth take, I, too, found myself laughing, as laughter is oftentimes infectious. Fortunately, I was able to regain my composure.

"I'm going to tell them to make another take," I announced.

Willy sat motionless with his head down as I asked the band to play another take. Lance rolled tape at my cue, and I rolled the clik track.24 Willy had finally regained his composure. He sat up in order to wipe away tears from his face.

Personally, I don't get it. I mean, I thought it was mildly amusing, but this seemed to be an overreaction. Perhaps he was vulnerable-much like one is when he or she is extremely upset. Perhaps the drumming had depressed him so much that he was susceptible to even the mildest of humor, sending him into a tizzy. I can't quite figure it out.

Regardless, to me, humor is the single most important part of a session. I'm like the class clown of a session. I dance, play practical jokes, fuck around constantly, make up names for people (I know, big surprise), and I'm an incessant smart-ass. I'll do anything to keep the people involved, happy, and entertained. The more miserable the circumstance, the more I use humor as my weapon. I had achieved what I needed most to achieve today. I got Willy to laugh. More importantly, I got him to laugh uncontrollably. This was a good thing.

"You're right, Cotton sucks," Willy finally replied, still catching his breath, and still having occasional momentary tremors of laughter. "Do you know how to use a razor blade?" he continued.

"Of course," I replied. I should have stopped there, but I was curious, since he had already asked me this in our pre-gig interview.

"You asked me that before."

"Yes, that's one of the reasons you have the gig. Somehow, cut me a good drum take tomorrow," he said. And after the band finished playing the last take, he called it a night.

This isn't going to be easy.

Mixerman
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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 7
188 Ways to Kill Your Drummer
Posted: August 7, 12:34 a.m.

Last night, as I was leaving the studio, I told Lance to burn me two CDs of all the takes, to program an ID for each section of the song as the CD was being burned-intro, verse, chorus, etc.-and to document clearly and concisely which ID was which. Then I told him to have one of the CDs couriered to my house and have the other delivered by runner to Willy's.

When I got up this morning, I was well aware of what this day would be like. Hours upon hours of tedious cutting and editing. I'm a big proponent of cutting tape, as opposed to using a computer. For starters, I like the way tape sounds better than computer programs-especially Alsihad.

As I alluded to earlier in this diary, and which I suppose I can't say enough, Alsihad is, without question, the most purchased and used Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) in the recording business. There are other manufacturers of DAWs, but none have anywhere close to the market share of Alsihad. As is typically the case with electronic equipment, computers, etc., it seems the best product rarely rises to the top. Beta players and Macintosh computers are prime examples of that phenomenon.

The advent of the DAW has changed the way recordings are made because products like Alsihad have reduced the buy-in cost to making records (albeit this is largely irrelevant in this particular case) and the editing software greatly speeds up the actual process of editing. Unfortunately, the power of editing that Alsihad provides can, and in many cases will, slow down the recording process as a whole rather than speed it up. This paradox occurs partly because people seem unable to resist using the editing power that Alsihad offers, and even the most disciplined producer, recordist, singer, or player (myself included) begins to depend on the fixing power of the computer, as opposed to the performing power of the musician.

Of course, the speeding-up or slowing-down of the process given the presence of Alsihad is a hotly contested subject. But if you tell just about any studio manager in L.A. that the session he/she is booking will be using Alsihad, their eyes will light up as if you had just announced he/she won the lottery.

Che-ching!

To make matters worse, there is some debate as to the quality of audio reproduced by Alsihad. Recording and the process of editing within Alsihad is a subject of great contention among the community of audio engineers. To me, the sonic quality of a recording is drastically degraded just by putting a recording into Alsihad. Even though there are technical ways to reduce this degradation, it is often either cost-prohibitive or, in the case of big-budget records, viewed as unnecessary fat in the constant battle to trim costs.

Unfortunately, the process of editing within Alsihad can cause the most egregious degradation of all-particularly with drums. With as many edits as were going to be necessary on this song, the quality of the recording would, without a doubt, be reduced substantially in quality. A recording that sounded "alive" and "vibrant" sonically can be reduced to "mundane" or "dead" by editing within the computer. I don't know the technical reasons why this sonic degradation occurs, and to be fair, as with all of this that I am discussing here, there are those that will argue vehemently that said degradation is imagined. But as far as I'm concerned, anyone that argues that might as well argue that the earth is flat.

This phenomenon of degradation doesn't really happen from physically cutting together pieces of tape, unless you accidentally use a magnetized blade, in which case you get a permanent "pop" on your recording. Nice! Unfortunately, the process of cutting tape together can be slow, laborious, and, to some extent, archaic. Archaic would certainly be the truth of the matter here. This wasn't simply a case of cutting three large sections of takes together to get the best performance, in which case I'd be done in about ten minutes flat. This was going to be some heavy-duty editing. There would likely be a very large number of edit points in the song, a task that even on a computer would take many hours. On a tape deck, a job like this would easily take close to an entire twelve-hour day.

As I walked out of my house, I picked up the padded envelope that contained the CD Lance made for me. I listened to the takes as I drove to the studio. The freeway was clogged, as it always is during the day in La La Land, so I wasn't endangering too many lives by writing notes on each take as I drove. About halfway there, I stopped even taking notes, as I was overcome by the irony. While Dumb Ass could not maintain a consistent pulse from one beat to the next, his propensity to speed up the snare hit and slow down the kik was nothing short of consistent. Yes, Dumb Ass was actually consistent in his inconsistency. To make matters worse, Dumb Ass wouldn't play the form of the song the same way twice. Some verses, he was still on the ride cymbal, when clearly he should have been on the hat. I was going to have to pick a take that he played the proper arrangement on and edit from there.

I couldn't help but wonder why I was editing a drum take out of this bullshit. But at the same time, it's not like a good take would have ever been played by Dumb Ass. So I can hardly criticize Willy's decision to have them play the song down a bunch of times and try to cut something together. But perhaps it would have been better if the drummer played the takes similar to each other. It certainly would have made editing easier. But, as I've come to realize, this isn't about easy.

Even with the traffic, I managed to make it to the studio at my planned start time. Seeing as Lance wasn't in yet, I made my way to the muffin room. I had been thinking about that chocolate muffin all morning, and I wanted to make sure that I was the person who ate it today. As I made my way to the table, I could see my muffin there at the top of the muffin pile in all its glory. Knowing that Willy liked the chocolate muffin, I actually considered leaving it for him. But seeing as I was going to be editing all day, the muffin was just going to get stale anyway, so I did us both a favor and ate it. It was delicious, and I was enjoying it thoroughly. That is, until Dumb Ass walked in.

I almost choked on my muffin. (That sounds bad!) This led me to lapse into the oddest momentary daydream of Dumb Ass incorrectly performing the Heimlich maneuver on me, and in the process, badly bruising my sternum. Then I imagined Dumb Ass performing CPR on me, punching my bruised sternum as hard as he could in hopes of reviving me. By the time my mind had wandered to Dumb Ass leaning over to administer mouth-to-mouth, I was overcome by disgust, jolting myself completely out of the dream sequence.

What the fuck was he doing here? I was going to be editing all day. I didn't even want him anywhere near the studio.

Lance finally sashayed his skinny ass into the muffin room.

"You're late," I told him curtly, now in a bad mood with the presence of Dumb Ass.

Even if Dumb Ass were a cool, laid-back dude, I wouldn't want him around while I was editing his takes together. The process requires enormous amounts of concentration, and having a nervous Nellie in the waiting room, or worse yet, in the control room, asking me a lot of questions or criticizing a work in progress would only serve to hinder that process. So I decided to make a sign. I wrote on a piece of paper with a dull blue Sharpie pen, and I taped my sign to the window of the control room door.

NO DRUMMERS ALLOWED! THIS MEANS YOU!!!

"Whaaaaaaa," Dumb Ass whined in his best retard voice. "Why no drummers allowed!?" he exclaimed while stamping his foot as if he were three years old. Perhaps he thought he was Tarzan or something.

"That's just the way it is, my man," I replied compassionately.

"You're not going to have to edit me very much," he continued.

What? Was this guy smoking crack? Was he not listening to the way the music rocked awkwardly like the blinker of a car?

"Of course not!" I lied. "But this takes a lot of concentration, and I can't really have disturbances."

"Okay, but don't make me sound like a robot."

Better a robot than a horse, I thought to myself. The way the drums were now, were the song to ever get on the radio, entire cities of people would have to be treated immediately for seasickness.

"I won't," I replied, smiling as I closed the door gently on him.

Once I got into the room, I quickly realized that this studio wasn't the least bit prepared for tape editing. There were no extra two-inch take-up reels (I would need a bunch), no half-inch splicing tape (I needed the thin tape to do the amount of edits I would be doing); there were no speakers in the machine room; the razor blades were not demagnetized; there was barely a nub of a white grease pencil for marking tape; and I was in desperate need of a common two-by-four piece of lumber, the purpose of which I will explain momentarily. I provided Lance with a list as I spent the next hour-plus charting out the rest of Dumb Ass's takes from the CD, as Lance put together my equipment list and proceeded to demagnetize and mark blades just as I had showed him moments earlier.

Fuck! The task before me was overwhelming. I've done editing like this before, but it's been years. Editing is a groove thing. It's not difficult, but efficiency comes from the act of doing. This was ridiculous. Dumb Ass's drums pushed and pulled like the aptly named Doctor Doolittle creature Pushmi-pullyu. In order to fix this sort of disastrous feel, I was going to have to use little bits of audio tape from before kik drums or after snares to insert in order to manufacture drum hits that fall where they are supposed to. I reserved an entire take that I felt was less than stellar for those bits, and I had Lance label it "Equalizer."

