Studio Embarrassments

[vvv]

Keep it short, a thing or three how you embarrassed yerself in the studio.

Me:

1. brought the girl who dropped the 12 pack and at least 3 broke;

2. lost my voice midway through the last song (drank a 1/2 bottle of wine and it came back - this song here);

3. went to a pro session with my singer who was scoring for the famous band's drummer - what was I doing there? (Cabrini Green pick-up and I hadda car.)

[Magnetic Services]

Wasted at least an hour trying to track down the terrible distortion I thought was coming from my tape deck or mixer, only to realize it was the shitty B*hringer headphone amp I was using.

[Studiodawg]

I was all excited about my mix, but when I took it to my wife to hear, it sounded like dogsh!t...drove 100 miles to Cleveland the next day and got real monitors.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

The studio's the one place in the world I haven't embarrassed myself.

[vvv]

The studio's the one place in the world I haven't embarrassed myself.

You make up for it here, tho'.

I kid! I kid! I kid! I kid!

That was just too easy, I hadda, it was a compulsion.

[Scodiddly]

I'm sure I would have many more than the one I can remember, but then I'm almost exclusively a live sound guy.

Made a band wait around while I restriped time code on a tape, because it wasn't reading. Turns out the time code doesn't work when you're just fast-forwarding or rewinding. This was on one of those new-fangled decks that put 12 tracks on some kind of video tape cartridge, sometime in the early 90's.

[drumsound]

The first place I worked had a really shallow control room with a door on one of the short walls. I was doing a hip hop session and the 'producer/money guy' had his foot in a cast. At one point, I think near the end of the day, I got up to move a mic or something and walked right into this guy's cast, causing him much pain and me much embarrassment. Luckily he was happy with the work I was doing, but I felt like a freaking moron.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Mine are almost all from my early tape days and usually a result of not having good notes.

Losing a great take because I forgot to arm the tracks.
Punching in on the wrongs track.
Doing a bunch of great overdubs on the wrong take.
Accidentally recording over the second half of a song because the counter didn't work properly and I didn't check.

[drumsound]

Mine are almost all from my early tape days and usually a result of not having good notes.

Losing a great take because I forgot to arm the tracks.
Punching in on the wrongs track.
Doing a bunch of great overdubs on the wrong take.
Accidentally recording over the second half of a song because the counter didn't work properly and I didn't check.

Oh yes...

[Recycled_Brains]

Did a full remote set up. Got sounds. Band is stoked. Roll 1st take. Computer say's "ut uh". PT froze up the second I hit record, every time. That computer fully shit the bed very shortly after that.

Terrible feeling.

[alexdingley]

~20yrs ago: told the head engineer “lemme re-pack those totes for your remote recording, so you can fit it all on one cart when you load in. [at the live concert gig 2hrs away, on a Friday night]” (he was lugging 3 DA-88s, a bunch of outboard pre’s, etc...). He’s at the gig, and I’m still back at the studio, and I walk back into the studio lounge, only to see 6 hi-8 tapes laying on the bookshelves where I’d been re-packing/condensing the totes. He had to call local studios in the area where the concert was happening and bit tapes off of a local studio... woof!

~18yrs ago: transferred about 5 long-play white label 45RPM dance singles to ProTools, and spent time de-noise/de-clicking them (having played them back at 33.3RPM. (Didn’t know much about physical vinyl dance singles (and they weren’t labeled with a speed) finally got to a track that jogged my brain into realizing these weren’t just “weirdly down-tempo tracks”... had to re-do those and then get the remaining 25 other discs imported/cleaned up in the same day.

~17yrs ago: during a weekly CD-R duplication project (making & mailing about 250 discs) for national radio syndicated programming, I managed to accidentally run 30 copies of a punk band’s EP and mail them out to Christian radio stations all over the country. — thankfully none of it hit the airwaves, but it was an expensive fix (overnighting all this fixed copies)

[Jarvis]

~17yrs ago: during a weekly CD-R duplication project (making & mailing about 250 discs) for national radio syndicated programming, I managed to accidentally run 30 copies of a punk band’s EP and mail them out to Christian radio stations all over the country.

I just want to personally thank you

[Rodgre]

This one still makes me laugh...

I had a session with a new client. I didn't really know this guy but I had heard a bit of his reputation in the rock scene as a partier who was associated with a few well-known junkies and drug users. Mind you, I was young and innocent at the time. (I'm still innocent!)

So we've been tracking a few hours and he says to me "do you mind if I make a pot?"

I say, "you probably should go outside, maybe in your car. There is a school nearby and I don't want any trouble."

"No," he says. "Can I make a pot of coffee?"

I felt so silly, but we laughed our heads off. It was a good ice breaker.

Roger

[vvv]

Any studio I've ever been in hadda strict rule about no ingestible anything in the recording space, and pretty limited elsewhere.

Except this one place, let us bring in beer ... once.

[alexdingley]

I just want to personally thank you

...anytime!

In the moment, I was obviously embarrassed, and baffled as to how I'd managed to miss that / a little scared that I'd lose my job / also a little hopeful that those tunes had hit the airwaves on a Sunday morning.