That "Oh Shit" Feeling

tonewoods · Post by **tonewoods** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:57 pm

I can't listen to Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff" without listening hard for Phill Brown's "Oh Shit" moment...

Haven't heard it yet...

Tragabigzanda · Post by **Tragabigzanda** » Thu Jan 26, 2012 6:39 am

The first time I sat down to mix a record on a real console was a big "Oh shit!" moment. The mixes were super dense, the songs quite dynamic, and as the first day of mixing wore on, it became apparent that I had no idea what I was doing, and that some noisy channels on the Neve were more trouble than I knew how to deal with. I had no choice but to call the studio owner, who very graciously came out to the studio, bailed me out, showed me a couple tricks to simplify my process, and talked me off the ledge. I ate the $$ that day, felt like a schmuck, and learned that you should never go into a mix thinking you know exactly what you're gonna do. Super humbling, and really thankful that happened with such an understanding and patient group of people.

Leopold · Post by **Leopold** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:17 am

I've had a few in fact last weekend I had somewhat of an "oh shit" moment.... I was working with a band that was recording most of their tracks live to tape and even though I swear I hit the play and record buttons, I must not have...so the band rolled through a really good take of a song and when we rolled back to hear it.....wasn't there. I just apologized, they walked downstairs and ran through it again. No big deal even though that embarrassing feeling of..."uh, what happened?" was pretty shitty.

I remember when I first started working on tape, I had a Tascam MS16 and when I loaded the tape onto the machine, I didn't notice that the head shield was up, so the tape was never making contact with the heads....yeah after the 3rd take, I walked over to the machine, inspected the tape path and figured it out.......

E

Tragabigzanda · Post by **Tragabigzanda** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:07 am

Ha, your tape headaches made me think of another time I had completely forgotten about: I was tracking a band to tape, and the machine was situated in such a way that I couldn't comfortably watch it's meters while tracking, and this was in an "open room" environment (meaning I was monitoring with headphones). Long-story-short, the card for channel 1 on the Otari crapped out somewhere in there, and we wound up tracking everything without an inside-kick track. Ugh. Imagine me telling the poor band we could either track it all again, or the drummer could go back and just track his kick drum (this was before the wonders of Drumagog, et al had found their way into my repertoire). He opted for the kick drum overdubs, and it worked surprisingly easy.

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 4:12 pm

Last week we had about two hours to jam and record.

We wrote a song and played it OK by the 3rd time and then the phone rang. At a hour in then, I 0'd the R16 to lose the tentative takes and record the 4th time expecting it to kill.

Then we played the second hour and got a second song.

WHEN I realized I had not flipped the record button back on.

So in the 15 minutes I was willing to be late by, we ran thru them again in reverse order, totally messing up the first-written tune (that we now had played second.)

When I got home and downloaded the tracks, I realized that the quick run-thru on the last-written was OK, but the first-written totally sucked.

:vomiting graemlin:

However, on playback after the two new takes of each song there still existed the last take of the first-written, so the day was saved, but still,

Oh, SHIT! was said many times.

(The first-written is out to my horns/keys guy in England, but the second written can be heard here.)

sessionsatstudiom · Post by **sessionsatstudiom** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:13 pm

My latest Oh Shit moment was working on a post production project. I had imported the audio from an OMF but just linked to it rather than copy like I normally do. Well I did the mix etc... The client comes to me a week or so later with one line a frame out of sync. I go to pull up the session to fix it and my original audio is gone. The drive that the OMF was on will not mount. The client is there and I am starting to panic a bit. But did not let the client know what was happening. I kept my cool. Then I remembered that I had printed a dialog stem.
Got the project done. Client did not know the drive tanked. I still had the OMF on my FTP redownloaded it. Relinked the audio. Did a save as on another drive.

All happy. But very nervous. I was glad I had printed the stems for the project even before final approval. Otherwise would have taken a bit longer. The client would have been cool with it. But I did not need to worry them.

