the trouble with being nice is ....

[sthslvrcnfsn]

So i've been recording a good band recently. I'm going in for re-recording and new material tonight. Since I don't have a room, and have scrape-by gear (good board, 1 decent comp, 1 adat, handful of inexpensive mics), I'm doing this for free, with an agreement that my name be listed somewhat large on the finished product.

These guys, while being quite talented, have 1 job between them. They have a space for us to use, and the time to do this. The problem is, I usually end up buying the "we're-tracking-the-last-song-let's-beer-run" beer, and when I go to their shows (...and they usually save me the $5 by putting me on the list) I end up buying quite a few pitchers after their comp tab runs out and before they get their cut from the door. The last time we recorded together, they used our demos on the internet to start booking 2-3 shows a week around town. That's a pretty good schedule, especially compared to 2 gigs a month before. I'm not trying to completely credit their increase in shows to myself, but the demos certainly helped ,especially in the days where you can refer most bars' talent people to a fucking MySpace page (damn MP3s is what I mean!) The demos didn't sound great by any means, but they had their place.

So my question is, after doing demos, and after tonight's tracking, and the upcoming 2 weeks of mixing (I have a 7-4 day job, so finding time is tricky in an apartment), what the hell do I do? I feel like this "session" tonight will turn out a good product - I have better equipment than before, some nice things on loan, and I am already familiar with mixing this band's material. It'll certainly get artwork and some minor pressing, and at least be sold at shows - probably not a deal or anything, but they are only a few months young as a band. They've had offers from engineers in the area who have good sounds and good reps, but they have politely declined, choosing me instead (money might be a factor, but not a big one).

I don't feel like I can charge because I don't have a space or anything, but paying for them to have fun on occasion and buying ADAT tapes gets on my nerves once in a while. It'll be really cool if the disc gets a write-up in the paper or something - any press or popularity among the "cool kids" - so that I can get more "work".

I love recording because it is fun, but sometimes a big time commitment warrants a little love, no? Really I'm not that pissed or anything, just thinking out loud before I pack up my car.

jim!

[joelpatterson]

Not to worry about a thing, you're just having what I call a "HOLY FUCKING CHRIST" moment. That's when you look around and you are doing SO MUCH for this stinking band, and they are ingrates, they really think you're the lucky one, and you suddenly wonder WHAT THE HOLY FUCKING CHRIST!

In the end, the glory you get from being the guy who did their excellent demos will really far outweigh the passing emotions of the moment, but it's hard to see it at the time.

Just make them the most fucking insane rockin' little demos. Eh?

[cgarges]

I don't feel like I can charge because I don't have a space or anything, but paying for them to have fun on occasion and buying ADAT tapes gets on my nerves once in a while.

What does not having a space have to do with not charging? technically, I've never had a space, but I've been making my living off of recording bands for the past 8 years. Hell, for the last four, I didn't even have a job.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[sthslvrcnfsn]

joel - you explained EXACTLY what I was feeling at the beginning of the night.

chris - not having a space isn't a big deal. not having a space AND bringing ALL of the recording gear is a big deal. Does a 70s Tascam board, an ART pro vla, one ADAT, 4 cheap mics, and SOMEBODY that knows how to use them warrant a bill?

i learned tonight that i can put load in and wire together a studio, and get preliminary sounds in an hour. who would've thought?!

tired, and going back at it in 8 hours
jim!

[cgarges]

chris - not having a space isn't a big deal. not having a space AND bringing ALL of the recording gear is a big deal. Does a 70s Tascam board, an ART pro vla, one ADAT, 4 cheap mics, and SOMEBODY that knows how to use them warrant a bill?

If you work in a McDonald's, but don't own or rent the McDonald's building and don't have to bring anything to work, you still expect to get paid, right?

If you do the work, you should get paid (by "paid," I don't necessarily mean money). Period. If you choose not to get paid, then you certainly don't have room to gripe about it. But not having a space has no bearing on whether or not you deserve to get paid. Not having much experience doesn't have as much bearing on it, either, it just means you shouldn't get paid as much as some other people who have more experience and can run a session more efficiently and with better results.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[joelpatterson]

Yes totally.

Without you, this band would have had a great rehearsal and nothing to show for it.

The fact you're providing a service and a tangible product is worth something. What the something is, well... hard to say maybe. Harder still when your relationship has evolved from "friend helping out" to now it's more like "vital part of the whole enterprise."