The two-by-four I asked Lance to get was for making a time and distance template. Length of tape is the equivalent of time in a recording. The two-inch machine spins tape at a speed of thirty inches per second. Therefore, thirty inches of tape is the equivalent of one second of running time. If the tempo of the song is sixty beats per minute, which is the equivalent of one beat per second, then the length of one beat is thirty inches.

The way to determine the distance of a beat that is not so easily calculated is to physically cut a piece of tape between clicks on the clik track and to mark that distance on the two-by-four. This distance becomes my template, and I halve and quarter my template in order to mark my distances for eighth notes and sixteenth notes, respectively. With the template, I have what amounts to a measuring stick, so as to see physically whether I need more tape or less tape between drum hits.

After a couple of hours of mapping out what I thought were the best measures of the takes and Lance getting the items on my list, I was ready to start cutting tape. The question was, Do I start immediately and cut the two-inch master, or test my cuts on half-inch tape? Normally, I'd at the very least start by cutting half-inch drum mixes of the takes as a trial run of sorts to see how the song was going together. Since I was already two hours into my session, I decided against this course of action and just went for it.

I spent the next eleven hours with Lance by my side cutting tape. At first, Lance was mesmerized by the barbaric nature of slicing up tiny pieces of audio tape and pasting them together with sticky splicing tape. But he quickly forgot about that, as he had his hands full in swapping reels on the machines, documenting where every scrap of tape came from that made up the master take of the song, and, just as important, documenting where every scrap of tape was missing from the production reels.25 All this without writing a dissertation, but furnishing enough details so it was clear where everything had gone and everything had come from.

Shortly after commencing the editing process there were reels and tape everywhere. I had two machines going; I was measuring, cutting, adding, checking, redoing, and rechecking. There were little bits of audio tape adhered all over the wall with grease markings on them telling me what they were. I was adding in scraps as time equalizers that were barely over a half inch wide. It took me over two hours just to do the intro and half a verse.

My kingdom for Alsihad!

Yes. That's right. My kingdom for Alsihad! I give! This is not a job for editing two-inch. When a drummer is as bad as this, fuck it! Who gives a shit if the sound degrades? With this many edits, it will degrade within Alsihad, but again, so what? Hell, with inserting little bits of "Equalizer," I was degrading the sound on two-inch anyway. The drums sound like shit regardless. Degrading the recording really doesn't matter.

I know that this revelation-or throwing in of the towel, as it were-might be slightly disappointing to Luddites everywhere (Luddite is my pet name for those who prefer working with audio tape as opposed to computers), but there is a difference between editing the shit out of a decent drum take and doing what you have to in order to make a shitty drum take decent. In other words, my disdain for Alsihad does not lie in the good it can do in making a project more efficient. Clearly, in this particular case, the pros of using Alsihad far outweigh the cons. My disdain lies in the use of Alsihad to edit what otherwise could have been a perfectly acceptable performance. The fact of the matter is, the recording is now under a visual microscope. But in my opinion, music should never be judged visually.

Unfortunately, the use or nonuse of Alsihad on this project wasn't my call. The global ramifications of Alsihad on the making of music had nothing to do with the making of this particular record. My job was to edit the entire song on two-inch whether I wanted to or not. I had to complete the job no matter how much of a waste of time I thought it was. This is what Willy Show wanted, and clearly, it's his show.

I realize now that I've had a pretty cushy recording life in recent years, in that I have not had to perform this type of heavy editing. I've done some two-inch editing in that time, but no more than five cuts in a song. In those cases, I was basically compiling entire sections. These days, this kind of extensive editing is left to Alsihah. In fact, I have a newfound appreciation for Alsihah.

Prior to today, my normal workday was spent sitting in a comfortable chair getting fat as I ate chocolate muffins and worked off the calories by punching buttons and moving faders. Editing two-inch to this extent was serious fucking work. I was standing the entire day, sweating like a pig, with my back killing me and my head swimming. I even sliced my finger today, an unusual event under the circumstances, and an event that I am painfully and constantly being reminded of as I type this diary entry.

At the six-hour mark of my day, Dumb Ass finally left. The singer made a brief appearance and split. The bass player and Yore relaxed in the lounge all day, drinking Johnnie Walker Red and playing video baseball (this was beginning to be a trend). Willy checked in and wasn't surprised in the least to find out that it would take me all day and possibly some of tomorrow to finish the job.

I made 188 edits today, and the feel of the drums still sucks ass.

It's just that now the drums are in time.

Mixerman
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fieldflower
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Re: Tävling

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Fast efter att ha läst lite om mannen som skrev det tycker jag det känns som att han borde hålla sig till att skriva böcker...
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Per
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Re: Tävling

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Grattis! Ni tog ledningen över er själva var sin gång.
Sonnerup 5:a, Rikshabacker 5:a, Epiphone Thunderbird Pro V, Bach Jazz 5:a + några till
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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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fieldflower skrev:Fast efter att ha läst lite om mannen som skrev det tycker jag det känns som att han borde hålla sig till att skriva böcker...
Okej, ja texten är ju underhållande iaf och mycket behagligare att läsa i tapatalk än på hemsidan så jag fortsätter en stund till. :)
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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 8
A Fatty Day
Posted: August 8, 12:49 a.m.

Lance was sitting at the table on the patio with Dumb Ass smoking a cigarette as I pulled into the lot. Lance was there before me today, most likely due to the fact that last night I told him I'd be starting at 9 a.m. It was now 10:30 a.m. Lance didn't dare complain. It was Dumb Ass who commented on how late I was. I smiled and told Lance to follow me.

Dumb Ass tried to gain admittance to the studio, but I told him that the "no drummers allowed" sign I had made yesterday was still in full effect and that he'd have to wait. I guess he thought I was kidding, because he came in anyway and sat down in my chair between the speakers. There wasn't much I could do about that. Technically, this was his session. Regardless, that was my chair, and I had work to do before Willy came in.

"Excuse me," I said. Convinced that he had actually made a point other than the one on the top of his head and further convinced that I wasn't going to force the issue, Dumb Ass got up and moved to the couch in the back of the room.

By the end of yesterday's editing session, it was almost impossible for me to accurately judge the big picture of my editing job. I had to wait until today to hear how my edit job had worked. I dimmed the lights and closed the machine room door, which houses the multitrack26 machines, so that I wouldn't have to listen to the incessant thwap, thwap, thwap of 188 edits passing the entire run length of three minutes, forty-five seconds. I prefer to listen to takes with the lights dim. I've found that there is something about reducing the amount of stimulation on your eyes that makes your listening more acute.

It was just as I had expected. There was no feel to the drums. It doesn't really matter that the kiks hit the one and the snares hit the two. Feel comes from everything in between. Feel comes from the way the rhythm makes you "feel"-hence the term. A drumbeat should make your body move by pure reflex. There should be an infectious physical reaction from the drums.

How could this actually be a surprise to me? I must have spent too much time convincing myself this morning that I might be pleasantly surprised with the results of yesterday's marathon editing session. The cold, hard reality had set in. I spent twelve hours editing these drums with the single goal of making them, at the very least, acceptable, but, at the very most, they sucked ass.

I called Willy's cell phone to make sure he was coming in. He asked me how the drums were, and I told him they were in time now, but that they still sucked. There was no point in trying to sugarcoat it. I didn't want Willy coming into the studio expecting a killer drum track. He told me that he'd be in shortly and he hung up.

Willy came in at around eleven and immediately hugged everyone. My first notion was that Willy must not like dim lights, because after the morning hugs, he turned them all the way up. Willy was asking how everyone was, and we participated in the exchange of morning niceties as he reached into his leather satchel that he has thus far carried with him, pulled out a huge baggie of green, and proceeded to roll a fatty. It was eleven in the morning, and Willy was smoking a fatty.

"Breakfast of Champions," he stated as he smiled contentedly, holding his breath.

He pointed at Lance to dim the lights again. I understood now that it wasn't that Willy disliked dim lights. Willy couldn't roll a fatty in the dark.

He offered me the fatty, which I declined. Not because I don't smoke fatties, but rather, I don't smoke fatties if there is any chance in hell I'm going to have to cut tape. Combining the use of wickedly sharp instruments with substances designed to alter and dull the senses was an activity I preferred to avoid. Besides, my finger, which I probably should have gotten stitches for, was still throbbing with pain.

Willy offered his fatty to the others in the room, and Yore accepted without hesitation.

So far, Yore is the big partier in the crew. He's keeping his empty bottles of Johnnie Walker and Maker's Mark as trophies from his drinking sessions. The empties are currently stacked on top of the refrigerator in the lounge, and his collection is already nothing short of impressive. The bass player also participates in the drinking sessions, but I get the feeling that he drinks nowhere near the amount of alcohol that Yore drinks.

After Yore took a hit, the singer was the next to partake, as he walked over to take the fatty and proceeded to draw from it.

Willy asked me if the edited take was up. I nodded, and he proceeded to listen to the edited take. I sat there listening to the take, thinking to myself, This just isn't right. Willy stopped the tape machine when the take was done.

"It's not right," he said. "You're right about what you said on the phone," he continued.

I sat there slightly uncomfortable, trying not to show it. Willy made that comment while Dumb Ass was in the room, and I was just waiting for Dumb Ass to ask what I had said. Thankfully, he didn't even ask, but he did speak.

"I sound like a robot!" Dumb Ass pouted, actually sounding like a robot. Everyone pretty much ignored him.

We all sat there dejected, staring straight ahead. We were on our eighth day on this project, and we still hadn't recorded a usable note. As if that weren't enough, and as if the band, Willy, and I weren't sitting there wondering what else could go wrong, things got worse. The runner delivered a phone message, which he handed directly to Willy. I was sitting right next to him, and I could read plainly what the message said.

