Studio Gigmare!

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 12:04 pm

I just had my first! I've had plenty of the performance, "onstage in my underwear*" type dreams. But this morning I had my first nightmare about a recording session. What's worse, it was around a session that I actually had booked this morning, so while it was happening, it seemed pretty real.

I got to the studio with my wife and my buddy Forrest in tow (no idea why, neither of them are engineers). Once there, I noticed that someone had dragged a mattress into the control room and had clearly been sleeping there. The owners were in the control room with a bunch of college kids. All this is about ten minutes before my client is supposed to show up to record his classical guitar-type originals. The owners leave the control room and the kids stay and one of them pops a bottle of champagne. At this point, I realize that the owners and the kids are drunk. I kick the kids out of the control room and notice that the owners have replaced our desk with this weird sort of bookshelf thingey that mostly blocks the monitors, except for where they've added a TV (non-flatscreen complete with rabbit ears), in which case they've totally blocked the left channel.

Anyway, as I'm herding the kids out of the control room, one of the drunken owners says "It's cool, we'll party in the lounge." We're not that big of a space, so having a bunch of drunk and rowdy 20-somethings around is going to kill my session. So I decide to cancel and I go to find the owners to tell them they're going to owe me my hourly for the time, since they've effectively canceled me without 24 hours notice**.

Only problem is that we no longer have a lounge. Instead, I'm wandering through this odd sort of patchwork suburb trying to find them. The kids are everywhere and drunk and now possibly rolling on ecstasy. It takes me forever to find the owners, who are too wasted to really process what I'm telling them. But then, when I try to go back, I can't find my way. Hours go by and the sun comes up (I'm not sure why, as my session was supposed to start at 10am, which means that I've been gone for almost a day now), and I begin to freak out that my wife is going to think I joined the party with the college kids.

Then I woke up and realized that I'd been dreaming, and that I wouldn't have a studio full of drunk kids when Steve showed up at ten.

Sooooo...I'm clearly a messed up individual. Does anyone else have crazy session dreams/nightmares they can remember well enough to post?

* I've not played in any band where underwear is normal stage garb.
** In real, walking life, I've never had to state this sort of policy with the people I'm talking about here. They're organized and professional and cool folks. But in the dream, I figured if they were going to screw me out of work to drink and do drugs with a bunch of kids, I was going to amke it financially painful for them. Which is what I'd probably do in real life, since I know I'd never book another hour in a situation like that again.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 12:33 pm

i like the bookshelf where the board used to be the best.

i had a dream awhile back that i walked into my studio and it was empty. that was nice. i think i actually forced myself awake and went into the studio to make sure everything was still there.

i have a sort of vague recurring dream involving finding all this unused basement space at my place and trying to make it into a studio.

after a long day of editing i usually dream about waveforms...

CurtZHP · Post by **CurtZHP** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:38 pm

I used to have this recurring nightmare back when I was a radio announcer; and it even popped up once in a while after I left that job.

I'd be sitting in the control room. It would be 30 seconds to news time at the top of the hour. I'd have no copy, the cart decks (this gives you an idea of how long ago this was...) would be empty, and the wire service printer is across the hall. In short, I'm utterly unprepared for what's supposed to happen in less than a minute; and I can't even find a 60 second spot to run while I sprint across the hall to get something coherent to read on the air.

Electro-Voice 664 · Post by **Electro-Voice 664** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:40 pm

Yes, drunken youth is terrifying
http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopi ... plin+dream

CedarSound · Post by **CedarSound** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:41 pm

Wow, sounds like you guys have really expanded the lounge since the last time I was there!

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:09 pm

>>>>I used to have this recurring nightmare back when I was a radio announcer; and it even popped up once in a while after I left that job.

I'd be sitting in the control room. It would be 30 seconds to news time at the top of the hour. I'd have no copy, the cart decks (this gives you an idea of how long ago this was...) would be empty, and the wire service printer is across the hall. In short, I'm utterly unprepared for what's supposed to happen in less than a minute; and I can't even find a 60 second spot to run while I sprint across the hall to get something coherent to read on the air.<<<<

Hah. The classic "Dead Air" dream. Curt, you haven't lived until it's _actually happened to you_. (Can anybody say-- bathroom really far from control room?)

