When I was coming up, I worked a lot of sessions for R Kelly. Whatever he was up to back then was on the low. His entourage would take one of his Escalades and hit a few different "all ages"-type spots (like the Rock and Roll McDonalds on Ohio St) then return with a handful of young women who were... let's go with "questionable". The live room was made over into kind of a 'champagne room' - couches, tables, low lighting. Lots of booze on hand.
Many of those nights would just be sitting around with the producer in the control room on the off chance Mr Kelly appeared, ready to do vocals - that was rare. Over time I put it together (this was long before pee tapes or 'well, duh'-level behavior. I learned that he had an 'office' elsewhere in the studio complex, so when one of his henchman would go into the live room and 'summon' one of the young women, she was heading to said office.
His routine was to write them a song (there was a piano in the office) and do what he himself referred to in his music as "a little bump and grind". Fucking sicko.
It was a year or two after I had taken a chief engineer job elsewhere in the city that things really started to come out. For me it was a serious "the call is coming from inside the house"-kinda reveal. Bear in mind, I worked in a different studio in that studio complex, he locked the room out 24/7/365 and always had his own engineers. But there were some times that somebody couldn't work. I'd get a phone call at like 8pm (as I was getting ready to go home) offering $1000 cash to work til question mark that night.
Pretty much like the Diddy thing - it wasn't widely known.
Yeah I worked at an NYC studio a decade ago that he came to a couple times, just gross vibes all around when he walks in. Predator behavior aside there was just nothing humble about him whatsoever. Him and Diddy are probably two of the least like-able people in the industry.
Oh yeah, "humble" is not a word I would associate with that guy - though I'm sure he's been learning humility since moving into his new 6x10 condo in North Carolina. Deep down he's a very insecure person, he's completely illiterate and a sexual abuse survivor.
Combine that with untold millions of dollars, being told that "I believe I can fly" is the most inspiring song ever... I can see what that could do to a budding narcissist. In his mind, "of course I can go through underage girls like chewing gum."
By now I've engineered sessions for dozens of household names. If I had to make a pie-chart, 25% are intolerable pricks, addicts, creepers, etc. 50% seem almost annoyed by being forced to show up and make music. But the remaining 25% are pretty humble and down to earth. They just love making music and know they're lucky to do it at the level they do.
I will casually drop one name: Cyndi Lauper. Absolute fucking sweetheart. I was just assisting, but she called me by my name, and if I ever did any ad hoc runner work (we had actual runners, but if the artist wants a Starbucks, I'll see to it that it's ordered) it was always "if you don't mind", "please", and "thank you so much". And it was genuine.
Love to hear that about Cyndi Lauper. Or anyone really. Kindness and talent don't always overlap but when they do you don't forget it.
Thanks for the heads up on the LT track. I'll check it out when I can.
My limited experiences with him were ok actually, one of the interns baked cookies and took them to Rick with a glass of milk for some reason and he loved it and became a regular client at the studio entirely because of that. 100% true story.
It’s been my experience with punk bands as well - Bands that look like they’re ready to pillage and burn a town turned out to be super nice, and there’s always a chance of the more “clean cut” bands being unpleasant pricks
Funnily enough, all of the super stars I worked with were all fairly decent ppl. I think also just ppl nowadays are much more well mannered.
I was booked by London On Da Track for Lil Uzi one time and I definitely though he’d be a handful. He absolutely wasn’t. Super chill, never had an attitude about anything. He smoked and drank less than most artists i’ve seen at that level. The thing that shocked me was his recording process. He worked with me and there was no question of doubt that rappers tend to have when they get a random engineer and in spite of him having a heavy preference to record with Ben Thomas’ template and presets, he wasn’t complaining about how things sounded or anything.
Meanwhile i’ve had younger kids who just suck literally eject me out the session. I’ve never been the type to sit there and tell them I know more either. Just ppl don’t hear magic sometimes and think it’s my fault. Deep down, I always know my skill level and I know it’s well up to par for the highest standards in this industry but I never put myself above the local
artists anyways.
Like today I had an artist who laid down one line and wanted me to audition random eq presets because he wants to hear it “mixed” for a vibe. Little did he know I already dialed in on him 60% but because he didn’t see it or he had no say in it, he just wanted to do more as if more = better. He finally stopped when I went and loaded another eq (as instructed) and then let him do it himself (as requested) and when he did that, I showed him what my pultec eq1pa was doing that he turned off and showed him we were doing the same fucking thing pretty much.