MSGTo: Willy Show

From: Jeramiah Weasel

Willy, I'd like to come by. Please call./MSG

Jeramiah is the band's newest A&R rep. He is basically a minion with a very strong opinion. I'd be surprised if he even had signing power, although I'd be willing to bet he's conned more than one band into signing a Memo Deal, which basically gives a label the right to the artist until a contract is entered into, greatly reducing a band's power of negotiation.

This band was the president's signing, and Jeramiah is a figurehead. But he certainly has the president's ear, and it would not be good for him to come over before we had something worthwhile to play for him. He isn't a dumb fellow, but he is a bit of a poseur, and he really doesn't understand much of anything about the studio. I've run into Jeramiah several times in recent years, and I've never been impressed by the dude. How he keeps getting gigs is beyond me.

Willy crumpled up the note and threw it in the trash.

"Perhaps we should trigger some samples," Willy said unfazed by the note, "and then pump the samples out the PA and record the room. We can use your drum machine," he said to me, pointing to my drum machine.

"May I?" I said, picking up the fatty from the console.

Normally, I wouldn't partake this early in a session, or for that matter, this early in the day. The fact of the matter is, I was upset. This was a terrible situation. If Jeramiah comes to the session and finds out that we can't play him a note of music, he could completely shut the session down. As much as that might very well be a blessing, I'm committed for the next two months to this gig.

As if that weren't enough, we were now trying to trigger drums and somehow mask the fact that Dumb Ass sucks. At that moment, I knew there was no way to make Dumb Ass good, and it was obvious to me that I was going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time forced into relearning this particular lesson. Add in the fact that I was absolutely drained from editing all day yesterday, and for what? Perhaps if my efforts had been fruitful, I would be adequately energized. But this wasn't the case.

It was pointless to resist. Willy was obviously going to exhaust every possibility to make a usable drum track out of the mess. The way I saw it, I had no choice. By the size of Willy's baggie (that sounds bad), and the fact that he laughed so hard at my "dumb as Cotton" line two days ago (which was only one step beyond mildly amusing), I was gathering that Willy smoked fatties every day. At this point, I needed to be in his head space.

The fatty did just what it was supposed to. I finally had recognized the situation for what it actually was. Humorous.

Not pathetic, not ridiculous, not hairball. Humorous. I had been given an instant attitude adjustment. I now understood what Willy was trying to achieve. Where I had been negative and doubtful that anything could save Dumb Ass, I was positive that we could do something creative to make the edited take work.

"Who ate my chocolate muffin?" a voice came from across the room. It was Willy, half-kidding, half-serious about the muffin.

I, of course, ate the chocolate muffin the moment I walked in this morning. I wasn't proud of that fact. The muffins are huge. I could have been less of a pig and left half the muffin, but I chose to eat the entire thing. Could I really cop to such insensitivity?

"I think Cotton ate it," I said after checking the room to be sure he wasn't around.

"Why the fuck do we only get one chocolate muffin a day?" Willy said.

With that, Willy picked up the phone and summoned the runner, who was sent out for twenty chocolate muffins. That was a bit much. Even being high I don't think we ate more than seven of them between us. Willy instructed the runner that he was to never put fewer than five chocolate muffins in the basket each day.

"And five onion bagels!" I exclaimed as the runner was walking out the door of the control room. Willy nodded his head approvingly as I brought my focus back to the task at hand-the triggering of samples.

Samples are basically very short recordings. A kik drum sample is a recording of a kik drum. A trigger allows me to replace the recorded kik drum with the sampled kik drum. This gives a very consistent kik drum sound, as opposed to the very inconsistent sound that was on tape. Bad drummers play their drums with a great deal of inconsistency, both in timing and velocity. Being that I fixed the timing, it was the velocity that was now obviously lacking consistency. The trigger works by automatically playing the sample once it receives a certain threshold of audio information from a source. In this case, the source would be the track that was designated for the kik drum mic. This way, anytime Cotton hit his kik drum, the trigger would play the sample, and that is what we would hear as the kik drum.

Before we were to begin triggering samples and the like, I really needed to make a copy of the edited tape. It had way too many edits to record over. Every time we played the tape, I was worried that something was going to fuck up. I knew exactly what I wanted to transfer to.

After much discussion, and perhaps a little sales pitch on my part, Willy decided that, rather than go down an analog generation, we should transfer the edited drum tracks to Radar. Radar is a digital multitrack recorder that I actually like the sound of. The great thing about Radar is it operates just like a tape machine. Willy was concerned about going digital, citing his disdain for the sound of Alsihad. But Willy had heard good things about the Radar, and I certainly wasn't telling him anything different. The drums had already received the benefits of analog tape; now my concern was having a master that worked. I finally convinced him to give it a try.

After the Radar arrived, I transferred the edited drums. Willy did like the sound of the Radar very much, and this was the best news of the day. I was in a great mood as I sparked up another fatty. Now, with Radar at my disposal, I had a chance to help move this session along. To say that we have been painfully unproductive would be an understatement. My goal was to eventually have someone else editing the drums, perhaps even in the Radar, while we continued recording takes each day. Spending an entire day editing while everyone just sat around drinking like fish wasn't good for the band. We needed momentum.

When you have a band sitting around all day, they never get into a groove. Somehow, Dumb Ass and the band must get into said groove. If Dumb Ass had some confidence and momentum, it's likely he would play better. This would make all of our lives easier and more efficient, and this was the key to making the session more productive. The band needed to be playing and moving forward, not sitting on their asses all day. Unfortunately, at the moment, I was alone in this thinking.

After pounding down chocolate muffins followed by lunch, we spent hours putting together samples, triggering them, playing them through the PA, and moving room mics. I had to program mutes29 on the kik and snare because I was getting so many mistriggers.30 Dumb Ass was just too inconsistent as a player, and with the compression, gating31 wasn't effective. We tried all sorts of wacky tricks to make the drums work (perhaps on a day that I'm a bit less exhausted I'll go through some of those). Actually, we were having a blast fucking with the drums. But by early evening, Yore, who was toward the end of his bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, had had just about enough.

"Let's just record the other instruments on this fucking song already."

The band was obviously getting frustrated at the lack of progress, and Yore was drunk enough to remove himself from his depression and expose the more assholish side of his personality. Willy, picking up on the subtle cue, decided we should lay down music on the drums. I took about half an hour to make an analog slave32 of the drums from Radar.

Finally, we were recording! We started with the bass, which quickly became a tedious punch-fest.33 of recording one measure at a time. Apparently the bass player wasn't used to playing with drums that were so steady.

Uy-yuy-yuy.

Next we recorded Yore's part, which was pretty painless, regardless of the fact that he was three sheets to the wind.

Unfortunately, as has typically been the case on this session, someone was sure to bring our progress to a screeching halt. The singer, who should probably stick to singing, expressed the desire to lay down some guitar parts, too. Willy obliged, sending Yore home, and wisely exiting stage left himself. I got to hang for another two hours, wanking off recording a below-average guitar player at best, whilst the quality guitar player was at home, likely sleeping off an entire day's worth of drinking. Why does this always happen with bands?

Here the band has a very good guitar player who can effortlessly and quickly lay down the parts, and the shitty guitar player is the one laying down the majority of them. Next thing you know, Dumb Ass is going to want to sing one of the songs.

God help us if that happens.

Mixerman
Fender P -78 | Fender J -78 | Fender Bass VI RI -95 |
Ampeg V4 -76 | Ampeg SVT-215E | Ampeg SVT-Micro VR Stack

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fieldflower
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Re: Tävling

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Gomorrn!
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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 9
Old Wounds May Run Deep

But New Ones Hurt Like Hell!
Posted: August 8, 11:05 p.m.
I woke up around 5 a.m. from my finger throbbing with pain. I took a look at the wound, and it wasn't going to take enrollment in medical school for me to determine the cut was drastically infected. Great. This wasn't a case for Neosporin. This was a nasty-ass infection. So I showered-which proved to be a difficult process while holding my hand in the air as if to say, "Pick me"-got dressed, and went to the emergency room.

After waiting there for three fucking hours-apparently people with hemorrhaging wounds, kidney stones, ripped placentas, strokes, and heart attacks have priority over people with throbbing, infected cuts oozing pus-I finally got to see a doctor. I was half wishing that I would drop dead right there in the waiting room to teach the triage nurse a little lesson on just how dangerous an infection could be. Of course, then I'd be dead. The doctor prescribed a strong antibiotic (or so he says) and a triplicate form opiate mixed with Tylenol.

After over three hours in the ER, my morning was shot to hell. I took my antibiotic, took my Tylenol #3 with codeine (which I never take just before operating heavy machinery) and drove to the studio (oops!). Having gone to sleep at 2:30 a.m. and having woken up at 5 a.m. this morning, coupled with an entire day of smoking fatties, as you can well imagine, I was wiped out. What I needed was Starbucks.

Specifically, I needed a super-size Starbucks drip of the day. I'm not quite sure what super-size translates to in the bullshit foo-foo Starbucks lingo, but it's the largest cup they've got. They're pretty good at Starbucks about not fucking with you, if you venture from their seemingly proprietary size terminology-even a term as obnoxious as super-size. I guess they figure if you need that much coffee, you're probably in a shit mood anyway. In this case, they would have been right.

Equipped with my extra-large, extra-hot, extra-black coffee, I hit the button on my car phone that activates voice recognition. It's actually a cell phone that converts into a car phone. I hate fucking cell phones. Driving holding a cell phone the size of a credit card sucks. Personally, I prefer to talk on speaker phone when I'm driving.

"Call Willy," I said to the microphone above me. "Calling Willy," my phone repeated back to me.

