RANT: "in your spare time.."

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Rodgre
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RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by Rodgre » Tue May 04, 2021 4:10 am

If I hear one more client ask for me to do something in my "spare time" I am going to throw an Alesis 3630 through a window.

I believe "in your spare time" is code for "also for free" as well.

The majority of my clients over the years have bee very respectful of the work I do and the time I put into doing it, but there are always those clients who don't take it seriously enough to think that it takes time and effort to do this. They look at things through their own eyes and they might have the luxury of things like nights off, time to do laundry and the ability to have a sick day. I am sort of at a moment of "perfect storm" with a bunch of balls in the air, as they say, right now and I have several projects concurrently going that all might need a minor mix revision or for me to add some guitar parts or whatever... stuff I can do without the client in attendance. Just because they're not physically there, some people think that it's no big deal for me to drive a half hour to the studio and do an hour or two of revisions for them because they picture me just getting to another client's session 15 minutes early and firing up their session and adjusting something then bouncing and uploading it to them, or maybe staying late 15 minutes after another session. Seems like no big deal, right?

How many of you folks want to stay an extra hour after a 10 hour session, after you've just spent 45 minutes wrapping cables and putting mics away and your significant other texts you that dinner is getting cold or worse, it's already 11pm and you just want to go home to bed? Fine. We all do this all the time. It's part of the business. We like to keep the clients happy and we like to do good work. I just want to express to my clients that I just do not have "spare time". It doesn't exist. No time is spare. I don't sit and watch the sunset thinking about the wonders of life. I wrap cables. I fix sloppy kick drum parts. I comp vocals. I intonate your guitar. I'm not complaining about that part. I love that stuff and I don't mind doing the mix revisions and whatnot, but I guess I've just heard "in your spare time" four or five too many times in the last week.

I'm among friend here, so I can vent and be a dick, unlike how I might treat my clients. I want to say "take a number!" but instead I say "sure! I'll let you know when it's done!"

Rant over. Thanks for listening.
Roger

PS I did not write this post in my spare time. I did it while bouncing mixes and booking 3 sessions on the phone. :)

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by digitaldrummer » Tue May 04, 2021 6:17 am

I think for me if it's going to take more than 5 minutes to do whatever the spare time task is, then I would probably respond something like, "Sure, I will try to fit that in tomorrow. I estimate that will take about 2 hours" (or whatever) and make sure they understand it's going on their bill.
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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by Rodgre » Tue May 04, 2021 6:21 am

That's going to be the "new me". I'm going to start being very finite with booking mix tweaks and billing for them. Some tweaks, I might not feel right charging for, but if I am tying up billable studio time, I'm responsible for that and I need to charge the client for something. Electricity and rent don't grow on trees, and you're cutting into my time with my dogs!

Ha!

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by drumsound » Tue May 04, 2021 7:30 am

digitaldrummer wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 6:17 am
I think for me if it's going to take more than 5 minutes to do whatever the spare time task is, then I would probably respond something like, "Sure, I will try to fit that in tomorrow. I estimate that will take about 2 hours" (or whatever) and make sure they understand it's going on their bill.
-
exposure_bucks.jpg
This is perfect.

Also, I think it's OK to explain to clients that it's TIME and that is how your billing works. Spare time is yours and work time is paid for and theirs.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Tue May 04, 2021 7:51 am

The last year+ of pandemic style work has really helped me with this whole situation. Everything I've done has been remote and I've really had to be on top of keeping track of my time and billing appropriately. One thing that has helped has been to give clients an honest assessment of how much time their job will take. If their job isn't gong to fit that timeline I'll explain why and we discuss. If they request things that are going to put us over the estimate I explain it and we discuss. One of the plusses of remote work is that I'm working with folks that are recording at home and have a reasonable level of skill. Sometimes if there's a task to be done, like tuning vocal for instance, we can discuss wether it's better for them to handle that or pay me to do it. It's always made clear from the outset (by me) that time is time and it will be billed no mater how small the amount. The little stuff adds up quicker than you would expect if you're not clocking it. Sometimes I round down a bit, sometimes if it's close I round up a little.

