The never ending album (rate) project

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scarygroover
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The never ending album (rate) project

Post by scarygroover » Mon Dec 01, 2003 3:51 pm

I am finally (thank god) in the mixing stages of this project I agreed to do for a set price for the whole album. I felt the leader took a little bit advantage of me and made countless overdubs and doubles and triples, only to say " well you can just edit out what we don't want later" to which my response was " why record it if we won't use it?" adding to the hours of which this project will take. Now I mixed the first song, and the classic happens " vocals are to loud, also bring everything else up" which is the same thing isn't it? Never again will I do an album on a per project basis again. It's daily or hourly pay or nothing.

Anybody else ever go through this?

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by Lavahead » Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:12 pm

I went through this same thing recently, only with a "day rate".

The days were long (10 - 12hrs)..the band was terrible (not only their music, but also their musicianship in general).

Enough said.

To go along with that Pro Tools thread, and what you said about the band member saying "edit out what we don't want later", "vocals are too loud, bring everything else up". Since when are band members qualified mixing engineers? That is a very important question to me...does anybody have an answer?

Some answers I fore-see maybe like "since they are the paying client", or "whatever the band wants".

When I take my car to the mechanic I don't stand over his shoulder and say "no, put that over there", etc. Of course it depends on the situation.

I would say that the average musician that comes through my studio to record has no "big picture" idea about their project. They go off things they've heard from other people..and that the notion that anything with a tube in it is "rad".
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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by scarygroover » Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:17 pm

well at least you still were getting paid daily. I got paid a long time ago up front and they have gone well over the time I thought it would take but a deal is a deal. The songs are good, but the musicianship is just ok. PLus there are 9 members, backing girl singers, flutes, violins, clarinets, keys, guitars, drums bass, loops. it is just a mess to mix.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by Lavahead » Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:19 pm

It sounds like the only perk is the girl singers...
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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by scarygroover » Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:23 pm

well not really. one of them was saying she hated the recordings because they are too slow. The songwriter made the click tracks himself. When some one you are recording is saying they hate the outcome, it doesn't make you eager to record them.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by concubine » Mon Dec 01, 2003 4:33 pm

Since when are band members qualified mixing engineers? That is a very important question to me...does anybody have an answer?

Some answers I fore-see maybe like "since they are the paying client", or "whatever the band wants".

When I take my car to the mechanic I don't stand over his shoulder and say "no, put that over there", etc. Of course it depends on the situation.

I would say that the average musician that comes through my studio to record has no "big picture" idea about their project. They go off things they've heard from other people..and that the notion that anything with a tube in it is "rad".
i'm sure your view works for certain situations, but i think it can be a bit arrogant (and naive) to make a sweeping generalization like that.

i've met numerous musicians who DO have a big picture of what they want, and have made valuable input as to various parts of the recording/mixing process.

my old band sushi recorded an ep and a full length album with a great engineer/producer in the bay area who shall go nameless for now. the guy was in no way a novice; he had decades of recording experience under his belt, and runs a lucrative business with his studio. however, when it came time for mixing, the guy did some things that completely went against what we as a band wanted.

for example, i continually told him to turn up certain lead guitar or keyboard melodies, and to turn down the drums, but he had this quiet way of resisting where he'd barely move the fader so that there was no real audible difference in the sound. as a result, both albums ended up with the drums way up front, dominating the mix, with guitar melodies squashed and shoved way back in the mix, dilutting the melodic impact of some of the songs. this didn't occur with every song, but it happened enough to where we were pretty frustrated with the results. some pretty important melodies got burried under drums and vocals.

we also kept telling him to add more reverb to certain things, and he did the same subtle thing of resisting by adding only an inaudible hint of reverb. we were so annoyed by that that he ended up having to add a bunch of reverb to the whole mix during mastering, which worked with varying degrees of success and was kind of a pain (more for him than for us, though it was on our dime).

as musicians who did have a "big picture" of how we wanted our stuff to sound, it was extremely frustrating to pay someone who wasn't always listening to us.

we did have some wonderful experiences during the recording process with this engineer, and he was usually great and fun to work with, but there was this passive-aggressive battle during mixing that left us with 2 flawed-sounding albums.

i just think it's silly to assume most musicians don't know what they want or what they're talking about when mixing.

jeff

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by TooLoFi » Mon Dec 01, 2003 5:06 pm

"we did have some wonderful experiences during the recording process with this engineer, and he was usually great and fun to work with, but there was this passive-aggressive battle during mixing that left us with 2 flawed-sounding albums.

i just think it's silly to assume most musicians don't know what they want or what they're talking about when mixing."


