Funny Mixing Tales

tigerflystudio

tigerflystudio

New member
Just thought it'd be good to share a funny story I heard the other day.

Yesterday I was speaking to a friend of mine (who use to be in a signed 90's pop band, but is now a producer). Anwyays, he was telling me about a band he recorded last week and how they had a really annoying singer who was "very keen" on being in control of the mix. This 'ego' singer (let's call him 'Jock') was forever moving faders about on the mixing desk which just lead to his vocals standing out way too much and a generally bad overall mix.

So, Alan (my buddy / producer) told Jock that the last fader on the desk was the 'Master Controller' for the vocals, and that he could use it to manually automate the vocals throughout the playback of the track.

Apparently Jock spent all afternoon manually tweaking this fader and spouting off about how much better it was and how he was really 'getting inside the mix'. Except, of course, there was nothing assigned to chat channel! Nice one Al!

We laughed about that a lot. What was extra funny was that the drummer from the band was in on it, too, but didn't say a word because he realised how much of a dick Jock was being. Awesome!

So, you heard / got any good ones?
 
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I recorded a singer who wanted to loop record a bunch of takes and try different stuff for potential backups, and in case she wanted to comp together parts from different tracks to make one main vox track. She sings away while I'm goofing off on the internet...

7 takes later, she's done, I got all these tracks in the project. We're listening to em one by one, and I accidentally hit the 'M'ute button, which UN-muted all the tracks. Now we're listening to ALL the vox tracks and it sounds like a choir. I laugh and say 'woops' and start muting the vox tracks again, she says 'NO WAIT' - and ultimately gets a 2nd mix of the song with all the vox tracks on it :D
 
There's a similar story to the first one with The Beach Boys when the Wilson's dad Murray was being phased out of the recording process.

They'd set him up with a dummy mixing desk and he'd be tweaking away mixing sweet f a!

I don't know how true that is but it was in Brian Wilson's Biography and seems like a reasonable account of events. Murray Wilson was by all accounts a cock!
 
When I've done live stuff I always pick a 'DFA' button/pot (does F-all) on the desk to twiddle a bit if one of the morons moans about his monitor mix... usually any problems are due to their piss-poor mic technique rather than me... I'm not gonna whack up the monitors and get feedback just because they're trying to sing into the side of a hypercardioid from about 3 feet away.
 
I know a guy that thinks of himself as an engineer, let's call him James. He doesn't have a breeze of what's going on. He was on a session a few months back, and another guy I know (who actually knows his stuff - let's call him Bob) was helping him out by playing guitar on the track. After a lot of complication and Bob basically setting everything up, or telling James how to do it, Bob finally sits down to track some guitar. There's no sound being recorded, and the guys are wondering what's going on. Bob goes back into the control room and sees that James has set him up to record live guitar onto an "Instrument" (MIDI+Aux combined) track in Pro Tools. Bob explains to him that this won't work, and tells him why it won't work (almost explaining MIDI vs. Audio to the "engineer"), to which James stubbornly argues "it will work I'm tellin ya! The guitar is an instrument? Instrument track? DUH!! Just go back in and I'll sort this out". The guy wouldn't back down. Needless to say, they didn't get a lot done :rolleyes:
 
The classic one is where someone in the band starts giving instructions to the engineering on how to make it better...and the engineer just rewinds and then turns up the studio monitor volume a notch and asks "How’s that sound now?"...
...the response is always positive. :)
 
mattr said:
When I've done live stuff I always pick a 'DFA' button/pot (does F-all) on the desk to twiddle a bit if one of the morons moans about his monitor mix... usually any problems are due to their piss-poor mic technique rather than me... I'm not gonna whack up the monitors and get feedback just because they're trying to sing into the side of a hypercardioid from about 3 feet away.
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Haha yeah, 'usually' - I'll give ya that one.. But I've been on the musician side of that one an awful lot... "HEY I cant hear myself..." (fiddle fiddle fiddle) "Ok you're golden.." yeah right! :mad: I try to keep my stage rig on the quiet side to keep bleed down and whatnot, and let him do the heavy lifting, but then he's GOTTA do it! Especially if they ask me to, then I kinda assume they sorta know what they're doing, but we all know where THAT gets ya..
 