At some point there was a plug in you could put on your master bus that would keep a tally of how much time you've spent on a song. It's was super helpful but I somehow lost it in my last computer migration and I can't remember who made it.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Tue May 04, 2021 8:27 am

The mastering version of this is "Hey that master you did sounds awesome, I made a couple tweaks to the mix, if you could just run this new one with the same settings that'd be great, thanks!"

As if I can just snap my fingers and make it so.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by Rodgre » Tue May 04, 2021 8:32 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 8:27 am
The mastering version of this is "Hey that master you did sounds awesome, I made a couple tweaks to the mix, if you could just run this new one with the same settings that'd be great, thanks!"

As if I can just snap my fingers and make it so.

New mix? New master. From scratch. That's how it is.

Roger

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by kslight » Tue May 04, 2021 11:14 am

I am reminded of my aunt being surprised at the result of the following situation: she has a high maintenance dog that “needs” specialized grooming because just any pet smart won’t do, she takes it to the breeder for grooming, way out in the sticks. She bought a brand new car recently, and decided she didn’t want to go to the breeder’s house to drop off / pickup the dog, because it’s 3 more miles of dirt road. The breeder / groomer accommodated her request, but also charged an extra $20 for it.

Of course, if you can afford a brand new car and a high maintenance dog, you can afford everything that goes with that (and she certainly can), but I don’t know what she expected.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by cgarges » Tue May 04, 2021 6:43 pm

digitaldrummer wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 6:17 am
I think for me if it's going to take more than 5 minutes to do whatever the spare time task is, then I would probably respond something like, "Sure, I will try to fit that in tomorrow. I estimate that will take about 2 hours" (or whatever) and make sure they understand it's going on their bill.
This is exactly what I do. Except that I never, ever say that I'm going to do it the next day. If I do, I look like a hero, but I always say that I'll see if I can get to it by the end of the week. Unless I KNOW that's not gonna happen. Then I'll say something like, "Well, I'm pretty slammed right now, but I'll see when I can get to it and let you know."

Chris Garges
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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by digitaldrummer » Wed May 05, 2021 5:40 am

cgarges wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 6:43 pm
Except that I never, ever say that I'm going to do it the next day.
under-commit and over-deliver! :lol:

that's usually what I do as well, unless it's an in-person thing and I know they'll be back the next day AND I have time before then...
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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by Scodiddly » Wed May 05, 2021 6:04 am

kslight wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 11:14 am
I am reminded of my aunt being surprised at the result of the following situation: she has a high maintenance dog that “needs” specialized grooming because just any pet smart won’t do, she takes it to the breeder for grooming, way out in the sticks. She bought a brand new car recently, and decided she didn’t want to go to the breeder’s house to drop off / pickup the dog, because it’s 3 more miles of dirt road. The breeder / groomer accommodated her request, but also charged an extra $20 for it.

Of course, if you can afford a brand new car and a high maintenance dog, you can afford everything that goes with that (and she certainly can), but I don’t know what she expected.
I suppose a punchline could be that she had bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee or something to handle that little bit of dirt road. :roll:

Ahem.

In the live sound world the equivalent is the "oh by the way", some extra thing that wasn't mentioned when the gig was planned. Like, "oh, can we have the music out in the lobby too?" asked about 5 minutes before doors. Or the dreaded surprise opening act. The usual response is "here is what we can do, and this is how it will impact the schedule". Sending a truck back to the shop for more gear is very definitely NOT free.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by roscoenyc » Wed May 05, 2021 9:26 am

Easy answer: I don't have any spare time. Lemme look at the calendar and see when I can get this done for you.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by trodden » Wed May 05, 2021 9:30 am

This is EXACTLY why it's taken me years to start building my next studio. Well, one of the reasons.