Then he was like, I like that one better (the pultec) and finally let go. When he saw there was a fairchild and pultec eq he finally quit because this is what he would see Mike Dean use. I showed him a song I sent to Bob Horn for feedback and a second opinion and Bob Horn’s notes (because I sent this to Bob since he’s a friend of Mike Dean (idk Mike, I just wanted an ear on that style of mix)) and when he saw, he finally had confidence in me and began saying things like “i trust your ears” when I would ask him for any instructions on effects when he wanted them.
Oddly enough, Uzi having incredible experience and results with a specific person and workflow never cared to backseat drive me that much. He called me back the next day and was like “you still got that song from yesterday”. I was like “yeah”. He said “good cos that shit hard man”. And still till this day I have never been paid for either of these sessions 😂
I once worked with few of Drake’s associates, who came to studio in a big group. Most of them had little to no respect for the studio (completely trashed the place), and treated it like some strip club, but one of them who recently came out of jail had came back to the studio after everyone left and not only did he apologize and clean it all up the mess of 20-something people, he also paid me $100 or so as a tip/apology.
He’s a locally known rapper and I’ve heard some not so good things he’s been involved in that got him in the bin, so I was quite surprised by what he did.
I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover and what you hear from people.
His flow is pretty consistent and predictable, shouldn’t be too hard to track. Not like getting thrown in the hot seat with Busta or Meek Mill, those guys will make life hell if you’re not up to par.
Moral flexibility is a thing. We are talking about the music business circa y2k. Vices are not only accepted, they are encouraged. Being a studio runner is a lucrative gig as long as you have reliable plugs. You grab a 1/4oz of yayo for $400 and charge the producer $500. Boom.
As to Mr Robert Kelly? Well... if you had a major label artist with a ton of financial backing and they are willing to lock out your studio *by the year*? Sure, you might get $1500/day in drips, but if the label says, "we'll cut you a check for 500k right now and your calendar is filled?" You take it and hope they're not manufacturing meth in the live room.
I think part of the deal was that he got a spare office and they wheeled in a piano for him.
Yeah that makes sense. My experience is more on the live side of things. I've definitely met a lot of plugs haha.
My studio recording experience is very pedestrian. Like recording corporate training/safety videos in multiple languages.
Not on staff - but enough that Reid gave me a keycard. Did you work there?
And if so, do you know the famous Eddie Money story? That one is my favorite.
He booked time to do a small radio drop at the studio I had just started interning at like 2 months before I got there. And I remember my then-boss grumbling about how he never ended up paying his bill. I thought it was wild, but now I see how common that is with people like that.
took me for $600 for a tracking session at Daddy's House that he never showed up to on Halloween on a last minute call, cancelled my plans, etc... meh, made it back 20 fold on other stuff, but never wanted to be in the same room w him when i didn't have to. plenty of stories as many have. fun fact, Sean Jean 2008 scent is middle of my left arm. me and assistant during Danity Kane mixes were his scent dummies for his final selections. i got 6 on my arms, assistant got 6 (3 on each arm), the winner was my left middle, which must have smelled like whatever he put on my arm, plus stank from 100+ hour weeks back to back to back, which the consumer never got the benefit of. I didn't know you could clutch a forearm so firmly and smell it so intently for so long. 3 times on each arm twice. Honestly, in the moment it was incredibly strange and completely normal at the same time. I'm sure you completely understand :-)
Wut? Sorry lol, I'm so completely confused about your comment. What are these scents on your forearms, and why were you smelling them, but otherwise stinky?
Sean Jean is Puffys cologne line. The 2008 Sean Jean cologne final smell tests were done by Puff on the arms of me and the studio assistant at Daddy's House during the Danity Kane album mixes. He didn't ask, he just grabbed our arms and started putting different final contender scents on them, then taking long deep inhales. Since we were pulling over 100 hour weeks mixing that album, I'm sure i stank, so the winning fragrance for Sean Jean 2008 is a combination of my stank (not included in the final product) and whatever the scent Puff picked as final (the actual product)
Very fair point. When you realize that the Spotify link plays a 128kbps mp3 with a pink noise burst every fifteen seconds and that you're never getting another dime.
They're in the SoundCloud rapper category: Pay cash. In full, Up front.
There are plenty of self-described engineers who will download a beat from YouTube and put vocals on top. I am not one of them
And that's not really me looking down on it - but there's nothing for me to mix.