Willy answered his phone as he always does in the early morning. He asked how I was, and he asked how the guitar part went down. I told him I was fine (not wanting to go into my morning hospital visit at that moment) and that it took two hours to record the guitar part the singer laid down. Then I told him that I thought Yore could play better after a fifth of Johnnie Walker than the singer could ever hope to do straight. Of course, that wasn't news to Willy. That's exactly why he exited stage left last night.

I was enjoying my coffee and my conversation with Willy as the codeine was starting to relieve the pain in my finger. Willy's a great guy, I was thinking to myself. I love hanging out with him.

"So what should we do today?" Willy asked.

I really wish he hadn't asked that question because at that exact moment I was taking a swig of my coffee. The question caused me to suck scalding hot coffee through my sinuses, which then percolated through my nose. Holy fucking shit! I was screaming in pain. Willy kept asking if I was all right. He thought I was in a car accident or something, and I almost was as I recklessly pulled my car over. I had scalded my sinuses. My kingdom for some cold water and a neti pot!

After a couple of minutes, the pain lessened, perhaps due to the codeine in my system, which was really starting to kick in. I had coffee all over my shirt and pants, and to make matters worse, there was coffee all over my car. In my pain, I had managed to drop the cup, spilling coffee in both the cockpit and shotgun positions of the car. I told Willy I was going to be a little late, since I had to go back home, change my clothes, and try to clean out my car. He understood.

Great! I'm thinking on my way to the studio in a fresh set of clothes. Now Willy's asking me what we should do for the day. But as I thought about it, I considered that this could quite possibly be a positive development. As much as I liked Willy, this session was going nowhere, and someone-namely me-had to step up and get things moving.

So I called Willy again. After he determined I was going to live (he was very concerned), I asked him about Dumb Ass and the ramifications of actually using the shitty drum tracks on the album. Willy explained that the band was sure that if they used another drummer on this album that Dumb Ass would leave, and they would be dropped. Under normal circumstances, I (and I think Willy) would call that paranoid thinking. But the more money a label spends on a band's first album, the more likely the band will either be shelved or dropped. Being that the band was given such a fat deal but was then forced to write for two years is a bad sign. The band obviously wanted to make sure that they finished an album. Having the drummer quit would be counter to that goal.

I'm not sure whether I agree completely with this thinking or not. First of all, I doubt Dumb Ass would quit. He may be a retard, but he's not crazy. Secondly, drummers are replaced in bands on a daily basis. It's not like anyone outside of the industry has ever heard of this band before, so the buying public certainly wouldn't be the wiser.

Still, I could understand their concern. It's quite possible the label would take any opportunity to cut their losses. The band would certainly have a better feel for that than I would. Regardless of my thoughts on the matter, Willy explained that both Yore and the singer were adamant and unified on this subject. Surprising, considering I've never seen them agree on anything to date.

There was really only one way that Dumb Ass was going to be removed from this project. Yore and the singer had to agree to it. They wrote the lion's share of the songs, and they were the ones with the power to remove Dumb Ass from the equation. The only way that Dumb Ass was going to be evicted was by demonstrating that keeping Dumb Ass was surely worse than losing him. Whether Willy had actually thought the situation out this clearly, I couldn't tell. I decided not to leave it to chance.

"I think we should record three or more songs to completion and let them hear for themselves that Dumb Ass isn't going to cut it," I said to Willy, finally answering the question that allowed me the opportunity to experience new depths of internal pain. "I also think Dumb Ass needs to play more than one song every four days to build up his confidence. Perhaps we should consider not using a clik track to see if he plays better that way."

I had more suggestions, but I decided to stop there and see how my comments were received.

"I think you're right," Willy replied.

Yes! Finally, we were going to move forward. If we could get a few songs in the bag, it would go a long way toward morale, confidence, and vibe. Best of all, it gives something for Jeramiah Weasel to bring to the president of the label.

When I arrived at the studio, Lance was in the room, setting up what looked to be a mic for a vocal overdub.35 All the telltale signs were there. A music stand positioned as a table, a stool, and, of course, a pop screen.36 Had Lance completely lost his mind? Did he decide to take over this session? Then the bass player walked into the room.

"Oh, good, you're here," he stated matter-of-factly. "I'm going to record a vocal on this song we're working on."

I was flabbergasted.

"But what about the singer?" I asked confused.

"I wrote this song, and I think it'd be better if I sang it," the bass player responded indignantly.

Even with the tone of voice with which he had spoken to me, I was actually considering telling him about the new plan of attack, but I think he must have been playing mind tricks on me, because I said nothing. I was at that moment convinced that the best thing for me to do was record a vocal. It would be up to Willy to put a stop to the nonsense.

We spent the next two hours recording vocals. The whole time I couldn't stop thinking about the shit that would be hitting the proverbial fan when our favorite megalomaniac singer walks in and sees me recording the bass player singing. But the singer didn't show up during the vocal session, and I found out later that the bass player knew that the singer would be a few hours late. Not knowing this myself, I tried desperately to reach Willy by phone, but to no avail.

Recording vocals with the bass player was more arduous and more torturous than recording guitars with the singer. I couldn't help but think to myself, Perhaps everyone should just shift over one musical station, pick up whatever instrument happened to be there, and then start recording the album. It would give a whole new meaning to the game musical chairs. The way I figured it, there would be a one in two chance that whoever sat on the drum throne would be a markedly better drummer than Dumb Ass. For a moment, I started to wonder if I were showing signs of my age in thinking that players in a band should actually play the instrument on which they are most proficient for the purposes of recording an album.

So much for the great plan that I had laid out earlier with Willy.

I finally finished recording several takes of vocals after having to punch just about every line on every take. The bass player, whom I have named Harmon Neenot (pronounced NEE · no) for the purposes of this diary, had no pitch, no time, no vibe, and no talent as a singer. Other than that, he was great. I started comping Harmon Neenot's vocal, which is the process of compiling one take out of several by switching between them for sections, lines and, in some cases, words. Willy finally walked into the studio.

He was surprised that we were recording vocals. Yes, me too!

"That's awful," said Willy, scrunching up his nose. He was referring to the noises coming from the speakers that sounded more like seals squealing in agony than to someone actually singing. Willy quickly looked around the room, realizing that Harmon might be around. Fortunately, he wasn't.

I filled Willy in on what had happened, and he told me I might as well finish the vocal comp. I guess the plan was for Harmon to hear for himself just how shitty his vocals were-a plan I feared could backfire.

When I finished the vocal, I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and the band was playing basketball. Even with my finger as bad as it was, I figured some exercise wouldn't be a bad thing. It turns out that this was a poor decision on my part, for I went up to get a rebound, and as I came down, my foot landed on the edge of Dumb Ass's foot.

MOTHERFUCKER!

My ankle bent in half. I've never been in more pain for so many different reasons in one day in my life. I was half tempted to take out insurance on myself just for the remainder of the day but feared it might be too expensive for the risk. Dumb Ass must have thought we were playing competitively or something, because he went under me while I was in the air. What a schmuck! I had sprained my ankle and very badly to boot.

The good news was that the pain in my ankle made me completely forget about my sinuses and my finger. The bad news is that my ankle was swelling up so fast it looked like someone was actually blowing it up like a balloon. Lance ran to get me some ice in a towel, which I promptly wrapped around my ankle. I shouldn't have even gotten up today, I thought to myself. Now I was sounding like Paulie Yore.

Dumb Ass and Yore both helped me hop to the lounge, where I put my foot on the table with the ice on it. Everyone decided to hang out in the lounge with me, when the singer came in looking irate aplenty. Lance, being unseasoned in the art of discretion, had foolishly spilled the beans to the singer about our yodeling sessions starring none other than Harmon Neenot, singer extraordinaire.

The singer went ballistic. Normally around now, I'd exit stage left. Unfortunately, I wasn't upwardly mobile. This was not a fight that I wanted to be present for. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that this was going to get ugly, and it did.

Yore joined the fray early on, pointing out that the singer spent two hours recording guitar parts last night. As far as Yore was concerned, he couldn't really understand the difference between singers playing guitar and bass players singing-and he had a point. Dumb Ass was still complaining that he sounded like a robot, and the entire band yelled simultaneously at him to shut the fuck up. I was half tempted to say, "Jinx," but thought better of it.

On the Richter scale, I'd say this argument registered in the neighborhood of a 7.0. Willy's way of dealing with the discord was nothing short of fascinating to me. He proceeded to spark up a fatty and pass it around the room, as the argument took odd twists and turns, which had no relevance to anything but years of baggage and the need to perhaps blow off some steam. I was starting to get the idea that Willy was like the Phil Jackson of the recording world, in that he likes to let things work out on their own. And who can argue with success?

What I found most amazing about this scene, as I sat there with my ankle throbbing, my finger throbbing, and the inside of my face throbbing, was that, as the band members continued to yell at each other with marked disdain, they were simultaneously passing the fatty to each other and partaking. Not one person turned down the fatty. When the fatty had made its way to my position, I paused momentarily. I had made the decision this morning that it would be best if I abstained from such activities as smoking fatties. But the way I figured it, the session for today was blown, my codeine (which I was in need of about now) was some distance away from my present position, there was no Lance in sight, and there was no way I was going to muster the strength to get up and hop all the way to my medicine. Not that fatties are very effective in dealing with pain, but hell, it couldn't hurt. So I, too, accepted the fatty.

When things settled down and talking wasn't doing much good anymore, Willy called the session. With Willy's declaration, everyone left, although I'm really not sure anything was resolved. Perhaps Willy felt a good night's sleep would be the healer of these wounds. I had my doubts. After everyone was gone, Willy, who obviously recognized my need for something positive in my life at this moment, invited me for sushi. My favorite!

A week ago I wondered if I was going to survive the session. But at that time, my concern was with being unjustly fired, not killed!

After a great sushi dinner we went back to the studio, hung out, smoked a fatty, and listened to music.