I was at a music store and two boys approach the mic counter and say they need a mic to record there new hiphop album, the mic guy asks well how are you recording into your comp? They say with midi. The guy says that won't work, I had to put a fist in my mouth so they won't beat me in the alleyway later.
 
Got some from being out mixing live with a PA:

Hotel manager come over and says, "Can you turn it down a bit" so I turn down the volume control for the headphones, and he says, "Thats better thanks".

Punter comes over and says, "what happens if I turn this knob (pointing)" my replay "you get a punch in the noise".

In the studio I had a newly appointed band manager turn up (no names) for a session I had with a band I worked for regularly. He must have read a magazine about recording and he had one suggestion which was suggested all day for everything we were working on. "I think we should try reverse gated reverb on that". Eventually I asked him if he knew what Reverse gated reverb was? He had no idea. I did know but it was not going to work on anything we were doing, so I set it up and he agreed. He was trying to hard to impress the band he had just signed up. Buy the way the demo helped get them signed to a major label.

Cheers
Alan.
 
miroslav said:
The classic one is where someone in the band starts giving instructions to the engineering on how to make it better...and the engineer just rewinds and then turns up the studio monitor volume a notch and asks "How’s that sound now?"...
...the response is always positive. :)
Click to expand...

Works every time!! :laughings:
 
mattr said:
a 'DFA' button/pot (does F-all) on the desk to twiddle a bit if one of the morons moans about his monitor mix.
Click to expand...

Wow... can't believe you have a DFA button, too. When I use to do the sound in my club I always had a 'DFA fader' on the desk. And yes, it was there for that exact same reason - band members (on stage) would come over to the console (FOH) and start asking for more guitars or whatever. I'd say, "hey, the mix sounds great out here, ask around". They'd go back, have a mini-band conflab around the drum kit, then one of them would shuffle back over to the desk and say something like, "we want that really cool / heavy guitar sound, just like '..........' (insert (crap) band of the moment here)". So, I'd give them free reign with the DFA fader. Worked every time.

A really snotty arse once asked me, "so what IS this DFA fader?" In a flash of lightening-quick inspiration (unusual for me!) I replied with a straight face, "why it's the Digital FOH Assembly, of course". And before I even had time to wonder if the guy would buy it, he just tweaked the fader and said, "Yeah, cool. That sounds so much better now". Needless to say, I didn't book that particular shower again.
 
So these stories are not urban legends, you actually do this? I have heard and read that all the time and I was always thinking: "Nah, wouldn't work". People would figure it out. But then again I have been on the other side most of the time being nice to the guy behind the mixer so he doesn't put a slight delay on the monitors on a live gig... It would never cross my mind to go over and tell 'em how to do their job. I guess the delay-story got me intimidated early enough :D I am beginning to suspect some sort of hidden agenda to train artists in their early stages with those kind of stories to be humble and obedient...

Cheers :drunk:
Tim
 
timkroeger said:
So these stories are not urban legends, you actually do this? I have heard and read that all the time and I was always thinking: "Nah, wouldn't work". People would figure it out. But then again I have been on the other side most of the time being nice to the guy behind the mixer so he doesn't put a slight delay on the monitors on a live gig... It would never cross my mind to go over and tell 'em how to do their job. I guess the delay-story got me intimidated early enough :D I am beginning to suspect some sort of hidden agenda to train artists in their early stages with those kind of stories to be humble and obedient...

Cheers :drunk:
Tim
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All "artists" should be told: Don't piss off the sound guy/girl. They can make it go lovely, or terrible for you, live or studio.

:drunk:
 
I personally believe studio doors should be locked, and only the engineer and the producer can enter. Maybe the owner if that's a different individual than the other two.

I remember one "session" where a local garage band wanted to rent the studio for a mere day, with a lofty goal of tracking 8-10 songs, all covers.