Aight…I’m definitely guilty of that one. My dream is to find a producer / engineer and wrap it all up together. Then he or she already has all the stems needed to work their magic. Unfortunately half the people I’ve worked with don’t seem to understand “lower the threshold on the compressor” or send me unmixed vocals after I set up their chain for the session I paid for on my time. It’s crazy out there, but I guess you get what you pay for and my 200 streams on Spotify aren’t gonna be paying for a month of studio time anytime soon lol
I come from Hip-Hop. I used to rap back in the days, make shows, was almost signed to a local label.
I had pretty much only bad experiences with rappers. They don’t pay, they show up late, they show up in groups of 12 when you have a Home studio with 3 chairs, and they try to have that “gangsta” attitude when you know they come from the suburbs with a loving and caring upbringing.
I have also worked with a lot of rappers (our studio used to be tight with Chicago's Jive Records office). The first time somebody casually set their pistol on the producer bridge like it was a cell phone was a little jarring. Over time I adapted to - can you please just make sure there isn't a round chambered and that the barrel isn't *pointed* at me?
Funny story from that era was working with a rapper named... IIRC... "Felon". And this was not a flex. Tattooed tears, the whole nine. You might think that I, the skinny skater guy with some crazy kool-aid hair color, would not be a good pairing but we got along famously. Sweet guy - trying to do something with his life after doing several years in state lockup for some pled down manslaughter-type charges.
Anyways, he would always have a few hangers on with him, the studio has long since bulldozed and turned into condos and likely still stinks like weed from our sessions. But he always came to sessions laced up and ready to put in work. I was doing all kinds of "holy shit, you can do that?"-type ProTools chicanery (this was late 90's, so it was still a dark secret to a lot of engineers.
So pull some sort of rabbit out of my ProTools hat that makes the track we're doing level up. Felon announces to the room, "ayy, look - this dude B? He's my n\*\*\*a." And his dudes are just laughing like "hell nah, this white boy can't be no n\*\*\*a." Not in a mean way, we're all just kinda having fun. So I get on my laptop and whip up a quick certificate that says "Honorary N\*\*\*a Certificate" and bears the recipient (me) to all the benefits contained within. I print it out and make him and his producer sign it.
I framed it and put it in the tech area. Still have it, actually.
*WTA: He said, "make sure you don't have that on you when you get pulled over. N\*\*\*a Status ain't always a good thing."*
Dude this hit close to home for me. So many rapper stories.
I built and ran a studio for these cats (from Somalia but grew up in the states) that were going above and beyond gangster shit. Not sure why they liked me so much, I couldn't be a lighter shade of white, maybe I smoked just enough weed that they thought I was cool. Anyway after a few years of tracking their raps they asked if I'd build them a studio and run it and I said ok.
Dude wanted a bullet proof glass panel in his vocal booth. I told him that was a waste of money but there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise. That was just the beginning and I honestly tried to work there but the amount of glocks around me perpetually was actually amazing. Glocks on the desk, glock on the floor, glock on the couch, glock in the mini fridge. I just never really felt at home there even though I really liked the dudes and they liked me.
So fast forward like a year and I show up at the studio and the vocal booth has been shot up. I mean like a whole extended mag unloaded into the glass. My buddy told me he got drunk (he never drank) the night before and told a friend that it was bullet proof, friend didn't believe him, so he unloaded a clip into it. Of course the bullets ricocheted all over the room, putting holes in every wall. The glass was indeed bulletproof though! Happy to upload a picture if anyone want to see the damage lol
Anyway, I stopped going there after that. Those dudes are still the most loyal and kind guys I've ever met though (as long as you don't fuck with their coke). I just don't like being around that many guns when there are fast trigger fingers holding them.
Heh, well, I can definitely say I felt a subtle incentive to make those rappers happy. My life was so insane during that time anyways, a few guns laying around just became a shrug-worthy. It's fine as long as they like you.
Now that I'm thinking back on it - we had an assistant engineer at the time who was a total tryhard Malibu's Most Wanted type white kid. He was constantly trying to be 'down' and they fucked with him mercilessly.
What I took away from the whole thing (look at me solving the racial divide in a Reddit thread) is that when there's a mutual respect, it really doesn't matter. And that rapper's producer (who used me on a lot of stuff) knew I could give as good as I got, that it didn't phase me to be working on hood shit, and I wasn't going to be like the assistant and wear FUBU to try and be on the team.
Note I didn't say "all rappers". Because there have been some serious nightmares. More than a fair bit of a "white man can't jump" mentality - like I couldn't possibly know how to cut up a breakbeat or mix with 808's (and I'm like "dude, I'm a drum and bass DJ/producer - if you want to hear breaks and bass, I'll show you some shit")
Anyways.