How you turn the corner and broach the whole subject of money, the justice of them giving you some, there's a test of people skills if there ever was one. The bestest way is to somehow get them thinking it was their idea, that their thankfulness for what you're doing deserves to be rewarded. The worstest way is for you to wait for some turning point, like sending the master to be duplicated, and then suddenly bring up the justice issue.

The more people that hear what you've done, and see what a friendly, optimistic, funny guy you are, the better you position yourself for future work. One thing I've noticed, the only people who ever stall and plead poverty are the flaky bozos, and this is a truism that never seems to change. The people who are determined to make something of themselves are only too glad to pay me, they're grateful I'm here doing what I do. Long term, seems like things are really going your way.

[sthslvrcnfsn]

Everything ended up alright this weekend, since the band really didn't play very well. We couldn't leave the equipment set up, so they'll get whatever I can make out of the performances (I can mix at home).

Oh, did I mention I got a nice old Traynor cabinet for free, and gave it to the bass player for free because his equipment sucks ... that was a while back, though. Just one more thing to add to the list.

In light of all this, I will be recording a different band soon - we've been talking the last two weeks. Any thoughts on how I should go about doing this? One of the guys is a fairly close friend. They're a little more gracious, and are really excited about spening about a whole day just to find cool and wierd sounds, which is something that I totally dig and will enjoy a lot. I'll be using their space, borrowing some of their gear, and bringing all mine again. they've never heard anything I've done, so they're going on blind faith.

Oh, the things I'll do to have my name on shit.
jim!

ps - Tonight we decided that the disc cover should have "JIM [LAST NAME] produces [band name]" as the title. I need to shut my trap before somebody reads this and I get in trouble around town here.

[joelpatterson]

You are on a roll, jim!

I would plan ahead for this next gig and make real sure, draw little pictures, make sure all the gear you have and the gear they have is going to work together seamlessly and you're not surprised by some oddity they never think about. And do this: say, with the last band, the one thing I would have done differently during the recording session was: what? There's always some little thing that could have been smoother, so envision this next session and try to anticipate the things that might crop up. Walk through it all in your mind's eye. Maybe you thought about a snake you could make that might be handy. There's something.

If you can keep doing this for free, you are going to be very popular, but if you feel like it would be great to at least start breaking even with this, come up with a figure and maybe say, if it all works out and you guys like this, then slip me $------ when it's over and we have a final CD we're happy with. This lets the session itself be loose and creative and free from an hourly rate, which, no question, is a drag. But it also says, on everyone's part, we are not just screwing around and having our fun, we are serious, this is work.

Good luck, my friend, I know if I think long enough I'll come up with the song that all your consonants come from, it is on the tip of my tongue, just a second....

[sthslvrcnfsn]

Good luck, my friend, I know if I think long enough I'll come up with the song that all your consonants come from, it is on the tip of my tongue, just a second....

No. you won't. I told you once, and you swore never to tell anybody. Don't do this to me man!

***I was thinking of approaching this band with the finished mixes on a CD - the item they want to sell - and asking for $1 per disc sold. I'm thinking they won't charge much for it. It'll only be 3-4 songs, since they didn't really have any usable takes of anything else. Is that unreasonable? With the next band, I'm defenitely going to ask for a similar deal, as well as some contingency like "1 case of beer per recording night for ME" (to be had later - not getting my drunk ears on during the session, duh), or some other form of barter. Charging per hour would kill things. I've thought of either a small flat fee, or a per-song fee, as well. Any experience with per-song fees?

I talked this over with my girl last night, and we couldn't decide what method of charging would be appropriate at this point. I feel like I need to make that decision soon. We did agree it was time for me to start getting paid, however, so she agrees with all you folks. Recording school, internships and 6 years of freewheeling lo-fi shit need to start paying off.

Anyways, I always make a list of my gear, and at this point, I'm pretty comfortable with it, right down to my little patch cables. I also usually make up little sketches of the room, and note possible spots that could yield strange sounds - things I'd like to check out when I get there. Since I'm a little limited by mics, I always make sure I know what instrument each one is going on.