I had a project where I basically took the reins in sake of efficiency and budget concerns. There were things that I would squabble about with the band, but we did so directly instead of passive aggressivly. I generally think that I am making intellegent decisions based on the technology I'm working with, so I'll explain this to the client as well as I can. By the end of the day, my goal is to make the client happy, so I can sleep soundly on the pile of money they are paying me, but sometimes, just sometimes, the musician WILL NOT be able to make good decisions. Example, I was in the final phase of mixing and the guitarist asked me to push up a guitar lick dramatically. I put up no fight about this, because I knew that everytime he heard that paticular part, he would think back to being in the studio and making that decision instead of being basically ignored by the engineer. I listen to this part of the song today (after mastering and such) and the guitar covers up an emotional high point in the vocals (like a distraction). The musician could not see the forest for the trees in this case, so perhaps I should have put up a fight, but ultimatly, it's not my record.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by scarygroover » Mon Dec 01, 2003 5:06 pm

Hey jeff, good points. I have been in that situation where the engineer didn't want to do what my band told him. However, I was paying by the hour. What i am referring to is giving the "deal" of a lifetime to a band and then they just think that it's an open ended deal to do as many overdubs even if you don't use them and leave it to the engineer to clean up the mess in mix. Now don't get me wrong, if a band wants to do this, by all means, I would let them IF they were paying me by the hour or day. But when you give a flat rate, the band better be pretty sure what their parts are and be able to play them well or it gets to be joyless. thats all I meant.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by Professor » Mon Dec 01, 2003 5:18 pm

I don't want to sound too over the top here, but why not just give a clear definition of your time/rate relationship. I posted rates based on the project but specified an exact number of hours included in that 'project rate' and an additional 'per hour' charge that would be added for time over the alotted hours. I'll admit that there are lots of projects where I spend way too much time for no extra pay, but I make that determination myself. If I'm frustrated with a band or project then I push the session through faster. If you're concerned with the mixing process then get the rough mix in place and the editing done and then get the lead singer or band leader in to 'help' mix. If he is there and OKs the sound of a track then he will defend it when the rest of the band complains.
I definitely understand how the complaints before you've finished can be a pain. I had the school big band in two weeks ago and had the kids complaining before they even started playing. 'Why are there only three mics for the trumpets and not five?' 'Why do I have to stand here and not there?' 'Why don't we just record everything live?' For the record, the session had all 17 members of the band in the studio playing simultaneously to maintain the 'live vibe' that is so essential to jazz. Of course the solos were overdubbed - but you know, we needed to keep it live.

-J

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by eh91311 » Mon Dec 01, 2003 6:03 pm

scarygroover, at least you have come to the right decision about flat-rate fees. You can do flat-rates as long as you stipulate the maximum number of hours that the flat-rate fee covers.

As far as mixing goes, you should have at least the main person or persons attending your mixdown sessions. so they can put in their requests and comments and can't complain about the finished results after the fact. When handing over the final mixes and all media (tapes or files or CD's or whatever), make it clear to them that by handing over the materials, the session is done, closed, and any other modifications or remixes or whatever will be charged at a hourly rate that you should confirm to them at that time, along with your studio minimum rate (at least 2 hours). Since they have taken advantage of you regarding the amount of recording studio time for their flat-fee charges, be sure to increase your established studio hourly rate (if you have one) to them for remixes and/or additional recording or backup files/tapes or whatnot.

Try real hard not to work with them again.

If you choose to record them again, charge them by the day or hour, get 50% of the estimated total up-front before recording, and at the instant that they go over their estimated recording time or hours, have them pay more toward the 50% up-front deposit for the extra hours they want to book. If they balk or complain, end the sessions, hand over the media and walk. Be firm and don't bend. Make sure they know these new conditions before you start the project. If you end up losing friendships, consider them friendships that never really existed anyway.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by concubine » Mon Dec 01, 2003 8:02 pm

scarygroover wrote:Hey jeff, good points. I have been in that situation where the engineer didn't want to do what my band told him. However, I was paying by the hour. What i am referring to is giving the "deal" of a lifetime to a band and then they just think that it's an open ended deal to do as many overdubs even if you don't use them and leave it to the engineer to clean up the mess in mix. Now don't get me wrong, if a band wants to do this, by all means, I would let them IF they were paying me by the hour or day. But when you give a flat rate, the band better be pretty sure what their parts are and be able to play them well or it gets to be joyless. thats all I meant.
oh, i know you mean. i've been on both sides of the issue. i was just commenting on something lavahead said, which seemed like a broad generalization that could have potentially bad ramifications, though i'm sure what he said could be applied to musicians some of the time.

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by Rodgre » Mon Dec 01, 2003 8:08 pm

I've had similar experiences. When a client tells me that they have a certain budget that they need to do a project within, I do my best to keep it on track. Sometimes the client will take advantage of the fact that they discussed their budget ahead of time, and if they start using more time than you're getting paid for, then it's your problem. That's unfortunate. It's so hard to put your foot down when you're knee-deep in the project.

Sometimes you get a band that says "we have about $500" and they want to do 13 songs. You know it will be best to multi-track it and overdub the vocals and mix it, but just think.... 13 songs.... mixing alone would be a full day's worth of time even if you mixed extremely quickly.

