Has tracking ever made you feel ill?

kRza. · Post by **kRza.** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:50 am

..and I don't mean dope. Interesting phenomenon happened to me the other day.

I have a 2 level studio...control room upstairs....bulk of tracking happens downstairs.
There's a fair amount of bleed between the levels...so while someone's tracking I try to pay attention to their performance, make sure it's good...so then mixing / editing is just picking the one that feels best.

The other day I tracked strings. A lady played viola / violin / and cello and something really weird happened. I found myself loosing it! It felt like someone was stabbing my ears with a blunt pencil. She was a professional and the listening environment was fine....but, after the session I felt like someone had beat me up! Listening intently to string parts by themselves (each one tripled), left me feeling like I was drug behind a car for 3 hours.
Took me a few days before I could revisit the tune.

Never happened to me before. But the song sounds great with the strings. I'm wondering if this is what's called "psycho-acoustics"? Although I'm not really sure what that means. I do know that sounds can affect you physically (brown tone..etc...), but I haven't experienced it til then.
Anyone else have this happen?

drumsound · Post by **drumsound** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:58 am

I feel sick if something is stereo is badly out of phase.

KFledman · Post by **KFledman** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:07 am

I once recorded a jingle for snapple where they hand-picked their least-on-key workers to sing....after hours of listening to the out-of-tune singing, I found myself throwing up......still, it was worth it [$75/hour back in '93 or '94]..

and, when I hear something 180 degrees out-of-phase [or is it just the reversed polarity of speakers?] I immediately turn my head 90 degrees to the speakers so I don't feel all off-balance; but that doesn't quite make me sick][/i]

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:47 pm

drumsound wrote:I feel sick if something is stereo is badly out of phase.

same here.

always been fine in the studio, but there's been a few times at shows where the combination of intoxicants and really pummelling bass has made me feel rather unwell.

jakeao · Post by **jakeao** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 4:45 pm

I sometimes find myself having a hard sitting upright, after 4 gazillion takes of figuring out guitar solos.

Brett Siler · Post by **Brett Siler** » Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:39 pm

This has happened to me a few times.

The most recent is working a piece I was writing, it was about a crazy guy and I had to keep taking breaks because I was feeling like I was loosing my mind while making it.

Another time was I played an improv show and it was completely free. It was so loud and intense after the set was over I had to go lay down because I was about to puke. I was completely sober and feeling fine until after that set.

A-Barr · Post by **A-Barr** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:13 am

A buddy of mine tells the story of seeing John Zorn playing through a Marshall stack one time. It was so loud, and my friend was standing so close that he swears there was a moment when his vision flipped upside-down.

This chart http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt has some very interesting info.

Knights Who Say Neve · Post by **Knights Who Say Neve** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 6:20 pm

When I played noise shows I would frequently feel ill in a hard-to-define sort of way. I usually ended up listening to the show from the parking lot, where it sounded great (I'm not joking, BTW), but when it came time to play, I'd shove the earplugs in and hope for the best...

RedCrownStudios · Post by **RedCrownStudios** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:25 pm

I have had a couple bands make me "ill" in the sense that I had to make them take a break so I could get away from them without choking them to death.

I mean that seriously. I have had a couple bands where they have annoyed me so much I have had to force a break because I was getting so internally pissed that I was starting to get that feeling you get when you feel claustrophobic.

"....let me do that again....I can nail it this time......" - over and over and over.

Arggg!! Getting paid by the hour doesn't mean anything if you want to pull your hair out.

Nick Sevilla · Post by **Nick Sevilla** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 9:49 am

My favorite sessions were in a lady's house, and every other morning or so I'd come in, and the studio REEKED.

The cat, apparently, had decided to use the control room as a Squirrel refrigerator.

Yum....

Judas Jetski · Post by **Judas Jetski** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:18 pm

A-Barr wrote:A buddy of mine tells the story of seeing John Zorn playing through a Marshall stack one time. It was so loud, and my friend was standing so close that he swears there was a moment when his vision flipped upside-down.

This chart http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt has some very interesting info.

I wouldn't have thought that the inside of my car engine would be louder than the battleship New Jersey firing all of its guns at once.

...

Um

...

I really need to get back to work.

cjac9 · Post by **cjac9** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:39 pm

bad pitch often makes me squirm...this past week I recorded 12 songs of vocals with a friend of mine. He writes really great songs and has a good voice but his ear just consistently hears things a few cents under. I believe he hears flat as "cool tone" maybe. Like when you play a bass that is down a step and think it has killer lowend but then realize its just tuned lower. Long story short, lots of squirming this weekend. I have almost puked in many other situations though...luckily not this past week.

rwc · Post by **rwc** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:27 am

I recorded this band once where there were over 300 cuts. The playing was really out of time. Lots of punches and editing.

The next song we did, I expected for some reason to sound like the first song did AFTER the editing. It was uneditable, and unpunchable, because the guitar playing was so sloppy. One note would be so much louder than another, there'd be squealing and all sorts of unwanted shit everywhere. I felt sick.

I never called them back.

NewAndImprov · Post by **NewAndImprov** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:31 pm

I used to run live sound for an old-time fiddle festival. A full 8-hour day of fiddle playing, and the good players only came on at the very end. After 8 hours of mostly out-of-tune fiddle, I'd leave with a raging headache. The people were really nice, and there were definitely some very good players involved, plus the scene/culture was really interesting to me, but the intonation just drove me nuts. One year, I had to leave to go straight to play a jazz gig, and I literally could not tell if my bass was in or out of tune all night.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:33 pm

the only times i can recall feeling physically ill during or after tracking was when i worked for a few years with a certain singer who has since traded alcoholism for addiction to 12-step programs.

he would always show up unrehearsed and be constantly rewriting his part and requesting that i chop up the recording that was already in progress to accommodate his last minute changes to the arrangement (the music for which was largely written and performed by other ppl including myself).

to top it off, his mic technique made me want to throttle him and he often choked if he thought there was even a possibility that we were rolling.

everything since then has been fucking SERENE by comparison.

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Has tracking ever made you feel ill?

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