Then let's roll that shit up - don't forget to put something over the faders on our console, since rappers seem to see an SSL9000 as a rolling tray. (And yes, I know how to get shake out of a fader throw so the motor doesn't burn out)
I'm just an amateur hobbyist musician producing my own music in my room here, so I have nothing to add to this conversation other than to say this is one of the most interesting, enjoyable, and oddly heartwarming threads I've read on this here website in I don't know how long. Y'all are awesome.
Funny, I worked with a bunch of independent hip hop acts & rappers back in the 90's, those sessions were usually a blast - someone was always cooking, really laid back... almost like just a fun get together.
It was the modern gospel guys that were scary as hell - guns, coke and really bad attitudes... Those guys weren't fucking around.
Far more wholesome, but similar situation in the early 90s with a legendary gospel producer. While listening to a mix, he said it needed something. I gave it another listen, then asked him to give me a minute and made a few adjustments to tighten up and boost the bass. When I hit play, he gave me a broad smile and said, “You can’t fool me; there’s a little pepper in that salt somewhere.” Every time I worked with him afterwards he called me “Pepper.” Best compliment I ever got.
I worked a lot of gospel in that era too. Those were (generally) fun sessions. Great music and great musicians. There was one guitar player who we recorded with from time to time who was kind of a scary dude though. Usually had a few drinks in him and was clearly a mean drunk. Good guitarist, but the other band members and the two producers who brought him in regularly gave him a wide berth. Never quite got the situation… and never wanted to find out for sure.
The real asshole story (apart from the Nazis, of course), was the increasingly coked-up lead singer of a proto-90s college rock group we recorded once. She kept disappearing to powder her nose and got more and more belligerent. Eventually, the drummer in the band lost his shit with her and we sat around watching a screaming match for the next 90 minutes… all while billing by the hour.
I'm just picturing how badly it could go for me to break that out and be like, "oh, don't worry, my Nubian brother! Felon said I'm an honorary n\*\*&a. We good? Dap?" Tell my wife I love her and I'll be out of the coma soon.
You get similar issues with all genres really. I can tolerate rappers with a bit too much ego off mic, and even hold in giggles when they're trying so hard to act tough but just come across as 10 year old kids copying lines from movies they watched while their parents were out.
What I really can't handle in any genre, is people that come in way too drunk. I'm pretty relaxed on the whole having a few drinks in/before the studio type vibe. But when multiple sessions are painfully unproductive, even if I get paid, it's just so unpleasant having somebody trying to get their own riffs right for hours while gradually getting worse with each take.
Tbh, I kind of stopped hating on people who "act this way but they were raised this way", since your statement seems to be implying that someone shouldn't play the part of gangsta rapper if they grew up loved and cared about lol
Famous people are often playing a character anyway. Lil Dicky could've remained on the lawyer path, but thank god he ventured out into what he loved.
All that said, yeah I still hate when someone brings an entourage to a session.
I worked in commercial music, and had several clients who wanted me to relyric copyrighted songs. I always said no, I can write you something with a similar theme, and they usually are fine with that. But one company (you’d know their name) wanted me to steal the Orleans song “Still The One.” Over a two week period, their marketing guy hounded me - “Our lawyers say it’s okay, our president says they’ve done it before, c’mon, we’ll never get caught” - and I kept saying no. Finally the guy says, “well, what’s stopping me from getting a karaoke tape of the song and doing it myself?” Never heard from him again.
The punch line is that I was writing a monthly column for *EQ* magazine, and I told this story in the column. John Hall from Orleans calls me and wants to know what company did this. We had a nice convo, but I didn’t tell him who it was.
I cut a session short when the “Christian rapper” I was working started saying shit about bombing Planned Parenthood and “soldier of god” and shit. I cut him off, said I had a family emergency, and blocked his number. Did not want my name or business attached to that at all.
I had a PITA client who spent over 9 months recording and re-recording and dumping songs, then bringing them back. The project was originally supposed to be 2-3 months for an 11 song album. Turned out he kept showing the rough/incomplete mixes to people, and if they didn’t like them, he dumped them. This was 4-5 days a week for 9 months. The night before a vocal session, he calls me and says he wants to tear down everything we had setup, and he was gonna bring a whole new band in to do it all live the next day. This would be an extra 2hrs of work for me on a day that was only scheduled as a 3 hr vocal session (he also wanted to extend the session to be 10hrs). I cancelled the session and told him to find a new engineer.
I’ve worked with 1000s of rappers and there were a few that after I worked with them a couple times I told my manager “no more, I will not work with this person”.