Now, if only we could make some music.

Mixerman
Fender P -78 | Fender J -78 | Fender Bass VI RI -95 |
Ampeg V4 -76 | Ampeg SVT-215E | Ampeg SVT-Micro VR Stack

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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 10
The Albatross
Posted: August 10, 12:27 a.m.

Willy called me at the crack of dawn. We would not be working on the album today, since he was going to have a long meeting with the band to try and deal with the rift that had formed. Willy then provided me with some history. Apparently, this was not the first rift during Willy's short tenure with the band. During the rehearsals, the band had another similar blowup. The band members hate each other. No surprise there. What I didn't know is that the money is almost gone.

For the most part, the band is under a tremendous amount of stress, because they've all been living on their advance money, and each of them was quickly running out of that money. At first, I was taken aback by this news. Two million dollars-the reported value of the deal-was a lot of jack to piss away. Of course, I don't really know the details of how that money was disbursed, nor if the budget for the record was included in that figure. Then, of course, there are any number of wacky accounting practices that go on at record companies. Regardless, the more I considered the possible costs of taxes, possible down payments on houses, musical equipment, and two years of no income in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the US, this was not that surprising. When I think about how much of my own money goes out the door from living in L.A., the scenario was not that hard to imagine. On top of all that, I'm sure the band never dreamed that it would be writing for two years before it would be making a record. I'm sure the band figured they'd be touring by now and making money playing.

The label was taking a "tough shit" attitude with them, which was exacerbating the situation. Allegedly, the label has been pretty shitty with them all along. Last week, Yore was telling me that their previous A&R reps (since fired) were total assholes to them. The way it was described to me, it was as if the label was psychologically torturing them. This somewhat explained the constant depression that Paulie Yore was in, although it didn't make hanging with him any more pleasurable.

It's not like the band didn't have good songs when it was signed. Quite the contrary-I've heard the songs that they had when they were signed, and in my opinion, they're great. I can even understand why this band was a bidding-war band. Labels don't give a shit anymore if there's a weak player in the band. Everyone just assumes you either fix it with a computer or get a session player on the project. The only thing that labels are interested in is a song that they can break to radio. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. Everything else can be fixed.

I'm assuming that when the label signed the band, they recognized the excellent songwriting and figured it wouldn't be too long before they got their obvious radio single out of the band. From Yore's descriptions, the label was having them write music that was similar in characteristic to hot music of that moment. Being that what's hot is constantly changing, so too did the direction of the writing.

Willy felt that in the rehearsals they weren't a bad band. He knew the drummer was weak but probably didn't realize that this would translate so badly in the recording. I guess I could understand this. I've been fooled by drummers in really awful-sounding rehearsal spaces, so I'll give Willy the benefit of the doubt. Willy also confided that, due to Dumb Ass's limited intelligence, he wasn't capable of remembering the form changes they would make in preproduction. Willy would make a change, and Dumb Ass would immediately forget to do it. I can just imagine the conversations, with Dumb Ass thinking Willy meant the chorus when Willy said verse. Working with Dumb Ass was nothing short of maddening. The reality is that I'm not exaggerating when I say that Cotton is probably only moderately more intelligent than a retard. It's that bad.

Since we weren't working today-God forbid I get a three-day weekend after this debacle-Willy asked me if I could mix a song for him from another project that he's been working on. So that's what I did today. I mixed a completely different act with my leg up in the air and my ankle still two sizes too big. I had Lance running around doing everything for me, as I sat there just mixing. It was actually nice to bring a piece of music to completion and so quickly. The recording reportedly took only two days, and the mix took me only five hours.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting down from this project. Setting aside all of my physical ailments (which are numerous, and each has occurred as a direct result of this project), it's torture to spend nine days working twelve-hour days to accomplish nothing save an unusable and incomplete take.

When I go into a session, I go in every day with a cheerful attitude. I put on my game face and try to keep everyone happy and amused. I want everyone to feel good and be excited about what they're doing. That's what making a record should be about. Sure, roadblocks are bound to happen, but those roadblocks serve to make life more interesting and invigorating. If only we had traveled far enough on this project to actually hit a roadblock, I'd probably be in good spirits. But really, when you consider everything, we haven't even started our journey. It takes me longer every day to put that game face on, which is even more depressing to me, since I view that as one of the most important parts of my gig.

My only salvation on this project has been this journal, as it allows me to demonstrate in real time just how destructive to music the business has become. Unfortunately, this journal has also been my albatross, as I am obsessed with writing and posting, without fail, my thoughts as they are freshest in my mind. Worse yet, I attempt to do so at a level of quality beyond my current capabilities as a writer, even at the risk of exhaustion and even at the risk of appearing ungrateful for the job-something I have been accused of and criticized for by some outspoken readers of this online journal.

The way I see it, anybody who thinks I should blindly skip through life satisfied with being unproductive so long as I'm being compensated for such activities isn't considering the negative effect that lack of accomplishment can have on the brain. The act of accomplishing nothing other than wastefulness is both exhausting and debilitating to the soul. While in the short term it may be self-serving to my financial well-being to participate in such unproductiveness, the resulting waste only serves to sicken me.

Still, I'm optimistic. Willy wants to start fresh on Monday. Perhaps the weekend off will recharge everyone's enthusiasm, and we can become what we, as humans, were put on this earth to be.

Productive.

Mixerman
Fender P -78 | Fender J -78 | Fender Bass VI RI -95 |
Ampeg V4 -76 | Ampeg SVT-215E | Ampeg SVT-Micro VR Stack

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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 11: Win One ForThe Gipper
Posted: August 13, 12:09 a.m.

After three good nights of sleep and quality time with the family, I woke up this morning in far better spirits and with a renewed sense of purpose. Still, I couldn't help but be partially concerned with the potential of my day going downhill from here. For the second time since this project began, I had a conversation of some substance with Willy. The first was over sushi on Thursday night. The second, and the one to which I am referring here, was over the weekend. According to Willy, his marathon band-therapy-bitch-session had gone well. Being a producer can often require a hard-knocks degree in psychology, and Willy, no doubt, needed to make use of that degree this past Friday.

Even Willy, who has revealed himself as a man who prefers to avoid mediation unless there is clear and present danger-sometimes referred to as "waiting until just before everything goes down the shitter"-has to occasionally resort to the role of therapist in order to keep a session moving forward.

I could just picture Willy in his slippers, rolling fatties in a plush crushed-velvet chair, as the band members vented for hours their disdain for each other until they reached the point of utter exhaustion. In no small part, the inevitable argumentus coitus interruptus would occur from the band members' disintegrating fighting spirit, as fatties could turn even Ivan the Terrible into Gandhi given enough of the substance. Then I could imagine Willy viewing the band's temporary inability to discuss its insurmountable problems as some sort of therapeutic victory. Yet, although I criticize, I can't help but think that were Willy to actually intervene, the results would likely be nothing short of disastrous where the completion of this project is concerned. At least with his usual course of action, problems are neither solved nor aggravated in the process.

Suffice it to say, Willy was confident that we would be moving forward on Monday. I had my reservations.

Three days off on a project is an eternity. Even though I worked on Friday, it was still a break from this project. When players are in a groove, three days can destroy every ounce of momentum that had been achieved. Of course, that certainly wasn't a danger here, as we were having the opposite problem-stagnation. When stagnation sets in, three days can be as revitalizing as an unreciprocated blow job.

I was truly impressed with Willy's decision to take the time off. Many producers would have chosen to work through the weekend, citing a need to catch up. Catching up would have likely been the worst decision he could have made. From my experience, if we had tried to power through the weekend, this session would be over. Cooked. Done. Finito. It amazes me how many producers, both big and small in stature, don't recognize the value of rest and separation. Even a matter of one night's sleep can condense what would otherwise be a three-hour late-night task down to only minutes come morning. That's because after a long day's work of recording an album, two conflicting phenomena can occur-oversaturation and hypersensitivity.

Oversaturation causes one's brain to be incapable of discerning and evaluating subtle and even not so subtle differences among such things as timing, tuning, expression, musicality, and balances (level differences among different instruments). It's quite like a numbing agent of the brain. If you could inject the part of your brain that processes hearing with novocaine, this would be similar to the effect of oversaturation. I would imagine that people of all walks of life have experienced this to some degree. I sometimes refer to it as "the wall," and when you hit the wall, there are only two cures. Time and fatties.

Hypersensitivity is the function of one's brain being so aware and sensitive to minute changes that you are beyond any kind of "real-world" standards of listening. It is the exact opposite of oversaturation. This temporary condition can make differences that are normally nearly impossible for the human ear to detect seem like enormously drastic changes. Although this condition is generally less debilitating than oversaturation, it can cause the wasting of inordinate amounts of time, as this phenomenon will cause one to endlessly make adjustments that seem to make a big difference but, in reality, make no difference whatsoever. Once again, there are only two cures. Time and fatties.

After twelve hours of intense listening, either one of these phenomena can occur. The best method of preventing these two temporary conditions is to take breaks. But breaks become less effective and are required more frequently as either of these disorders sets in, and at some point, only a good night's rest will rejuvenate one to the point of functionality. Unfortunately, rest and breaks do not appear time-efficient, and they are often abandoned for the far worse option of powering through.

Sometimes even a good night's rest can't prevent one from starting the day with either one of these ailments, as the cumulative effects of working long days on end take hold. And sometimes, both the hypersensitivity and oversaturation conditions can be present and occurring simultaneously. When this particular brain-fuck happens, watch out, because the phrase "dog chasing his own tail" is given a whole new level of meaning. Of course, on this project, while I have experienced all sorts of minor temporary semi-delusional states that occur over the course of a session (even without the fatties), oversaturation and hypersensitivity have not, to date, made the list.