They specifically wanted to be mic'd together and play their songs "live" which as most of you know presents a track isolation challenge, but since they were on a budget I could appreciate this desire.

Everyone arrives, the tech and I are setting up mics, stands and gobos and taking "direct out" where possible. I walk to the console room while the tech puts on the finishing touches, I load a fresh reel of tape and slip it through the capstans, and turn on the monitors as I sit down.

Screaming. Lots of screaming. Painful screaming.

The band was apparently arguing amongst themselves about song order. With some nudging and prodding (which became unpleasant), we started to record their first song. Within less than a minute, the vocalist stops and starts screaming at the drummer for being "always f-ing late you incompetent blah blah blah".

The whole day was like this. We interfered early on but their hostility and anger towards us encouraged us to sit in the console room and just shake our heads and tell bad jokes.

Sadly, after the 8 hours was up and we had maybe 5-6 minutes of useful tape, and honestly, it wasn't very good.
 
Doing standard rock shows live and every time I get the sound perfect up comes who ever and says it's to loud --not in reality but for that particular person whom may have some little bit of authority at the venue.
This one time I was asked to turn it down and was also asked what I can do about it.
Jokingly I pointed at the master mains mute on my Midas console and said I push this button.....and he did :eek: OPPS.... boy did I get the look of the century while everyone was looking at him walking away as I unmuted the mains. :laughings::laughings::cool::cool::laughings::laughings:
 
another one...
When I was in my 20's I went into a studio with my band to rehearse. We'd been there a couple of times before and we just jammed out some original rock tunes in the studio's 'live room' (the only other room was / is the control room).

So, one evening we're bashing out some reasonable stuff and the owner of the studio comes in from the other room. We'd heard quite a number of things about this guy from other people - that he was basically a tit and knew nothing about music / production himself. Anyways, he says, "hey guys, you're really great, why don't we stick a few mics up and capture a live recording?"

Well, we weren't great (far from it) but we said "ok". So the studio owner (let's call him Rick) sticks about 5 mics around the room and then goes back into the control room.

After we finish the sesh and pack up, we wander into the control to listen to the recordings. Firstly, as we listen, we notice constant random volume & EQ changes on lots of the channels - he's basically recorded everything POST fader. Nice one, Rick. Then, in one track, we notice an odd distant tapping sound when the drums aren't playing. We solo that channel to discover the control room talk-back mic has also been recorded and has picked up Rick drumming on the console with 2 pens. What a legend!

Eventually we find a couple of songs that seem ok (where Rick's not messed them up) and decide to use them as a VERY basic demo, just for grins - it was free, after all. So we ask for a mixdown to CD. Well, this gets Rick flapping - he hasn't got a clue how to do it. He spent half an hour pretending to connect and disconnect vital bits of kit before eventually feeding us a big lie about a faulty processor in the signal chain.

Anyways, the following week, the regular sound engineer (nice guy) was back at the studio and so we told him about Rick. His reply went something like this, "Yeah, Rick's a cock. His latest brainwave is to be a hands-on band manager, so he's looking for a new (unsuspecting) band so he can look like a Mr. Bigshot. but he keeps ballsing things up in the studio and blaming everyone / thing else. He's just not interested in learning the trade properly. Took him four days to realise the CD burner wasn't even plugged in."

We all looked at one another, then laughed our asses off.
 
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suprstar said:
I recorded a singer who wanted to loop record a bunch of takes and try different stuff for potential backups, and in case she wanted to comp together parts from different tracks to make one main vox track. She sings away while I'm goofing off on the internet...

7 takes later, she's done, I got all these tracks in the project. We're listening to em one by one, and I accidentally hit the 'M'ute button, which UN-muted all the tracks. Now we're listening to ALL the vox tracks and it sounds like a choir. I laugh and say 'woops' and start muting the vox tracks again, she says 'NO WAIT' - and ultimately gets a 2nd mix of the song with all the vox tracks on it :D
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Was is Joanna Newsom in "Peach, Plum, Pear"? I always wondered why the decision to go all "choir of one" on the chorus to that song.
 
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