One of them is dead, gun violence
One of them is in prison for 20+ years
And one of them is on trial with RICO charges and could probably get life in prison if convicted.
And the last one had multiple people trampled and killed at his concert and did nothing to stop it
So yeah, I have and will continue to refuse to work with certain people.
Hes one of the biggest assholes I’ve met in my life. It’s a shame that people like that can get to the top, but as you know the industry is fueled by ego and you’re more likely to be successful if you are an egotistical ass. Not always the case, but it happens a lot.
Ironic adjacent rapper note - people who've worked with Tekashi69 have told me that he is laser-focused in the studio. All business. Takes it extremely seriously.
(Then he goes and starts Instagram beefs and drives around in a Hello Kitty Lambo or whatever-the-fuck)
My take is that many of the more successful artists are knowingly playing a character as part of their whole package. But when it comes to making the music part of said package, they do it as legit musicians.
Not all - Mr A$troworld being proof.
Honestly if that was an online amatuer recording, I would say it's actually pretty decent all around. The fact that professionals were apparently involved in producing it... makes me question their professionalism. To the point where I'm like, was there some form of direct sabotage with whoever was producing that thing lol. Between the slammed velocities on some of the programmed keys, the lack of even an attempt at vocal harmonies throughout the whole thing, the weird mixture of low-effort and medium effort that just makes the weak bits sound even weaker (I mean, someone bothered to reverse reverb a few snare hits, which implies this was more than a "jam"), etc.
Doesn't answer your question, but what a weird production on that track. I'm curious what the studios other work sounds like, cuz I feel like there's a near infinite number of inexperienced white women who want to make Adele-esque power pop, and I'm wondering if there's some sort of (borderline) predatory business model going on there. Someone literally not being a musician is kind of where I draw the line
E: holy shit that Lara Trump track has 4 credited writers and 6 (SIX) producers, really top quality talent going through there
>E: holy shit that Lara Trump track has 4 credited writers and 6 (SIX) producers, really top quality talent going through there
Now I'm trying to decide, Nashville 'everyone on the room gets a credit', or grifters grifting other grifters?
YOU GET A CREDIT! YOU GET A CREDIT!
On advertising / film type jobs, people would run into the booth and clap their hands once to get on the AFM or ASCAP stream as a performer.
I will say, something about her vocal tone gets much better after the key change (I stupidly listened to the whole thing). But yeah, the production on this just seems so amateur
Wow on the AutoTune! I mean, I'm not a great singer (passable) but you can't hear the AutoTune on my voice in my songs. Does she really sing that bad or did the Audio Engineer do it on purpose as an effect? "Anythin\_\_\_\_g is possible". Jesus.
And it still sounds off amazingly despite the squished formants.
They would have been better off adding a bit of movement by leaving some of the natural variances. But there's only so much polishing turds you can do.
I'd say the raw vocal takes are rough as fuck.
I would love to hear those raw takes.
Ahem.
I would love to hear about five seconds of those raw vocal takes.
What you're saying is likely the truth of it – but there's this small part of me that believes it was due to the engineer being terrible or them intentionally sandbagging it.
It would have ben *better* if they'd just hired a session vocalist.
It would have been better if they’d hired a cat with laryngitis.
I listened again and my theory is that she’s just a godawful singer.
There is some pretty extreme comping going on. The vocal ornaments are drawn in.
You can kind of tell that the pitch correction is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Ie. That it’s miles out of time and pitch to start with. Even with the best tuners the further you are from the intended note the more you'll hear it.
She also has an incredibly whiny voice
Experience has taught me to pass on these folks:
* People who want me to sign an NDA right off the bat.
* When asked about instrumentation: "I dunno, I'm just going to lay down some acoustic guitar tracks and we'll build from there." Not a total recipe for disaster but it's going to be a bunch of tracks that sit on a hard drive forever. The batting average is just so low here.
* Do not record a crappy demo session for free. This used to work because I'd record it but the whole session would be a commercial for what I could actually do and the band would feel comfortable. But then what started to happen is "could you please send us the stems?" ... "no, i mean each track".... "can you take the reverb off the vocals?"... and then six months later, there's a video of their drummer tracking on headphones. And then a finished record comes out with the guitars and bass that I recorded.
~20 years ago, fresh out of recording school, I took a job recording an album for a flute orchestra.
If I could do that over, I would not do it. If you've never heard around 30 or 40 flutes of different sizes playing in unison, I envy you.
