Post embarrasing rookie mistakes you made

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Bro Shark
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Post embarrasing rookie mistakes you made

Post by Bro Shark » Fri May 21, 2010 3:20 pm

I expanded my DAW's I/O by buying my first-ever ADAT device (Motu 8pre), and I was up against the clock at my space to get some tracking done. So I ran down there and unboxed everything and went to hook it up... but why the fuck aren't the cables compatible with the ports on my 002R? I tried like 100 times to jam em in like a monkey. They'd kinda go in, but never really fit or latch in any way, and nothing was connecting in the software... So, I got smart and got out my pocketknife and ripped the little dust-doors off the ADAT ports on the 002R!! Thinking, "these must be temporary until you get your cables. If I remove them, the cable will seat perfectly" (?!?!?) The shit still didn't fit. This went on for at least an hour or two, and I was really sweating...

Until I finally realized, of course, that the cables ship with little plastic guards over the ends. They just pop right off.

I'm two dust-doors poorer and had quite the :oops: moment... luckily I was the only guy there at the time.

Let's hear your rookie mistakes here, I know you all have em.

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Fri May 21, 2010 3:41 pm

Mine were mostly tape related. Doing a punch in on the wrong track, accidentally recording over a chunk of the good take, thinking the machine was recording when it really wasn't. Good stuff like that.
Also, letting a fairly bad guitarist record over a really great solo because there were no free tracks and he said he could do it better. Four hours later we're punching in note by note and he has completely forgotten anything he knew about playing the instrument. Good times.

I've come a long, long way.

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Brett Siler
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Post by Brett Siler » Fri May 21, 2010 7:26 pm

I just posted one in the other thread about my Tascam M3500. Basically I had the cables from inserts into the patchbay hooked upwrong and it made my direct outs on each channel sound like shit.

My most embarrassing moment was few years ago when my computer ate it and the hard drive deleted Pro Tools files from two different bands I was working on, with out any back ups! I had to call and break the news, that was not fun at all. It put the fear in me and now I back stuff up religiously. In fact I'm about to buy some more hard drives so i can back up more!

mscottweber
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Post by mscottweber » Fri May 21, 2010 8:47 pm

I've had my fair share of confusing which end of the mic is the front end :oops:
In my defense, whomever was using the Blue Mouse before me had rotated the capsule around, so at least THAT time the mic body was actually facing the right way...

MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat May 22, 2010 7:19 am

do carpentry-related rookie mistakes count? cause i made a ton of those whilst building my new room.

recording-related...besides the usual recording over something/mispatched cables/shit not plugged in stuff which everyone's done, i think the biggest rookie mistake i made was thinking i could make something happen when it wasn't already happening on the tape.

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jgimbel
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Post by jgimbel » Sat May 22, 2010 7:55 am

Thinking I'd just buy a little four track to get some song ideas down and not buy any more. It's never stopped. Goodbye thousands upon thousands of dollars, hello new obsession.

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Post by drumsound » Sat May 22, 2010 10:41 am

Going into the music business.

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Snarl 12/8
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Post by Snarl 12/8 » Sat May 22, 2010 12:33 pm

Remember people, what you type here will live on in infamy long after you're dead. Putting your mistakes here might wind up being the rookie mistake of your career.

Edit: not to piss on the thread or anything.
Carl Keil

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us
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Post by us » Sat May 22, 2010 3:31 pm

ive made the mistake of not pissing on the tape when i needed to. as well as leaving shit unplugged.

and not testing the software on the computer well enough prior to tracking.

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DrummerMan
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Post by DrummerMan » Sun May 23, 2010 8:27 pm

where to start??? I'm going to skip right past the standard "oh golly! I recorded over stuff!!"-type stuff (which I've done plenty of) and go straight to the truly embarrassing things that no-one likes to admit to and that you have to live with (and hopefully learn from) forever.

-buying gear based on advertising hype alone (though once or twice this did give me some amazing keeper gear, like a pair of Summit TLA-50's and that CAD e100).

-badmouthing a band, to mutual friends, that screwed me out of a months rent for rehearsal space in my old studio.