I lost my last place at the end of 2015. After that and a year and a half of very temporary living, a severely broken arm, financial woes, and mental health crises for both my wife and I... by 2017 we were finally in a permanent home that also has the space for studio number 4. This time I own the property (well the bank does) and no landlord to kick me out after 4-7 years and losing out of my build out. At the same time, my duties at my second and part time job (I've been keeping a mindless desk job that enables me to focus on music, tours, etc. for the last 10 years) as an engineer/production person at 90.3 KEXP picked up tremendously. I was putting an additional 4-20 hours a week at KEXP along with my "day job" and just didn't have time to build or run a studio again. The work at KEXP filled my audio nerd needs. I did set up a "control room" in my living room, taking up nearly half of it, and made a couple records for friends and myself in the little free time I had. Tracking out of other facilities in town or running a snake to my unfinished garage, but nothing like how I was making records from 2005-2015.

Well.. then Covid hit. The activity at the station ceased, except the live broadcast of course. I haven't had an in-studio session or a live event since February 2020. Since I was part time, all the production work needed over the last year has gone to the three full-time engineers, which is more than fair. Good time to start building studio number 4 right? Well the crushing anxiety of "doing this one right" along with the the costs have made me drag my feet. Plus I had to get some things done on the whole house first, like replacing our 1920's knob and tube electrical along with the 1960's grounded electric in the garage, all run off of a 1960's panel. I've been running an extension cord from the garage, through the back door, through the kitchen, into the living room to be able to have grounded power for my set up since beginning of 2017. Also, now working from home for my "day job" that left me plenty of time to fuck around in my amazing garden. I became interested in gardening the same time I got back into making records again, around 2002. Being stuck at home and with the giant financial and anxiety/depression built speed bump in the way of my studio build, I spent all of 2020 out in the garden, growing amazing flowers and food while sucking down whiskey bottle after whiskey bottle in my garden shed. Everyone in the neighborhood, stuck at home as well, would make a point to go on daily walks and make sure to cruise past my yard to take in my work. It felt really cool meeting so many people who looked forward to appreciating my work. I totally missed working for KEXP, being a part of that community and the community outreach it provides to so many, so this filled that major gap a little bit.

Here we are in 2021. I've still not gone back to the station and I'm still working from home for the "day job". I just got my second vaxx shot and just spent a fuck-ton of money getting the electrical updated in the house. it cost me 10k MORE than the bids we got in 2018, which we couldn't afford at that time since we had no money and a wedding coming up. Should have taken a loan out then, instead of having to take a loan out in 2021 for MUCH MORE. I've had a structural engineer draw up plans on raising the garage's ceiling joists and be able support the double layer of 5/8's rock. I hired some friends of mine who are much better at that work to do the build out of the new ceiling system and I'm now slowly working on bulking up my outer leaf. SLOWLY.

The fucking point of this fucking story? Well, I often think about Rodgre's rant. That's who I was 2005-2015. Do I want to go back to that? I was much younger then and wanting to get my name out and I could stay up until 2 in the morning and get on my bike and ride to the office at 7 am the next morning with NO PROBLEM. Now at 46, my body hurts, I want to be in bed by 10:30-11 at the LATEST. I'm behind on my own music. I'd rather build a fucking greenhouse and actually just put a semi-temporary one together. But I miss making records. But do I want to spend 15-20k building studio #4? Yes.. but can I? I still have bands hitting me up for work due to some records I've made over the years, so my work is still standing, but those requests get less and less each year. If I do build studio #4, will be able to get people through the door besides my own bands?

When I lost my place in late 2015, and forced to move out of the city I loved because of financial/economic/rent reasons... I started having PTSD/stress dreams nearly every single night for the last 5 years. The same 7-10 dreams over and over and over. All based on real life situations in my past where I either failed, or was failing, or trying so hard NOT to fail. I'm now on yet another medication to help with those nightmares, and it's somewhat working. My stupid brain still fights the meds and now has started making different versions of those same situations. At times this is almost comical, but it's getting old once again. Part of me thinks that if I do build studio #4, those will go away. I'll feel that once again I have purpose. I'll feel once again that I'm providing a necessary service to my community of bands who don't have any fucking money but need to make a good sounding record. So part of me thinks I HAVE to build this.