I tried Albini's tape-an-omni-to-the-ground-in-front-of-the-kick thing, incedentaly. It was a plastic radio shack omni with an attached 1/8" plug and a bunch of damned adapters straight into my Tascam M-312's pre. It sounded just ok while tracking, but maybe I can fuck with it to get some usable delay for the whole kit sound.

I guess, I'll go wire everything up for mixing. I'm really hating my Paradigm Atoms right now (backup monitors behind the P. Titans) - they sound out of phase maybe, even though I've checked the wires a million times.

jim!

[cgarges]

Charging per hour would kill things.

Why?

How about a per-day fee? The problem with flat fees is that the bands frequently wind up taking major advantage of the enginer. There have been hundreds of threads on this. I recently played on a project with someone who was very picky and ultimately, his pickiness had to give in to the number of days he could afford to have me there. I was fine either way. I would not have been fine with it had I told him $100 per song or something.

Putting a value on your time makes the people receiving your talent and help appreciate the amount of effort you put forth a little more. A day rate is cool because people tend to nit-pick less about billable hours that way. "Do you charge for setup time? Do I have to pay for the time you spend burning my reference copies? Are my backups free?" All that sort of stuff.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[soundguy]

jim, it doesnt sound like you want to charge these guys. Its okay to help out friends and work for free, get over it. If you feel like you deserve to be paid, then bill them. If you are in this situation where you've been working for free and are worried that billing them will probably ruin things, you may very well be right. There are guys out there I do free stuff with on a yearly basis and love every minute of it. Its more important for me to make cool music with some folks than it is for them to pay me the little money they can afford in the first place. Then there are some people who if they were billionaires would still not have enough money to hire me on a session, dealing with some people is not worth any amount of money. If you want to maintain your bro relationship with the band but slowly work in some kind of fee, why not propose that they pay you some kind of fee that you all can agree upon but tell them they can pay you "whenever they can afford it" which might be never. You proably wont be too too bummed if they never pay you and if you do the record for say, $500 flat, the world aint gonna change if you never get paid and if you do, it will be cool to have $500 in your pocket. What it does do is sorta line them up for a billing situaiton the next time they want to work with you. Sorta makes that transisition from "bro" to "pro" a little less rocky. I personally wouldnt even bother with trying to get paid per CD unless you take the payment as a flat percentage on CD's pressed every time they make CD's. Running around being an accountant trying to keep track of their sales, even if they are really organized, is likely not going to be much fun and could easily turn you into a big nag if they one day out of the blue start to look at it as such. From your posts, it doesnt seem like its a big money situation in the first place, so Id try to find a relaxed way to maybe get some dough easily and hopefully not bum out on the situation if you dont. Id focus more on getting things set up so that when they come back to record the next thing they'll expect to be paying you something rather than have to go through some wierd process of billing your friends all over again.

maybe thats all shitty advice, I dont know. Ive never got anywhere good sweating the small bucks in life and if you have a goood time working and hanging with these guys, maybe thats more important in the big picture. Marking up some "free" sessions to some street cred around town is hardly a bad idea especially if those "free" sessions are for your friends band who you like, I tend to work on projects that I dig much harder than stuff that I really dont like at all.

dave

[joelpatterson]

Charging per hour would kill things.

Why?

Because that makes everyone hyper about how long everything takes to do.

In theory, a dollar off the top of each CD sold is ideal, because it doesn't hurt anyone, but practically--unless you are the exclusive source and salesman--as dave points out it's a nightmare: somehow, the money band members get for selling CDs at shows is immediately absorbed into their ectoplasm, so to get that dollar you'll need a nice sharp scapel (which is not a bad idea to have on hand anyway).

The first time you charge for what you do has a harshness built into it, I know, you're kind of almost a little embarassed and don't want to drive people away.
Occasional jobs for "free" can be a blast, but that's in the context of being paid all the time. One thing after another for free is drag city.

Any formula you devise will have it's detractors, but I'd settle on something and then, one bright day, from now on folks this is how it works. Would you guys rather have $100 in your pockets, or would you rather have an awesome recording of your song? Some people will be alienated, and others will be glad to take you up on your offer. Have faith in what you do.

[cgarges]

Charging per hour would kill things.

Why?

Because that makes everyone hyper about how long everything takes to do.

