The worst session you have ever done.

[japmn]

I will go first.


6 piece Greek band (guitar, upright bass, drum kit, 2 bad synths, violin, singer) get to the studio about 20 min. late and after about an hour or so of placing mics and plugging in DIs and getting everyone situated, I start getting basic levels on a Mackey 24-8 feeding the Protools V.4.2 system (this was a while back) The main guy (only one that speaks English) is already pissed baout "how long it is taking to get going" and let me remind you he was late, and it has only been a bit more than an hour. That is light speed.

After a few fights with the keyboard player "Bad connector on YOUR keyboard! Will not pass signal! Cannot be used! Fine I'll use the head phone out! Yes I have a splitter so you can monitor with your earbuds." He did not want to use the headphone mix i generated for everyone else.

Now it is about 3 hours into the session and I am ready to hit record. "Click Track, Sure! I'll grab the Metronome." this is before Protools could generate a click. "Oh you need 5/4 and a 7/4 bridge? This is going to take a little while. How many measures of 5/4 do you need before the change to 7/4? You don't know? Well I could just give you guys 2/4 and you can just count? No? well this is going to take a little while to do."

With that they packed up their shit and left. They were charged nothing. I made nothing.

The only session I have ever done that ended badly.

[JASIII]

wow, that sounds awful. I have nothing that compares to that.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i haven't ever had any tracking sessions go horribly awry at my place....hhmmmm....one time when i was working at a friends place, he left me to do an RnB session...singer showed up with the archetype intimidating manager and a full posse. they had their track on a DAT and for whatever reason i couldn't get the signal from the dat machine to come up on the board...i was sweating it and they were totally making fun of me...somehow i got it to work, set up the mic, the guy ran through a half dozen TOTALLY GENIUS takes right in a row, i got a quick rough mix together and they dug it when i'd throw the snare into the echo here and there, so it ended up ok, but i was stressing there for awhile.

i've had a few things come in for mastering where i press play and am just staring at the speakers thinking 'WHAT am i gonna do with this?'

[tommy]

Bad spoken word session. At least it was easy.

[vvv]

When I blew my voice out on the last chorus of the last song.

Phil Bonnet (RIP), was going to fly it in (in '92, this was kind of rad) when the cheap chianti I was drinking finally relaxed my throat enough to howl it out.


Another, when the junkie singer/guitarist kept nodding out, waking up, and turning up his amp in an apartment recording session, and singing as loud as possible in the bathroom "vocal booth". The broomstick-on-the-ceiling from below made it onto a track or two....

[JGriffin]

When I blew my voice out on the last chorus of the last song.

Phil Bonnet (RIP), was going to fly it in (in '92, this was kind of rad) when the cheap chianti I was drinking finally relaxed my throat enough to howl it out.

Was this at Solid Sound?

[vvv]

Yessuh, in fine ol' Hoffman Estados, I b'leev.

Prince of a guy.

[darjama]

As a (home studio) engineer, it was recording a singer who insisted, on getting drunk before screaming thru his alt-country songs. Then listening back the next day, he calls me and accuses me of doing something in the recording that made his voice sound too raspy.

As a band member, it was going to this studio our singer found (cheapest studio in Philly and proud of it!) where they recorded the guitar amps with sm58's hanging in front with the diaphragm 2 inches from the ground and pointing directly down (they were in a different room so I didn't see this until we were done). They had also routed the tracks so that they overlapped on the ADATs, and the bass DI and ride were on each other's tracks, etc. They insisted on excluding all the overlapped tracks when mixing instead of trying to work with them. Plus I'm guessing their ADATs weren't well maintained because there was glitches everywhere. The result was...craptacular.

[logancircle]

This guy just got out of jail, was living in a shelter and NEEDED to make an Instrumental American Folk Songs record. He told me he was going to single-handedly re-interest people in songs like "When Jonny Comes Marching Home Again" and all that shit. So I agreed to do it for free because of his situation. He had to be the worst guitarist I've ever heard. It was awful, everything took so much longer than necessary because he heard imperfections that weren't there and didn't notice flagrant mistakes. He wanted to do 30+ songs. Finally I gave him a 4-track and gave Cpt. America the old heave ho! But I lost sleep over it.

[radical recording]

I've had a few bad sessions over the years--late musicians, them showing up without the drumkit, horrible players, drinking in the studio, that kind of stuff--but this morning I get a call from a guy who wants to bring in a 9-piece ukulele band to do Christmas songs. No lie.

Should I be worried?

[MoreSpaceEcho]

this thread is really starting to shape up.

[JGriffin]

this morning I get a call from a guy who wants to bring in a 9-piece ukulele band to do Christmas songs. No lie.

Should I be worried?

Perhaps, but I don't think anyone on this board will ever forgive you if you turn that gig down.

And of course you have to document the sessions in a thread.

[JGriffin]

Yessuh, in fine ol' Hoffman Estados, I b'leev.

Prince of a guy.

Yeah, it's too bad what happened to him. I worked on some "tribute to Phil" video a few years back.

John Towner over at Solid Sound is sort of a family friend. Great dude. I've known him for 20+ years and done a bunch of sessions over there. Your session would have been when they had the 24-track in use. They still have it but it sits in a corner...they're pretty much all ProTools now...what the market wants I guess.

[Jess P]

One time I recorded marriachi music and spoken dialog for a puppet show involving a strange relationship between a cockroach and kitty cat.

My worst session though was a few sessions I had with this conterperary christian singer lady. We recorded at her house and she was so nervous about singing she would waste all my time asking me questions about her computer. I spent an entire 3 hour session putting a music player on her my space profile and choosing photos for the album cover. Then when she was ready to sing she pulled out a casett tape, and I had asked specifically asked if the tracks she had were on CD. I ended up micing her karaoke machine. She later left a bad message on my phone for not printing out her CD covers, which I didn't agree to. Never saw her agian, but she did pay on time.

[Jon Nolan]

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopi ... crawl+hole

fuck. me.