Thanks for letting me rant. Cheers.
Brandon.

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by Recycled_Brains » Wed May 05, 2021 9:52 am

Thanks for sharing all this. I can relate to a lot of it.

I keep saying to folks that one good thing to come out of last year and all the resulting downtime, is perspective. For me, that's taken the shape of "no more fucking compromise". I'm done making records the way I (often) used to. It's not providing the fulfillment it once did and it's not serving me or the bands. I still love it in so many ways so I'm not looking to bail, but I want to do it in a way where I feel like I'm still going the extra mile on the band's behalf and filling that void for a community, but also taking good care of myself physically, financially and [most importantly] psychologically.

So I'm with you guys. Do whatever you feel is the right move in order to take care of yourself and still help your clients. Folks that don't understand that can kick rocks. In every single instance where I came out thinking "this rules" at the end of the process, it was because I was working with bands who never batted an eye at what we all collectively needed to get the job done right.
trodden wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 9:30 am
This is EXACTLY why it's taken me years to start building my next studio.

I lost my last place at the end of 2015. After that and a year and a half of very temporary living, a severely broken arm, financial woes, and mental health crises for both my wife and I... by 2017 we were finally in a permanent home that also has the space for studio number 4. This time I own the property (well the bank does) and no landlord to kick me out after 4-7 years and losing out of my build out. At the same time, my duties at my second and part time job (I've been keeping a mindless desk job that enables me to focus on music, tours, etc. for the last 10 years) as an engineer/production person at 90.3 KEXP picked up tremendously. I was putting an additional 4-20 hours a week at KEXP along with my "day job" and just didn't have time to build or run a studio again. The work at KEXP filled my audio nerd needs. I did set up a "control room" in my living room, taking up nearly half of it, and made a couple records for friends and myself in the little free time I had. Tracking out of other facilities in town or running a snake to my unfinished garage, but nothing like how I was making records from 2005-2015.

Well.. then Covid hit. The activity at the station ceased, except the live broadcast of course. I haven't had an in-studio session or a live event since February 2020. Since I was part time, all the production work needed over the last year has gone to the three full-time engineers, which is more than fair. Good time to start building studio number 4 right? Well the crushing anxiety of "doing this one right" along with the the costs have made me drag my feet. Plus I had to get some things done on the whole house first, like replacing our 1920's knob and tube electrical along with the 1960's grounded electric in the garage, all run off of a 1960's panel. I've been running an extension cord from the garage, through the back door, through the kitchen, into the living room to be able to have grounded power for my set up since beginning of 2017. Also, now working from home for my "day job" that left me plenty of time to fuck around in my amazing garden. I became interested in gardening the same time I got back into making records again, around 2002. Being stuck at home and with the giant financial and anxiety/depression built speed bump in the way of my studio build, I spent all of 2020 out in the garden, growing amazing flowers and food while sucking down whiskey bottle after whiskey bottle in my garden shed. Everyone in the neighborhood, stuck at home as well, would make a point to go on daily walks and make sure to cruise past my yard to take in my work. It felt really cool meeting so many people who looked forward to appreciating my work. I totally missed working for KEXP, being a part of that community and the community outreach it provides to so many, so this filled that major gap a little bit.

Here we are in 2021. I've still not gone back to the station and I'm still working from home for the "day job". I just got my second vaxx shot and just spent a fuck-ton of money getting the electrical updated in the house. it cost me 10k MORE than the bids we got in 2018, which we couldn't afford at that time since we had no money and a wedding coming up. Should have taken a loan out then, instead of having to take a loan out in 2021 for MUCH MORE. I've had a structural engineer draw up plans on raising the garage's ceiling joists and be able support the double layer of 5/8's rock. I hired some friends of mine who are much better at that work to do the build out of the new ceiling system and I'm now slowly working on bulking up my outer leaf. SLOWLY.