What we needed today was focus and determination-a desire by everyone other than myself to make music and have the music captured as music as opposed to fodder for manufacturing something that resembles music. Cotton needed the gift of confidence. Really, the whole band needed that gift. Were I Knute Rockne, I'd likely have given the old "win one for the Gipper" speech. But I'm neither Knute Rockne nor the producer of this session. So I didn't.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Willy wasn't going to allow any of these disorders to enter our session this week. In fact, Willy seemed motivated to give this session the jump start it so desperately needed. I knew all this from our conversation this weekend, as he divulged to me his plan of attack.

"I think we need to record some takes of several songs and help build up some confidence in these guys," he said. "And we should experiment with not using a clik," he continued.

Thank God I wasn't drinking a cup of coffee when he said this, as it seems to me that's exactly what I said to him last week! Of course, I didn't mention any of that to Willy. I responded to him appropriately with agreement and praise, expressing my encouragement of such great concepts in recording.

When I arrived today, to my pleasant surprise, everyone was already at the studio. Willy, Lance, and the band were all waiting for me. This was a good sign. After greeting everyone on the patio, I quickly determined that the band was in fairly good spirits. I mean, Paulie Yore was still Paulie Yore, and you could tell that the "girls" still didn't like each other, but they did seem to be putting on an act. Although it seemed a bit contrived at times-"Oh, I'm sorry, after you, no, no, no, no, no, after you" (puke!)-it was better than the alternative of screaming and calling each other egotistical assholes while smoking and passing a fatty around. In my experience, that really brings down the vibe of a session.

Willy added another little twist to our session this morning, but fortunately we recovered quickly. He wanted to open up all the iso booths and record the band live-bleed and all. Bleed is the sound of instruments being picked up by the other instrument mics. I pointed out to Willy that by doing that, we would be hindered from doing super-microscopic editing-not that I was upset at that concept! By recording with bleed, you are allowing harmonic information onto the drum tracks; that is to say, chord changes or tonality. In other words, I could no longer edit based on drum patterns alone.

In the case of editing takes with bleed, I would have to take into account musically where I was in the song when making an edit. If I needed to replace a measure of a drum pattern in which the bass player was playing a G, I'd have to take a measure in which the bass player was playing that same G and with the same rhythmic pattern-typically the identical measure from another take. If I didn't, then the bleed of the bass and guitar in the drums would rub with any retracked bass or guitar parts, and that can be quite distasteful. Typically, this style of recording is reserved for bands that can play a keeper take together, without having to redo any of the parts-an unlikely occurrence in the case of this band.

Recording without a clik can further reduce my editing options, as I have to use a measure that is close in tempo to the measure being replaced-a hit-or-miss proposition at best with someone like Dumb Ass on the throne.37 But Willy didn't care. He had decided that we weren't going to be doing such aggressive editing. Not on two-inch tape we won't be! That would be nearly impossible, and if not impossible, certainly time-prohibitive.

So we opened up all the doors, marked the mic placements and distances from each amp, moved the amps into the main room with the drums, and replaced the mics. We moved the amps because if the bass amp and the guitar amps were too far from the drummer, Cotton would sound as if he were lagging. That's because sound travels so slowly.

The rule of thumb is that sound will travel one foot per millisecond (it's actually generally slightly faster than that, but the speed of sound changes according to temperature and this approximation is close enough for the distances that we deal with). Just five milliseconds can be the difference between the drummer sounding on top of the beat or in the pocket. Since the band wasn't going to be playing with headphones, the players' amps had to be a reasonable distance from the drummer.

Willy had the band start with a different song today. Wisely, he had chosen a song that would be close to the same basic planned drum setup as we had for the last. We spent about an hour making some changes to the drums and guitars to better match the song. Before I knew it, we started making takes. I could hardly contain myself as I sat in front of the speakers listening to the band actually performing (and I use that word loosely) for the first time during this session. I've certainly gone two weeks in a session with nothing to show for it, but at least in those instances I felt as though some forward progress was being made. It wasn't until some time later that we realized that those two weeks were lost. In this case, we were all too painfully aware of our lack of productivity.

Cotton played considerably better without the clik, and although I wouldn't give him an award for "overachievement in solid drumming," it seemed that we might come up with something usable out of the performances. Or perhaps I'm just being optimistic. Until we tried to put something together, we just wouldn't know.

After six takes of the first song, I convinced Willy (and it really didn't take much convincing) to move onto a second song, as opposed to trying to edit together a take. Normally, it's best to do your editing before moving on, because, if the band didn't nail a particular section of the song on any of the takes, then you can easily rectify the problem by focusing on that section. If you move on and you have to go back, then you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to reestablish a sound. As it is, it takes constant vigilance to keep the snare drum at the same pitch for each take.

Once we change over sounds, even with impeccable documentation, it's unlikely we could come close enough to make an insert of a section, although there are exceptions to this rule, hence my use of the word unlikely. Regardless, even if I couldn't edit something useable out of those six takes, it was better at this point to create the illusion of progress than to bring the session to a grinding halt again. Lifting the players' spirits and having them in the groove of playing was far more important than actually knowing we had takes at that particular moment. As far as the band was concerned, the track was in the bag and that was all that mattered. Illusion or reality, it has the same effect.

After checking to be sure that Lance had all the necessary notes (which I amended, as they were indeed missing crucial information), we moved on to the next song. The session ran as a good session should. We listened to the demo of the song. Willy went over the form changes from the original demo. We all discussed the planned sonic direction of the song. We changed out the snare several times, changed out some cymbals, switched to a different guitar/amp combo several times, and swapped out the bass several times, ending up right back where we started. As the band rehearsed with Willy, I would make adjustments. Then they would all come in and listen together to the sound of the recording.

Sometimes the processes of finding the right sound for a record can be a bit laborious. Sometimes it can be painless. Today the changeovers were middle-of-the-road. Willy had clear concepts in mind, and implementing those concepts was a matter of finding combinations of instruments that translated well. Where the process becomes laborious is when one's concept is not very clear or one's original concept didn't work as intended.

Finding the right source-that is, the instrument itself-is the lion's share of work when seeking an appropriate sound for a record. It all comes down to the source. But the engineering side does come into play. Personally, I believe in making the record sound exactly as we (the producer and I) intend from the very start. I will distort drums to tape, compress them to tape, combine microphones to a single track, equalize, or do nothing at all. I will commit to tape whatever is required to make the drums sound like they should for the song. When it comes time to mix, I don't want the sounds to change at all. The mix should be done at the completion of the last overdub.

Sadly, even with this approach, on the occasions when my tracks are mixed by so-called famous mixers,38 they try to change the sound of the record. It is truly heartbreaking to put as much effort as I do into recording a song, exactly the way it is intended to sound, only to have it homogenized by a mixer more interested in quantity than quality. But that's what the record companies want.

It's really an odd process, if you think about it. The record company hires Willy Show, for example, to record the songs the way he is capable. Willy spends time and money getting everything to have a certain sound that is unique and consistent with the playing of the song and the performances. The record company then takes it from the producer's hands (very common), and has one of five mixers make it sound exactly like everything else on the radio. Then, as if that weren't enough, they have a mastering engineer39 come in and stomp the last remaining bit of life out of the production and make it sound as two-dimensional and loud as possible. But I suppose that's a discussion for another time.

As we proceeded to make takes, it was important that the song at least start at the same tempo. This way there was a chance that we could edit sections between takes. So before every song, I would give the band the clik through the talkback speakers up until the third beat of the count-off. I always have a drum machine in the control room with me, and I would check Cotton's tempo with my own set of headphones as he played without the clik. Remarkably, he could actually hold a tempo fairly well. In fact, it's not uncommon for Cotton to finish a song at the tempo he started it. Granted he fluctuates during the course of the song, but overall I'm quite impressed with his ability to maintain a tempo.

When all is said and done, by the end of today, we managed to record two songs of six takes each onto four reels of two-inch tape. I have no clue as to whether we actually recorded something useable or not, and it doesn't even matter to me. At least we are getting takes down. Momentum is the name of the game right now.

The most promising development of the day is that Cotton may be gaining some confidence. The last take they played tonight was the best he's played this entire session. I'm not saying he's miraculously great-far from it-but I have been able to put away the barf bag.

For the moment, anyway.

Mixerman
Fender P -78 | Fender J -78 | Fender Bass VI RI -95 |
Ampeg V4 -76 | Ampeg SVT-215E | Ampeg SVT-Micro VR Stack

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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 12
Girlfriend Day
Posted: August 14, 12:29 a.m.

As I was driving to the studio, reflecting on yesterday's productivity, I had a very disturbing realization. Although we were making takes and progressing with the session, the band members seemed unfazed by such events. There was no excitement, no giddiness, no enthusiasm. It was like making takes with a bunch of robots. If the band is a bunch of robots, then Paulie Yore is certainly the King of all Robots with his monotone, "Yeah, I guess that's all right." Or if he got really excited he'd say "That's good enough, I guess." I wasn't holding much hope out for Yore, but I was hopeful that when we make a little more progress, the level of enthusiasm would elevate considerably. Perhaps even I was guilty of guarded enthusiasm yesterday. That would certainly be understandable after the two-week debacle we have endured thus far.

When I spoke to Willy this morning, he had made an interesting decision. He was going to hire some hot-shot Radar editor from Nashville to come in and edit takes while we kept recording. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "hotshot Radar editor." Editing on the Radar is a piece of cake-do we really need a "hotshot?" I could just imagine Dude punching keys at lightning speed, as one uses designated macro keys on a Radar as opposed to using a mouse. Perhaps our hotshot Radar editor came of age when Commodore 64s were all the rage, giving him a distinct advantage over younger Radar editors who are likely hindered by the lack of a mouse.