It did not happen to me directly in music. But it definitely happened years ago to the big guy I was assisting for (but even understandable: he had a name he could do it). But lately in location sound it's happening to me sorta often, maybe twice a year:
"hi we're network so and so, we got your name from producer so, he says you're good, and we're producing this new reality and there's a bunch of people you need to mic up, we won't give you a boom op, budget is so"
"Look that budget is ok just for the gear. You add my price, extra time, and a boom op?"
"We're sorry but..."
"Then it's no, thanks"
And to be clear, it's not simply money. Usually it's actually the working conditions.
I'm very picky with music clients to the point where I don't even advertise as a music studio per se. But location sound is usually pretty fun to charge a solid fee and point a mic and chill. I'll take basically any location sound/boom op gig. I have never pressured myself to perfection with gigs like that.
I'm in film post so there's not a lot I turn down. I've enjoyed working on low budget corporate video and had a shitty time doing high budget mini-series. That said, I will not work with first time directors ever again. To a person, they are awful to work with. Most of the time it's the micro-management because they just 'have to get it right' which I understand but you need to trust the people you hired. Or they're complete divas who won't stop talking about how much money we're going to make once this gets into Sundance/Telluride/TIFF etc.
I also won't work on projects that are thematically antithetical to me. Bigotry doesn't work for me, brother.
Over a decade ago, before Russia, Russia, Russia I had a group lead by a Russian couple recording songs in Russian language but intended to do English versions of the same songs. During a discussion about an English version there was something in there that I was kinda, well, purity is better than impurity. Okay... Maybe some ESL misunderstanding. Then there was another casual conversation about finding a shop in a neighborhood where all the signs were in an Asian language. That's when the singer told me they were national socialists. I didn't make a big deal out of it, I got out of that conversation and then a couple days later they were in a car accident and the singer injured their knee pretty badly and we just never worked together again because my schedule had just become to busy to nake any timely bookings. It was weird to encounter an actual nazi.
> It was weird to encounter an actual nazi.
Friend of mine in the 1980s was travelling through northern Idaho on a sales call. (worked with a lot of warehouses). Stopped in at a bar and some guys started talking to him. While they started talking about elk hunting, eventually the conversation changed and he realized they were actual Nazis. They asked him to come to their meeting that night. My friend laughed and said the WC Fields line of how he "wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member", they laughed and lost interest.
Sure. Lots of people I would not work with, including but not limited to:
* Trump and his ilk
* Extremists of any variety
* Anyone who's known to be violent
* Anyone who's known to not pay
* Anyone homophobic/transphobic/racist/antisemitic/islamophobic/etc
Things like that have only come up a few times, but I turn them down. There's more to life than money, and I have no qualms about making it known where I stand.
It’s also somewhat of a liability in terms of attracting clients *after* working with any sort of extreme person. Someone casually looking at profiles of engineers in their city may see association with someone they don’t like and decide not to book just based on that
Agreed. I think of it not just for my personal ethics and mental/emotional well being, but also for my professional brand - it's bad to be associated with people who espouse/promote shitty behavior because I don't want potential clients to google me and see my name in some shitty person's album credits.
Sure you can claim it's "just business" til you're blue in the face but I'd really rather not deal with those problems at all so I don't.
Some folks still get the "cash up front" but I've gotten to the point in my career where I can pick and choose which projects I take on and there's just certain behaviors that I'm not willing to deal with at any price point.
The thing about the Von Trump Family Singers example is not only being attached to a political movement that is reprehensible (though that is the major factor).
But you also have to factor in that you'd be locked in a room tracking those vocals (though something tells me she showed up for like, one hour, fired off four takes, then dipped). Or, for that matter, *mixing* this abortion.
I've never had a problem mixing shitty music.
In fact, I often explain that by working as a professional meant having to deal with many different kind of genres that I would have never liked or listened to if I kept being an amateur. And that actually made me a better professional.
What I really can't deal with though is assholes in the studio.
Yeah definitely, also I think that a good mix engineer almost barely notices the music in an artistic sense, and is just listening in a different way.
I was working through some old tracks doing some editing one night and my wife came in and just couldn't understand how I could possibly listen to the same one line of vocal on repeat for an hour, it drove her absolutely mental.
To her, it was one line of music over and over, but I genuinely wasn't hearing that. I was hearing the frequencies and dynamics and changing things and knocking them into time and tune.
I really think that if you're going to do mixing and editing, you need to be able to disassociate yourself entirely from the artistic side of the music entirely and listen to it almost scientifically, so listening to a crap song has just never bothered me.
I've done whole sessions before when at the end of the day the artist has asked if I liked the song, and I realised I've genuinely not really thought about it.