GJ

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:39 pm

CedarSound wrote:Wow, sounds like you guys have really expanded the lounge since the last time I was there!

C Penn was the one who said "Fuck it! We're goin' tuh th' lounge!"

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 4:46 pm

Electro-Voice 664 wrote:Yes, drunken youth is terrifying
http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopi ... plin+dream

That one feels like one of my performance gigmares. I'm so busy looking for a setlist or a reed or something that I miss the start of the show and have to run out half-dressed.

Nick Sevilla · Post by **Nick Sevilla** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 6:20 pm

I once edited an entire song in Pro Tools.

Next morning... the song was there in the studio's DAW, but none of my edits were done.

Boy was I bummed out. It was so perfect, so real...

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:06 am

ha ha!

CurtZHP · Post by **CurtZHP** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 8:28 am

Gregg Juke wrote:
Hah. The classic "Dead Air" dream. Curt, you haven't lived until it's _actually happened to you_. (Can anybody say-- bathroom really far from control room?)

GJ

Oh, it's happened, trust me! I'd be in the can, or the production room, or just not paying attention....

When I worked overnights at this particular station, most of the overnight programming was a network feed. This network did a news break at five minutes before the hour that we didn't carry for contractual reasons; so we'd have to insert local material.

A few times, I'd doze off only to be awakened by the trumpet fanfare intro music to the network news. Imagine a guy falling out of his chair trying to wake up and find the button on the console, arms flailing like he's just been stuck in the ass with a cattle prod.

Good times!

Gregg Juke · Post by **Gregg Juke** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 12:53 pm

>>>>the trumpet fanfare intro music to the network news.<<<

"Da Da Da da, da dant-dah-dant-daaaaahhhh.... It's 'All Things Considered'."

My favorite intro/outro music was from "As It Happens." It was the 80's, but they had the grooviest canned mid-60's "Music Minus One" theme and bumper music... It would also have worked great on any elementary school film-strip from the same era.

GJ

joelpatterson · Post by **joelpatterson** » Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:18 pm

Yes yes yes, loved that show... these days they've got a Sergio Mendes/Brasil '66 style version of the theme song... it's just not the same!....

@?,*???&? · Post by **@?,*???&?** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:36 am

I was skeptical when I first read this post and then that night- after reading it- had one of these dreams.

It was a Larry Crane recording workshop in Portland. Larry seemed to be living in an older section of Portland and had 5 or 6 houses that were for the clients to use that were on the same street and seemed to be adjacent or across the street from one another. The clients were those coming to take part in the workshop. The idea was to use each house as it's own recording space. There were mentors for each house and about 4 or 5 other people who were a combination of band members and people who wanted to learn how to record. The houses were really run-down and everything seemed to be broken or have all of the common problems recording at home would have- cramped space, no isolation, no console, bad electric, resonant wood floors, square rooms, etc. Total nightmare, but all the music came out sounding really 'cool indie' without being trashy or poorly done. The smell of mildew, old wood and lots of pet hair were evident in the dream too.

Total DIY frenzy. No shit. And I blame the original poster for causing me to have this dream.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:45 am

hahahahaha awesome. that must've really been a nightmare for you!

i dreamt of waveforms last night.

here's a non-recording related dream that i share with you good people solely in the hopes of eliciting a chuckle:

i'm at the doctor's getting a routine physical. we're in a tiny 8x8 exam room. he does all the normal stuff and then goes over to a printer in the corner. this printer is circa 1977 and it uses the super old school green and white paper with the perforated edges. you remember.

anyway, the printout is a list of all the ladies i've had sex with in the past year. in the dream, unlike real life, i was quite a player and the list was rather long. sweet!

so the list is divided up into 3 columns. the first is the names of all my conquests. the second is the date on which the sordid acts occurred. the third is how long said acts took and it reads like this:

1 minute
1 minute
2 minutes
1 minute
1 minute
etc

i look at it, horrified, and say "doc surely there's gotta be some mistake here!"

he rests a hand gently on my shoulder and says "don't worry, it's very common."

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