Since when was Willy-the consummate Luddite's Luddite-willing to transfer the drums to digital format and edit them there? Granted, the Radar is probably the only digital multitrack machine in the history of such machines that I actually think sounds good (barring some serious hot-rodding). But that was quite a leap for Willy to make in such a short amount of time. Perhaps I had his ear and he trusted me now.

"I'm surprised at that," I said to Willy when he told me about the Radar editing.

"Yeah, well, we need to get a move on with this session, and you've already demonstrated that the Radar sounds great, so fuck it," he said as I could hear him sucking in heavily from what I assumed was the first fatty of the day.

Indeed, I thought to myself.

I certainly didn't complain about this new development. Shit, I couldn't have been more delighted to be relinquishing editing duties to someone else. If Willy had been a producer that enjoyed Alsihad, the session would have been paying for an Alsihah to be editing the tracks anyway. Besides, having one person editing while we continued recording would be a far more efficient way of working.

Then Willy further enlightened me on the subject of his great turnabout. He told me about a friend of his who is a somewhat famous producer in Nashville, who suggested that we quit fucking around editing two-inch tape and transfer the takes to Radar for editing, and Willy's friend recommended his guy for the editing gig. Being that Willy actually described Dude as "lightning fast," I've named him Fast Fingers McGuilicutty, sight unseen. Fast Fingers would be arriving tomorrow to start editing takes.

Further, I learned in our conversation that Willy had taken home a couple of the takes of each song from the running DAT (Digital Audio Tape). I keep a DAT recorder rolling at all times during the course of a session. When the band is making takes, Lance's job is to mark an ID at the beginning of each take and log the ID number and its corresponding take number. That way, if Willy or I want to take home a CD of some takes, all Lance has to do is look at his notes and transfer those takes to a CD. Running a DAT recorder at all times has the added advantage of allowing me to play back an idea or part that someone may have played accidentally but forgotten, and it can potentially provide interesting and fun interlude material for an album.

Willy had confided in me, in our phone conversation this morning, that the takes really weren't up to par and that the band was severely lacking energy. This was not a surprise to me. After all, the band did have an obvious lack of enthusiasm yesterday. It's not that either of us is incapable of listening to a take go down and recognizing that it's not totally happening, but we're dealing in relative terms here. Our ability to listen to a take has been tainted with the comparisons of what we had previously recorded. In comparison to our first recording with the band, yesterday's takes were a marked improvement. Improvement was a step in the right direction. In cases like these, where the playing is so hideously atrocious, knowing for certain whether takes are going to pass muster often requires a day away from the tracks and sometimes requires actually editing them.

Although the takes weren't happening, Willy felt that moving forward, as we have done, has been the right course of action We could always go back and try to beat what we have recorded thus far. So long as there was improvement, Willy would allow the band to record takes and move on to the next song.

Even with the news of the takes not being up to par, I was encouraged and upbeat on my way into the session. Perhaps the energy level would improve today. As I was driving to the studio, I had made a decision that I was going to be as upbeat and as positive as I possibly could. Sure, I'm always positive at the studio. But today was different. Today, I was going to be the specimen of good vibes, positive thinking, and overly expressive enthusiasm. Perhaps my enthusiasm would be infectious, and the band would start to play with excitement.

Of course, no sooner had I arrived at the studio, con­vinced that I was somehow going to make a difference on the day's work, when I was instantly and completely deflated. There, at the table on the patio, sat two girls with Yore and Harmon. Girls in their own right certainly were not a bad thing, but these particular girls had two strikes against them. They were at a recording session in which there were no girls, and they looked suspiciously like girlfriends. A terrible, horrible feeling overcame me. These guys didn't actually bring their girlfriends to the session. Did they?

"Hi, how's it going?" I said coolly as I hobbled to the table at which the crew was sitting. I stood there with what I'm sure was an awkward little smile waiting anxiously for an introduction, which I didn't actually have the patience to wait for.

"My name is Mixerman," I said like a heathen, holding out my hand as if making an effort to show that I came in peace.

Heathen or not, sometimes my insight and ability to recognize a situation scares me. They were girlfriends!

What I wanted to do was cry, "No! No! No! No! No! No! No!"-over and over again as I slammed my forehead against the brick wall outside the studio. But I figured that would have been too revealing of my thoughts on this subject, so I smiled and welcomed our newfound intruders instead.

How could these guys be this stupid? One should never bring one's girlfriend to a session. It's like the first rule of recording. I think they teach this in kindergarten. Even my children know you don't bring your girlfriend to the studio. Guys don't act like themselves when their girlfriends are there. They get distracted, the girls get upset because the guys aren't paying attention to them, and then the guys get all pissed off because the girls don't understand that they're making a record. Then what typically happens is the girls split, the guys get pissed, and it's a fucking fiasco every time. My only hope was that the girlfriends were planning to leave and go shopping together. I clung onto that hope like it was Barry Bonds' seventy-third 2001 home run ball, as I proceeded to the control room and prepared for the day's session.

Willy walked into the control room, and I gave him what must have been a maniacally horrified look as he entered, because he actually asked if I was sick.

"They brought girlfriends!!" I blurted out in horror, with no thought to how that must have sounded or looked for that matter.

Willy chuckled. "I'm sure they'll be leaving soon," he replied.

But they didn't leave soon. They stayed the whole day, and for what had been the briefest of moments yesterday a decent, well-adjusted session would now be destroyed by the presence of alien intruders.

Don't get me wrong. I love women. God do I love women. I enjoy working with women in studio situations. What I don't like is girlfriends or boyfriends in the studio. In fact, boyfriends are worse! There's just no room for that shit. Band members and artists have to be unencumbered and free to be themselves wholly. Girlfriends and boyfriends only serve to aggravate, for they don't recognize the boundaries of concentration and focus that go into the creative process of recording.

It seems our visitors were intent on proving that my disdain for such things was warranted right from the start. The girls yucked it up on the couch in the back of the room while I was trying to get sounds. Anyone who has done any level of engineering at all knows it's very difficult to work while people are in the room talking. The only way to combat the noise is to turn up the volume of your monitors. However, the louder I turned up the volume, the louder the intruders would talk, until such a point that I was absolutely blasting the music, as the unwanted studio guests were yelling at the top of their lungs and looking at me as if I was doing something wrong!

"I'm sorry, but there really can't be any talking while I'm doing critical listening," I would say after muting the speakers. "You're more than welcome to go into the lounge if you like."

"Oh, sorry! We'll be quiet," they would respond, giggling, as if making my life miserable was somehow humorous.

Less than thirty seconds of silence would go by, and the whispers would start again. The whispers would soon turn into talking, and then yelling as the cycle would play itself out again, and I would calmly ask them to shut the fuck up in as pleasant a way as I could muster-perhaps too pleasant a way. Round and round we'd go in an endless cycle.

At one point, one of the girls realized that I could magically communicate with the boys by pushing a button and just talking, and the other decided it would be cute for her to talk to Yore.

In an elongated and exaggerated fashion, with a light Southern accent much like the blonde white-trash-factory-worker character that pretended to get pregnant in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, she screamed, "Play louder, sexy!" She made sure that she yelled directly into the push button, as if by some miracle a solid piece of plastic with her thumb over it could somehow act as a microphone.

MOTHERFUCKER!

"Please!" I said, exasperated. "You really can't be playing with the talkback button. We're trying to make a record here," I continued, as I held out my hand in a gesture to demand return of the talkback remote control. Still, they wouldn't leave.

I had thought for hours about what I could say to get them out of the room. Many scenarios had played in my head in short little daydream sequences, as my brain attempted to come up with a reasonable solution to my problem.

"Get me a mic and set it up for the girls over there," I would say to Lance in one of my daydreams, as I pointed to the back of the control room.

"Why are you setting up a mic?" one of the girls would ask.

"So that I can record your singing," I would reply.

"But we're not singing," they would respond hook, line, and sinker.

"Oh! Right! Well then, how about you SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I would yell, to their horror and dismay. That would get them out of the room, anyway!

Had this little vignette actually happened, it surely would have gotten me in hot water with Harmon, who wouldn't understand at all why I was yelling at his girlfriend. I would have possibly gotten myself fired, a thought that is not so unappealing right about now. Worse yet, I might have to hang out for weeks with a guy whose girlfriend wants me fired. Even if he could somehow forgive me and understand why I snapped, his girlfriend would make sure that he hated me by such torturous techniques as endlessly talking about the incident.

Deciding that I perhaps wasn't the best candidate to ask the girls to leave at that particular moment, I decided it would be best if I let Willy act as the diplomat. I was at my wit's end where they were concerned, and it's always best to get a disinterested party involved in such cases. Willy always seemed to fill this role perfectly.

Willy was great, because when I told him my problem, he poked his head in the door and held out a fatty and led the girls to the lounge as if the fatty were a flute, Willy was the Pied Piper, and the girlfriends were rats. So as the crew smoked a fatty, Willy came up with the new rule that no one was allowed in the control room while we were working. Everyone was agreeable, as most people are when they are smoking fatties.

Willy was quite tolerant of the fact that the girlfriends were there. At one point, when the girls were in the lounge and we were making a take, Willy said we would just have to deal with the "bitches" for now (his word, not mine). The way Willy figured it, the girlfriends might actually make the boys play more inspired. This hasn't been my experience in studio life, and it certainly wasn't evidenced by the band's uncanny ability to play a 120-beat-per-minute lullaby. But who am I to argue with success?

With the girlfriends now out of the control room, the remainder of the day went fairly smoothly. Much like yesterday, we recorded two songs today. Willy was working very hard with the band to try and bring up the inspiration in their playing. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the band and Cotton were starting to perform halfway decently by the end of the night. But I do know better. So much for being upbeat and positive!

I guess there's always tomorrow.



