That "Oh Shit" Feeling

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ALFweeks
audio school graduate
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:26 pm

Post by ALFweeks » Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:55 am

Just be thankful the clients were understanding.

rwc
resurrected
Posts: 2333
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:21 pm
Location: Bed Stuy, Brooklyn

Post by rwc » Sat Apr 28, 2012 6:11 pm

Brendan O Brian shows up 18 hours early for a Bruce Springsteen session and wants to start recording immediately. 18. hours. early.

"I want to record an idea. Hit record with any mic, any mic is fine." I paraphrase.

"We do not have a tape machine set up yet sir, I have nothing to record you to." I paraphrase the assistant engineer as the tech and I practically jump down the stairs to get the A800!"

"Any mic is fine! Any mic!"

"We do not have a rig set up yet sir!"

This continues for about five minutes. I jumped downstairs while the assistant continues explaining that his lack of preference for any individual mic doesn't matter if there's no medium to record to.

We get the machine upstairs. Halfway through the calibration, a power supply dies. We run downstairs to get a new power supply. Fuck if I'm going to figure out what's wrong with it while he's here exclaiming he wants to start immediately.

The 50 yr old tech guru guy goes "this is bad. this is bad, bad bad. we're fucked. this is bad" about 10 times. He likes to be negative sometimes because he regails the pre-digital age, where you couldn't get in trouble for getting blowjobs in the mic locker from the receptionist and smoking weed in the tech room. Damn the post Giuliani era and Digidesign!

I'm 18 and work for minimum wage, and you're a famous producer with a label paying thousands a day for you to be here. If you yell at me enough I'm probably fired! So I'm nervous.

The tech more senior to me helps me grab a new PSU and we put it in there. We're aligning away as fast as we can. It's been 45 minutes since the guy got there, and he wants to start recording NOW, and is becoming visibly irritated that this is taking so long. I'm only at channel 16 out of 24. Ah well. If you want quality, wait, or show up TOMORROW..... I feel bad that the PSU died, but I don't feel bad that you're 18 hours early. I say My mentor looks at me, smiles, and says "we're done sir, you're ready." tracks 16-24 are likely as out of whack as 1-15 were(which was a lot, a tape machine that wasn't used for a month and moved three times, imagine that!) We hope they use those tracks for the third kick drum or some other irrelevant nonsense.

I go upstairs at 1 AM when they leave(I got to work at 10 AM that day) with the other tech guy, and we get to work on channels 16-24. Around channel 22 or 23 the tape machine dies again.

Crappy wiring inside the tape machine kills the channel 16-24 power supply, so we're back to work. Bring the tape machine downstairs to the shop, fix it, and go back upstairs.

We find the wiring flaw, fix the power supply. It's close to 3 or 4 in the morning at this point. We go back to work and redo all the work from scratch, put the tape machine back. All aligned. Beautiful.

I leave at 5:15 AM. I have to be back here at 10 AM. FML. Well, at least I did my job and fixed it all so they could have their session. I'm a dedicated employee!

The next day, me and the other guy were feeling good about resolving the problem. Until we're told that the console was left in LINE, not MIC. This was a preset session, meaning you don't touch ANYTHING they had going, or you're fired. If you unplug a cable they had in, turn a knob, press a button, you're fired. So this was a biggie. For 45 seconds they had no idea why they couldn't hear what was going on in the room, so they asked who was in the room last night by name, and didn't want us up there again.
Real friends stab you in the front.

Oscar Wilde

Failed audio engineer & pro studio tech turned Component level motherboard repair store in New York

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