You must lay down the law and say "for that much, we'll spend some quality time getting some killer sounds, and then you can blast through your tracks, live to 2-track. That's the best you can do." They could turn around and go to their buddy who has some recording gear and take advantage of him, and come out with a crappy demo with lots of overdubs, or else they'll do they live tracks with you and it will sound really good. Maybe even as good as it would have sounded had you done it multitrack.

Roger

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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by Lavahead » Tue Dec 02, 2003 12:18 pm

concubine wrote:

my old band sushi recorded an ep and a full length album with a great engineer/producer in the bay area who shall go nameless for now. the guy was in no way a novice; he had decades of recording experience under his belt, and runs a lucrative business with his studio. however, when it came time for mixing, the guy did some things that completely went against what we as a band wanted.

for example, i continually told him to turn up certain lead guitar or keyboard melodies, and to turn down the drums, but he had this quiet way of resisting where he'd barely move the fader so that there was no real audible difference in the sound. as a result, both albums ended up with the drums way up front, dominating the mix, with guitar melodies squashed and shoved way back in the mix, dilutting the melodic impact of some of the songs. this didn't occur with every song, but it happened enough to where we were pretty frustrated with the results. some pretty important melodies got burried under drums and vocals.

we also kept telling him to add more reverb to certain things, and he did the same subtle thing of resisting by adding only an inaudible hint of reverb. we were so annoyed by that that he ended up having to add a bunch of reverb to the whole mix during mastering, which worked with varying degrees of success and was kind of a pain (more for him than for us, though it was on our dime).
Jeff, I'll try to keep my response from sounding arrogant and naive.

In the example you described, with your band, I think this engineer/producer was making your band sound the way he wanted it to. That's what he does. He makes records that sound the way he wants them to. Right?

IN YOUR OPINION the drums were up front, and the guitar melodies were squashed. To this engineer/producer it probably sounded great. What were you paying him for? His 'sound', or to be a button pusher for yourself? Why didnt you just push them?

It totally depends. My post was based on the last few bunches of bands that I have worked with. They were with me almost through the entire mix process. It destroyed the projects, because they are not mix engineers, and they made the mixes sound like shit. I thought their decisions sounded like shit, and I printed it anyways. It sucked to work that way. I think if I had been left alone to mix them myself they would sound better than a guitar player telling me where the drums should be in my mix (probably a naive and arrogant comment).

This guitar player who gives advice during a mix session is generally not thinking about the drums, how they sit in the mix, if certain drums are eq'd/over eq'd/compressed/over-compressed. He's not thinking about the relation of the bass to the drums..are they sitting well together, how are they affecting everything else, and how is everything else effecting them.

I was in a band that recorded in a few pretty decent studios (Brian Virtue actually recorded one of our early demos, right before he recorded Korn's first record. I believe. Shrug). Do you think I was standing over his shoulder telling him what I would do?
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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by kylethompson » Tue Dec 02, 2003 12:31 pm

Lavahead's full of shit. Those mixes he did actually sounded pretty good (at least one of the albums did).


Torturous still, but I think you did a good job considering their complete lack of musicianship. Just be glad you haven't been doing the same rap record for 7 months now like me. You remember your hell night engineering for them, don't you?
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Re: The never ending album (rate) project

Post by concubine » Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:08 pm

In the example you described, with your band, I think this engineer/producer was making your band sound the way he wanted it to. That's what he does. He makes records that sound the way he wants them to. Right?

IN YOUR OPINION the drums were up front, and the guitar melodies were squashed. To this engineer/producer it probably sounded great. What were you paying him for? His 'sound', or to be a button pusher for yourself? Why didnt you just push them?
wrong. we were paying him not for "his" sound, but for his ability to help us capture "our" sound the way *we* envisioned it. he did his best to make the album well-suited for the songs, but the band didn't always agree with his approach.

i think it's really arrogant of you to assume the band should shut up and let the engineer/producer take complete control of the reins, and i also think it's rather presumptuous of you to say a guitarist or whoever isn't taking in the whole picture of the mix. i mean, even our drummer thought the drums were too upfront in the mix!!! we had ideas about how we wanted the albums to sound, he agreed to do his best to help us with that, and at times he failed because he simply wasn't listening to us. he apparently had a stylistic preference for bringing out the drums, pushing them way up front in the mix, which went against how we wanted the album to sound. guitar parts lost some of their potency, full-sounding acoustic parts wound up thin, brittle, and way in the back, some organ parts were rendered inaudible, but the drums sound absolutely smashing. we wanted a denser guitar sound, and certainly achieved one when recording with other engineers, but this particular engineer refused to listen during mixing, even though we were paying him daily rates, and despite the fact that he said he was co-producing it with us.


all i'm trying to say is that if the musician has some idea or vision of how the album should sound, just listen to 'em. if you disagree because of a stylistic preference, then tough shit! if you can't help the band get the sound they want because of other factors (technological issues, incompetent musicians, or you simply can't get that sound in your studio) then you need to patiently and tactfully explain to the band that what they want won't work and why, and offer some alternatives.

jeff

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