Mixerman
Fender P -78 | Fender J -78 | Fender Bass VI RI -95 |
Ampeg V4 -76 | Ampeg SVT-215E | Ampeg SVT-Micro VR Stack

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newheartshadow
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Re: Tävling

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Day 13
What Up, Dawg?
Posted: August 15, 12:09 a.m.

Whereas yesterday was a pain in the ass what with the presence of Paulie Yore's and Harmon Neenot's girlfriends, today was a pain in the ass times two. That's because Dumb Ass and the singer both decided to bring their girlfriends to the sessions too. Girlfriends were multiplying at an alarming rate. Tomorrow, could I expect the girlfriend ratio to double again? Perhaps Willy would bring his girlfriend and our soon-to-arrive comrade Fast Fingers could have his girlfriend flown in from Nashville. Lance surely had to have a girlfriend who had nothing better to do than to spend a day at the studio gabbing as she ate chocolate muffins. I have always had my suspicions about Magnolia-perhaps she could round up a girlfriend, and then we could have eight girlfriends tomorrow!

For the record, I really didn't give a shit that the girlfriends were eating chocolate muffins, as the runner was now buying ten of them or more per day so as to be sure that we never ran out. I considered requesting that the runner back off on the muffin count, but I was fearful we'd be back down to one muffin per day, as making requests at this studio was much akin to driving a large vehicle very fast and making sudden direction changes while on ice.

Four girlfriends is four girlfriends too many. I had to make a sign. I find signs to be an effective way to not only set rules but set them in an obnoxious way without actually offending anybody-mostly because rules usually come off humorous when posted as a sign. So I ripped a piece of paper from a pad, and I wrote on the paper.

NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!!

No! No! No! No! I thought as I tore up that sign. That wasn't going to work. A sign like that would only serve to guarantee that the girls would enter the control room. I needed a girlfriend deterrent, not a girlfriend magnet. So I tried again.

NO TALKING IN THE CONTROL ROOM!!!!

TO BE STRICTLY ENFORCED!!!!

I liked that one. I was hopeful this would work, since, as it was, I was sure that I could hear the flock gabbing from down the hall through an airlock that is designed to prevent sound from entering or escaping the control room. I realize that my sign was neither super inventive nor very obnoxious for that matter. But the way I figured it, these girls weren't going to be coming into the control room if they weren't allowed to talk. Therefore, by placing the sign, I would be better able to enforce the rule, since the rule had been clearly and conspicuously posted.

Yeah, right.

As I was hanging my freshly written sign, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a stranger coming down the hall. He was a short, lanky, meek-looking pasty-faced guy with a tiny goatee and spiked hair dyed pure blond. He was wearing a parka and carrying a bag that I assumed was made out of hemp. The stranger looked prepared for an Arctic dogsled competition, save the fact that he was also wearing knee-length shorts. It's ninety-five degrees outside, and this clown was wearing a fucking parka!

"What up, Dawg?" the stranger said to me. "Where da Bitch Slap session at, Yo?" he asked.

"Right here," I replied, preoccupied with the ideal placement of my sign and completely disinterested in pointing what I assumed was more posse to the lounge.

"I'm here to cut takes, Yo," the stranger announced. With that, it became apparent whom I was talking to.

It was none other than Fast Fingers McGuilicutty, in all his glory, standing before me, looking like a twenty-year-old idiot with a parka rated for forty below in the middle of summer in L.A. Out of nowhere it struck me that my Commodore 64 theory from yesterday was now shot to hell. Dude was too young to have ever used a Commodore 64. Perhaps he wasn't as fast as all the hype made him out to be.

"Ah-ight," I said, as I noticed that he was about the height of the girls, and lined my sign up to his eye level.

"Been having problems wit da bitches?" he asked.

What's with these guys and the "bitches" shit? I mean, yeah, I don't want girlfriends on the session, but it's not for some misplaced deep-down hatred of women.

"Word," I replied in a language that I thought he might understand.

My years of hip-hop sessions came in handy, as I could converse fluently with Fast Fingers, or perhaps I should say Fingaz. I knew the lingo and when to use it, and as far as he was concerned, I was one of the brothers. Strangely, neither of us was one of the brothers, but I figure that's just a technicality.

So I gave Fingaz the nickel tour. I showed him the room, and then the control room, and finally I showed him where the Radar was. As I stood there staring at the Radar, I realized that neither Willy nor I had considered where Fingaz was going to work. Editing in the control room was out. The iso booths wouldn't provide enough true isolation, and we'd likely want to reserve them for recording anyway. Willy's makeshift office was too far away from the control room, since we wouldn't want to have to keep moving the Radar. Really, the only place I could think to put Fingaz was in the bathroom, which was a reasonable distance from the control room. Fingaz didn't seem too thrilled with that prospect.

"What happens when someone has to go to the bathroom, Yo?" he asked incredulously.

"I guess you'll have to take a break," I said. I could hardly contain my laughter, and it got worse, because then I imagined someone taking a really smelly dump during Fingaz's forced mandatory break time, causing considerable contamination to the editing area. By the looks on Fingaz's face, he was imagining something quite similar.

This wasn't the first time that an editor has ended up in the shitter on one of my sessions, and I didn't find it any less humorous the last time it happened either. Being experienced in these sorts of things, I brought out some extra tapestries (which were also necessary for acoustical reasons, as large concrete bathrooms make for terrible acoustics), a plethora of scented candles, and some incense, in an attempt to try and transform the bathroom into what appeared to be a very vibey editing space. Okay, so it never quite made "vibey," as we couldn't really cover the commode, but it was certainly much improved, and the toilet would make a very convenient seat for anyone who wanted to come take a listen to what Fingaz was working on.

Willy loved what I had done to the bathroom after he figured out that I was, indeed, right that there was nowhere else to put Fingaz. Cotton pointed out that there was another bathroom down the hall, which I had forgotten about-mostly because I don't like that particular bathroom. I call it the "Trough," with its three urinals and three stalls. I hate using the Trough. I don't have a phobia or anything like that. I'm fine with the Trough at the mall or the movies or a restaurant. But I spend twelve hours a day at the studio, and I like having a private bathroom, much like the one I have at home.

With our makeshift editing suite complete, we set up the newest member of our crew in the bathroom. Fingaz had the Radar, a rack of three Dangerous Mixers,40 and some powered speakers. We ran cables to and from the Radar between the bathroom and the machine room, and we transferred the takes for Fast Fingaz to get to work on. He immediately got to work. And work he did.

This guy really was lightning fast. He had the fastest fingers I've ever seen as he hit macro buttons left and right like he was a court reporter at a deposition. He'd cut, paste, scrub, mark, move, slide, chop. It almost seemed fake, like a bad movie where the guy is pretending to break into a supercomputer on the Internet by typing on a keyboard really fast. He was absolutely fantastic!

Now, with Fast Fingaz furiously editing away, we needed to start to make takes again. Occasionally girls would try to enter the room one at a time, and I would play Mind Tricks on them, forcing them to quickly close the door and go back to the lounge. But at one point, I was overrun by the four of them. My Mind Tricks were useless against such numbers, and somehow they figured this out.

Willy would let the girls hang for a while, and then he'd pull his Pied Piper routine again, luring them to the lounge down the hall with his fatties. Then Willy would return and we'd continue working.

As the day went on, it got progressively more difficult to find band members with whom to make takes. That's because they would usually be somewhere else with their girlfriends. The moment I'd find a player and inform him that he was needed, another band member would be missing. It was like the girls had cast a spell on the band, causing them to forget that this day was probably costing in the neighborhood of $4,000.

Whenever Lance was trying to find AWOL players, I would go and hang with Fingaz and get to know him a little better. I found it absolutely fascinating that this guy lived in Nashville. He would be the equivalent of an alien in Nashville with his appearance and the way he spoke. Things just didn't add up, and I so desperately needed them to. I figured I'd just up ask him.

"So where in Nashville do you live?" I asked, as if I knew more than one street there.

"Damn, maaan," Fingaz responded incredulously. "I don't live dare, yo. Jus' been cuttin' takes wit da man over dare."

"Word," I replied. "Well, where you from, Yo?" I asked.

"I live in da City, Dawg" he replied, which made a hell of a lot more sense than dude living in Nashville.

"You know dey don't let no Wegro live in Nashville," he continued.

I almost fell off the commode at that comment. Dude called himself a Wegro! I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life! African-Americans haven't been referred to as Negros in thirty years, and for good reason! But Dude decides to call himself a Wegro? What a schmuck!

But then, at the thought of such absurdity on so many levels, I found myself laughing and unable to stop laughing. I was laughing so hard my gut started to hurt. (I'm still laughing.) This guy was a fucking classic! The fact that he couldn't understand what I found so funny about this statement just made my laughing fit worse. Finally, I had to get the hell out of there, because he was starting to get mad at me, and that was not helping me regain my composure at all.

When I went into the control room, Willy wanted to know what I was laughing about, and I told him. The two of us sat there for about ten minutes laughing so hard that our stomachs hurt. At one point, when we had almost gotten control of ourselves, we noticed Fingaz standing in the airlock with this confused scowl on his face as he was watching us laughing. This didn't help matters at all. Then Willy decided to fire up a fatty, and Dude came in to join the party.

"You bluntin'?" Fingaz asked Willy.

"Not bluntin'," I said. "Smokin' fatties." I guess Fingaz found that acceptable, because he joined in.

We got one song recorded today because we could barely get the guys in the room at the same time. Fingaz got the first song edited and was halfway through another. Willy decided he'd listen to the edited takes tomorrow after the second editing job was complete

As much as Fingaz is an idiot with his whole Wegro terminology and the shtick that went with it, at least I could hang with the dude . . .

. . . which was more than I could say for the band.

Mixerman
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Re: Tävling

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