-being a negative presence (sulky/obnoxious) in the studio around clients when things weren't going the way I thought they should in a session.


I'm sure there's others, but these stick out as really fucked up things I've done. I'd actually thought about making a thread like this for a while, but more like "the things you've done wrong...", since it seems we all seem eager to talk about the ways in which we've gone about things in a righteous manner, and then point out stupid, immature, irresponsible things that we've seen "all these other guys" do, but don't seem to admit too often that we were once young(er) ourselves and might have miss-organized our own priorities at one time or another.

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jgimbel
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Post by jgimbel » Sun May 23, 2010 10:03 pm

Yeah post Drummerman. (I'm going to write you back shortly, sorry I hadn't replied yet!).

I think the biggest mistake I've made is paying attention more to the "way things SHOULD be" than the way things ARE. It's so easy once you realize there are all these wealths of information online and in amazing books and interviews to see what's working for other people and think it should be the same for you. The main example I have is with drum recording. I don't feel quite as stupid about it because drum recording on your own seems to be somewhat agreed upon to be pretty tricky. But I wound all over the place before finding sounds I really like. I started out with a "drum mic kit". It taught me a LOT about micing, but I never ever got sounds I was happy with. After first being introduced to Tape Op and the TOMB I was obsessed with "close micing is not how you hear a drum, it's not natural". I was actually almost finished recording an album at the time and most all the drums were close miced and I just wasn't totally happy with how everything sounded, and this to me confirmed that close mics were generally not good on drums, for what I was doing. After a while of recording random songs, tons of tests, I found the best sounds I've ever gotten by going as minimal as possible, but sticking close mics on what NEEDS it, and realizing there's no shame in it. If a one-mic drum track works for the song that's awesome and really fun, but if everything about it sounds great except that the snare is totally lacking body, it is not worth living with a not-up-to-par snare track just to keep the coolness of saying "yeah these drums were recorded with one mic". My mics are setup for a song I just recorded, where I used an XY pair of LDCs in front of the kit, and an e635 under the snare, and it's totally minimal and sound perfect for the song. However another song on the album has every drum close miced, plus two room mics. And it sounds perfect for the song. "It sounds perfect for the song" is what I should have been paying attention to all along, not "you have to close mic or it doesn't sound professional!" or "close mics are unnatural".

Another quick thing I did wrong was waiting WAY too long to really get into room mics. I think it's a product of that when you're starting out it's often hard to know that something you're recording sounds good because you don't know what certain sounds need. I did room mics years ago on guitar for example and hated them, but now I totally see what they can add when used right and I love them and use them all the time.

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DrummerMan
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Post by DrummerMan » Sun May 23, 2010 10:44 pm

jgimbel wrote:(I'm going to write you back shortly, sorry I hadn't replied yet!).
haha! don't sweat it. I wasn't worried...

MoreSpaceEcho
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Mon May 24, 2010 8:53 am

DrummerMan wrote:-being a negative presence (sulky/obnoxious) in the studio around clients when things weren't going the way I thought they should in a session.
that's a really good one. one learns not to do that real quick (hopefully!).

i've made the mistake of thinking i could engage jeff in a rational, grown-up debate....

Mane1234
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Post by Mane1234 » Wed May 26, 2010 3:47 am

Thinking that all I ever needed to put me in the same class as real engineers was more gear.

As for a session mistake I neglected to turn the headphone amp on when I was getting everything ready. Spent a good 45 or 50 minutes trying to figure out why we could hear stuff over the monitors but not in the headphones..
Of course I've had it in the ear before.....

Scott Greenberg
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rookie mistake

Post by Scott Greenberg » Thu May 27, 2010 9:35 am

I was recording vocals, and accidentally patched the headphones where the mic should be...and the mic where the headphones should be. And I couldn't figure out the problem right away because the headphones were still picking up sound like a mic. But probably came very close to damaging a very expensive microphone. And in the process I think I almost blew out the artist eardrums.
I'd like to change your mind by hitting it with a rock.

-TMBG

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