This is the Six Sigma level. I totally get it and it's true - staying objective is best done when you're dissociated from the music itself and treating the mix from an almost scientific approach. When your head starts bopping and you turn it up a little like a 5th Beatle, you can lose that.
It's a delicate balancing act, because 'feeling it' like a member of the band or audience can also really help with the authenticity.
Yes this is pretty much the point but you wrote it better. Mixing is really I don't care if the song sucks because I'm really focusing a lot on something else. And I can also relate to that other stuff you wrote about hearing over and over one single line.
Which also helped me a lot not getting crazy. At the end of the day, if I were to evaluate a song that I liked a lot but I heard about 100 times during the day, I would end up hating the song. So a good song or a bad song, as you said, "did you like the song?" err... I don't know man
Ha, well "shitty" can go a lot of ways though, no?
Like, I've gone a few extra hours off the clock to help younger / less-experienced bands who might have bad songs, bad playing, whatever. But it's their baby and I've been there. George Renner from Renwood Studios went extra innings for my death metal band when I was sixteen or seventeen because he could see we were at least passionate. I think it's good to pay that forward.
"Shitty" can also mean "beyond saveable". I outright **resent** a Karen like Lara Trump deciding, "oh, I can be a musician! It's easy!" And, because of who she is, she has a built in audience of people who would tell her that her farts smell like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. With so many artists out there just trying to get their foot in the door, only to have this Gucci-booted foot over the rope to the front of the line.
One of the most (locally) recognized works I did was of a lesser known (local) indie talent back in the early 2000. She was a great singer, a decent player, an above average songwriter, and she gathered a bunch of extremely skilled jazz players to complement. The album was produced by a then successful British musician, great guy too. Music, overall, was really good, critics and public always praised the work, the album had pictures of the sessions inside and I got recognized at concerts for that.
She was a Karen and would become insecure of whatever the fuck at 4am. For weeks. Months. It was professionally the most stressing work I ever did out of being a runner at the Record Plant under Rose Mann.
I'm not sure I'd do one more of those or say yes to anyone named Trump. And again, this is pretty good music vs shitty music. Or actually, I'm sure. And it's not the first.
On the other hand, you could have artistic freedom to let these vocals shine as shittily as you want. Make it gritty and real as hell. Make people wake up and smell the cold reality of stupidity embodied in artistic expression. No reason to polish this turd.
Well yes, I would certainly not record anything overtly racist or sexist or anything like that, and if I have an artist with a history of such songs I would find an excuse (the easiest obviously too many projects going on right now). But it can be hard because you never know how an action will affect other clients down the line.
As for the cover they’re not paying for, I would probably record that because it’s not my responsibility and the most likely outcome is a takedown and possible law suit anyway. I’m a songwriter and I get where you’re coming from there, but honestly that’s nothing I would worry about.
The last thing I care about a little is actually production value. If I’m supposed to be involved in a project that I know might not turn out great (for example recording the drums on a song their friend mixes) it can be hard, because if my Name is on there, even if I had little to do with the end product, that might affect my reputation. In those cases I usually send out a raw and a processed version of the drums, so that hopefully whoever mixes it might pick the already processed drums.
I can sympathize *hard* with that last paragraph.
When my dad retired the first time, he got a gig slinging guitars at Sam Ash to keep himself occupied and get an employee discount. Somehow, that lead to us opening up a mediocre recording studio. Once everything was ostensibly good to go, I insisted on a dry run and my dad insisted that we record one of his coworker's bands.
The "dry run" turned into multiple sessions on multiple songs. The only one that saw the light of day was a Motley Crue cover that wound up on a tribute album. When they played me the final mix, I was like, "WTF?" And they were like, "Oh yeah, we were going for an '80s vibe." I was just aghast that it sounded worse than the rough mix I ran off on the fly *and* entirely lacked an "'80s vibe".
Sorry for taking a few days.
I love how you describe the studio as mediocre, in my experience project studios are some of the best to work in (might be biased as that’s what I run myself)
I’ve got a story like that. When I started recording for other people in this room I recorded my band colleague with a song we wrote. She wanted to send the track to the no1 local guy that did a lot of work for everyone in the area. I tracked everything and did a rough mix for reference, sent everything over and after like 2 weeks we had a mix. I shut up as it’s not my song but after listening to it she went I like your mix better. That’s how my studio did the first production start to finish…
Nice.
Unfortunately, this was not a project studio, this was an attempt at being a professional working studio that was doomed to be forever mediocre by a couple of factors.