The fucking point of this fucking story? Well, I often think about Rodgre's rant. That's who I was 2005-2015. Do I want to go back to that? I was much younger then and wanting to get my name out and I could stay up until 2 in the morning and get on my bike and ride to the office at 7 am the next morning with NO PROBLEM. Now at 46, my body hurts, I want to be in bed by 10:30-11 at the LATEST. I'm behind on my own music. I'd rather build a fucking greenhouse and actually just put a semi-temporary one together. But I miss making records. But do I want to spend 15-20k building studio #4? Yes.. but can I? I still have bands hitting me up for work due to some records I've made over the years, so my work is still standing, but those requests get less and less each year. If I do build studio #4, will be able to get people through the door besides my own bands?

When I lost my place in late 2015, and forced to move out of the city I loved because of financial/economic/rent reasons... I started having PTSD/stress dreams nearly every single night for the last 5 years. The same 7-10 dreams over and over and over. All based on real life situations in my past where I either failed, or was failing, or trying so hard NOT to fail. I'm now on yet another medication to help with those nightmares, and it's somewhat working. My stupid brain still fights the meds and now has started making different versions of those same situations. At times this is almost comical, but it's getting old once again. Part of me thinks that if I do build studio #4, those will go away. I'll feel that once again I have purpose. I'll feel once again that I'm providing a necessary service to my community of bands who don't have any fucking money but need to make a good sounding record. So part of me thinks I HAVE to build this.

Thanks for letting me rant. Cheers.
Brandon.
Ryan Slowey
Albany, NY

http://maggotbrainny.bandcamp.com

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Re: RANT: "in your spare time.."

Post by trodden » Wed May 05, 2021 10:19 am

Recycled_Brains wrote:
Wed May 05, 2021 9:52 am
Thanks for sharing all this. I can relate to a lot of it.

I keep saying to folks that one good thing to come out of last year and all the resulting downtime, is perspective. For me, that's taken the shape of "no more fucking compromise". I'm done making records the way I (often) used to. It's not providing the fulfillment it once did and it's not serving me or the bands. I still love it in so many ways so I'm not looking to bail, but I want to do it in a way where I feel like I'm still going the extra mile on the band's behalf and filling that void for a community, but also taking good care of myself physically, financially and [most importantly] psychologically.

So I'm with you guys. Do whatever you feel is the right move in order to take care of yourself and still help your clients. Folks that don't understand that can kick rocks. In every single instance where I came out thinking "this rules" at the end of the process, it was because I was working with bands who never batted an eye at what we all collectively needed to get the job done right.
Yeah, sounds like you and I are at similar crossroads. I'd be interested in hearing about your different approaches and plans.

I'm thinking this for myself-
Ok, i'm going to build out the garage. It's not going to be as fancy as I had hoped and planned in my daydreams. I can't afford that and that will take me another three years. (THIS ONE WILL HAVE AN AIR CONDITIONER) It will be good, and better than my previous rooms, but just not jaw dropping fancy and MUCH smaller (350 sq feet) There's no point in that and I'm not interested in impressing people. More than anything, it will be a place for me to hang out, have my own space, work on my own music, and have band rehearsal there so I'm not spending $250 a month for my share of a rehearsal room rent. I will be able to record a band in there, but will be picky about who I work with and will definitely try to get people to spend the money to track at a larger facility and then do overdubs/mixes with me. That itself will cut down on the traffic. No one wants to spend any money anymore. I'm more interested in working with people who understand it's going to take a few dollars and are not looking for the cheapest solution. Technology has gotten to the point where they can easily do it themselves if they want to only spend $500 on a record. I will be offering my gear to be rented out for cheap. And i'm only talking about stands, cables, workhorse mic's, and my lunchbox/500 series pres, headphone amp, etc. so people can have an option of doing it "cheap" in their rehearsal space. This will also get all of my gear out of the fucking living room and make our already small house, feel less small. If I make one, maybe two really good records there a year with other people's music, and use the space for my own creative endeavors, I'll be happy. And if somehow things change for the better and the impossible happens and I'm able to quit my day job, and work only my KEXP job by getting guaranteed more hours and health insurance and alongside maybe make records, edit books on tape, etc, in my space...then that would be amazing.

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