I was really asking Jim, but I don't see that as an absolute. Until last year, I've never been in a position to charge by the day, so I've had to charge by the hour because that's been the rate at which I pay for studios. I've been doing it that way almost every day for almost nine years. It doesn't automatically sprinkle some magic dust over a sesion that makes everyone tense. Some people get like that, but are usually likely to be like that anyway. The percentage of times where billing by the hour has directly affected the flow of the session moreso than any other factors is pretty minute.

In theory, a dollar off the top of each CD sold is ideal, because it doesn't hurt anyone, but practically--unless you are the exclusive source and salesman--as dave points out it's a nightmare: somehow, the money band members get for selling CDs at shows is immediately absorbed into their ectoplasm, so to get that dollar you'll need a nice sharp scapel (which is not a bad idea to have on hand anyway).

I agree. I've thought about doing this kind of thing for certain people, but can't bring myself to having to deal with it. Having to take care of "points" myself would be a nightmare, I think.

The first time you charge for what you do has a harshness built into it, I know, you're kind of almost a little embarassed and don't want to drive people away.

I understand, but at some point, it will behoove you to get oiver that feeling, which usually comes after doing it a few times and getting in the mindset that your time and/or talent is worth something tangible. For years, I've been hearing from people, "Oh, I'd love to just play music for a living," or "I'd love to record bands full-time" or that sort of thing, but then these people never do anything abotu tryign to get paid for their work. It's because I have a standard of not working for free that I've been able to pay my rent doing this for the past few years. Apparently, it's not an issue with as many people as you think it might be.

Occasional jobs for "free" can be a blast, but that's in the context of being paid all the time. One thing after another for free is drag city.

Again, I agree totally. If these guys are hooking you up or whatever, that's awesome. Honestly, I have jobs like that that I do. I didn't get paid to go to Abbeyy Road, but I went and I don't regret it one bit. In fact, I got a bunch more work out of the record I took there, but I got paid for that work. At some point, you have to get over the fear of saying, "My time and expenses are worth X."

Any formula you devise will have it's detractors, but I'd settle on something and then, one bright day, from now on folks this is how it works. Would you guys rather have $100 in your pockets, or would you rather have an awesome recording of your song? Some people will be alienated, and others will be glad to take you up on your offer. Have faith in what you do.

Amen!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[choke3d]

I haven't noticed anybody throwing out gear trade as an entry in to getting paid. It isn't cash, but if the project could use a certain mic, etc. it isn't a bad way to get them to understand that your time is worth something, and they are also getting to use the item on their project.
The first record I ever did - for free on a TSR-8 with really limited gear - was a challenge to say the least. Their mastering guy could only work with digital files (I think everyone on the project was a "good buddy" and not really pro). I had mixed to a 1/4" Teac reel-to-reel. They gave me a new mbox to get the files into PT. Not "pro", but it made me feel pretty good about things, and I've certainly used the mbox on other location projects.

[kayagum]

I talked this over with my girl last night, and we couldn't decide what method of charging would be appropriate at this point. I feel like I need to make that decision soon. We did agree it was time for me to start getting paid, however, so she agrees with all you folks. Recording school, internships and 6 years of freewheeling lo-fi shit need to start paying off.

Let me get this straight. You went to school for this, did free internships, and you're still undecided about charging money? Wow. This is right up there with bands paying clubs for the "privilege" of playing there.

I suppose it's a free market, and anyone can give away their money or their time. You probably think I'm a cold-hearted capitalist bastard because I have a full time non-music related day job, and I still charge for my music services. Truth is, the money is more about filtering whether someone is serious enough about their project to commit the time, money and expecting a corresponding return.

Every time I think I'm charging too much, someone calls me up and gives me a job that eventually ends up paying better. I usually charge what I consider to be a 50% rate to people I know or like, and in more than one case, they end up paying 100% anyway.

Now, I'm lucky. But I think I've generated some of my luck because people know I don't fuck around when I'm on the clock. And I agree only to work with people who don't fuck around either.

You get what you pay for. You also get what you ask for.

Do yourself a favor, and start charging. If not with these guys (and, no offense, they don't sound like the second coming of anything), then maybe the next project you encounter. If you're trying to spec a job, offer to record 1 song. Tops.

PS: If you have a fear of success, don't wait for Oprah to recommend "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. It's disgustingly new-age (even though the author used to be married to Martin Scorcese), but most of the serious points in the book are valid. If I got paid a dollar for every blocked artist I've ever met, I could retire comfortably.