Mike

ulriggribbons · Post by **ulriggribbons** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 10:46 am

I got a call from a friend about live multitrack recording a high profile show in a small club.

It didn't pay much, but when opportunities present themselves that seem like they could open new doors, I generally will pursue it.

I rolled down to the club with a 24-track and a rack of mic pres, and captured the whole show with a split from the microphones. Was an all day event and I worked my ass off, but the show was great, and I was overjoyed as I was monitoring it as it went down, and it sounded amazing. I can remember handing the headphones to my engineer friend and watching him smile, it sounded that good.

The "Oh shit!" moment came the next day when I went to transfer the raw tracks over to a hard drive to send off to the client.

There was a digital "hash" on top of *EVERY* track that was recorded. The entire show, totally useless. Never heard anything like it.

Rather than trying to place any blame, I ended up just owning the whole thing. My fault, my bad, the recordings messed up. Got my ass chewed on by a couple people, and felt like shit about the whole thing for months. Nothing like looking like an assclown to whole bunch of newly met people who are very successful in the industry.

I followed up with the management of the club, arranged to bring my entire setup back to the club to record another show, just to see what the hell happened, and the subsequent show went down with no problems.

That's my story about the one that got away

ju

rogersbarton · Post by **rogersbarton** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:11 am

Shit, sorry to hear about that and glad the 2nd shot went OK.

ALFweeks · Post by **ALFweeks** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:39 am

Definitely NOT the thing you want to happen. Glad things worked out in the end though.

gregnrom · Post by **gregnrom** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 3:14 pm

One of my first sessions at Electrical was a rock band that I was recording to the 24-track. This was their first time in an bigger studio, spending a bunch of money on a session. We were doing basic tracks all day. After dinner, we decided to punch-in a few repairs. I got my times, and the bass player went first. When the first spot came by, I hit record, and everything went silent. I had left all the tracks armed! There was no escaping it. I had just recorded a second's worth of nothing over their master take. Luckily for me, they were super cool people, and good musicians. I told them flatly, "I just recorded over this part of the song by accident. Can you do me a favor, and play those 2 bars again, together as a band?" Half confused, they went down and played that section again. I spliced it in, and it was all fixed within 10-15 long sweaty minutes. Super lucky it worked. Timing, intensity, sound all needed to be the same. It could have been much worse.

Tragabigzanda · Post by **Tragabigzanda** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 5:29 am

Yea, the best thing to do is just own it. "I just fucked up. We need to fix it. I'm sorry." I think it's good to do something else for them, too, like comp 30 mins of the session, or some such token of appreciation for their understanding.

Derrick · Post by **Derrick** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 8:35 am

Or throw a chair....

trodden · Post by **trodden** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:44 pm

gregnrom wrote:One of my first sessions at Electrical was a rock band that I was recording to the 24-track. This was their first time in an bigger studio, spending a bunch of money on a session. We were doing basic tracks all day. After dinner, we decided to punch-in a few repairs. I got my times, and the bass player went first. When the first spot came by, I hit record, and everything went silent. I had left all the tracks armed! There was no escaping it. I had just recorded a second's worth of nothing over their master take. Luckily for me, they were super cool people, and good musicians. I told them flatly, "I just recorded over this part of the song by accident. Can you do me a favor, and play those 2 bars again, together as a band?" Half confused, they went down and played that section again. I spliced it in, and it was all fixed within 10-15 long sweaty minutes. Super lucky it worked. Timing, intensity, sound all needed to be the same. It could have been much worse.

I've done that. Twice. Luckily there was another couple of takes on the reel. And luckily everything was going to be put into PT anyhow, cause my tape edit skills are severely lacking. But yeah, that's one of the worse feelings ever.

rogersbarton · Post by **rogersbarton** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 6:14 am

I bet you feel all the food you had for lunch rising up.

Beat Poet · Post by **Beat Poet** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 7:04 am

rogersbarton wrote:I bet you feel all the food you had for lunch rising up.

I have just reading this thread!

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That "Oh Shit" Feeling

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