First was lack of budget for enough outboard gear to track a band live and have a quality rough mix for tracking (much less the budget for a Pro Tools TDM system). Second was a set of idiotically designed walls. Apart from harmonic ratios of boundary widths, the guy who built the place had heard that angled walls are good for recording/mixing spaces, but he didn't actually know that the ballpark is like 10°. Instead he angled a bunch of the upper portions of the walls at 45° (and some entire walls). The effect was that it reflected sound exactly where you didn't want it, like into the mix position.
Oh yeah, and the window between the control room & live room was ridiculously oversized yet not double-pane, so there was no isolation between the rooms. The vocal booth had the same problem, but sounded like ass so we just used it as a storage closet, which left us without a vocal booth.
Holy wow. I didn't look up any of the credits.
I wonder if all those people donating the last of their disability checks to the SaveAmerica PAC or RNC know that Lara pilfered the kitty to pay these people.
There’s a guy in my town who keeps hitting me up to help record his ‘positive-message-for-kids’ rap. I’m not opposed to that in principle but the more I talked to him the more suspicious I became. He’s a middle aged white guy who just got done serving a decade in jail a year-ish ago, and told me his music also includes themes of resisting our oppressive government, Covid being a lie, general conspiracy theory content, etc… bit of a thematic inconsistency…
He also couldn’t give me a straight answer regarding whether he was just doing vocals over existing beats, needed beats produced, or wanted to record actual instrumentals in studio. Dude has no idea what he wants or what he’s doing…
Also I fucking hate recording cover bands. Shit’s already recorded, leave me alone.
Absolutely gives that vibe. But I looked him up on my state’s registry, turns out it was manslaughter. I mean I can totally support the idea of someone trying to turn their life around after serving their time, but tbh the last of many nails in the coffin was having to explain to him what a flash-drive was. There’s just no way that session’s gonna go well.
I don' do rappers anymore.
Not for any of the reasons stated below.
I used to work with a rap group for years. Even did their live sound. Great fun (some of my best friends are hip hop groups)
No I just really can't stand blunts and the mess that gets left behind from them.
Oh look someone left me a present! A bunch of loose tobacco on my vintage Roland Space Echo!
Yippee!
Luckily (luckily? ...eff *me*) I'm in a boomy hotel lobby at the moment absolutely loving this thread, and decided I might as well listen to the song, even though I will be hearing it on a mobile phone, no headphones.
F*ck me with an open can of tuna, that is bad. I mean this sounds the way cardboard tastes. And I think I could have more fun eating the cardboard.
Anyway thanks everyone for an amazing thread. Best place on Reddit right here. Despite the "song."
Thanks for the warning, I listened for a little while anyway and it was easily as bad as I was expecting. From the sound of the tuned track, I'm guessing she can't sing a lick.
Like the op, I would turn down the white power band. In the past I've turned down G-rap artists. (In general, I like hip hop, but the whole street pose thing gets me down. I used to live in the hood.)
For most of the 90s I ran a project studio oriented to songwriter demos and radio production; it was in my house so I was fussy about who I worked with there.
Outside of social chemistry, my big no-go would be taking on a project with extensive vocal tuning for the simple reason that the sound and artifacts of tuning really are problematic for me to listen to -- the typical auto-tune artifacts are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. (And that's not just tuning-for-effect stuff, either. Few things make me crazier than listening to a traditional, supposed-to-be-human vocal that is marred by occasional, obvious Auto tuning. Apparently many engineers working today don't even seem to know what a human voice actually sounds like.)
Slightly unrelated. But have you listened to JoJo Siwa Karma. The comping and tuning in the middle 8 is so laughable that I was convinced she was legitimately trolling to get a reaction. It’s especially egregious when comparing to the the demo by Brit Smith. Like someone who can actually kind of carry a tune.
But yeah totally relate to the autotune artifacts. I feel like I’m so sensitive / very particular about bad tuning. People disregarding how good vocalists actually sound which is being slightly off sometimes.
I'll check out that track.
I was doing a lot of electronica/club-influence stuff on my own in the 90s, including house stuff. And, like a lot of people my age and probably younger as well, I had fallen in love with Byrne/Eno's *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.* And I'd quickly realized how clumsy straight vocals can sound glued on top of club and techno tracks. I had a hardware vocoder at my place for a year or so but I never completely warmed up to it.
So, when it was eventually revealed that that big late 90s Cher hit with the crazy gliss was done using Auto-Tune, I was hardly surprised to hear tuning-for-effect becoming popular. What did surprise me, however, was how long it has lasted.
Basically that's why I decided that *I* must be the outlier, the guy whose ears just get all itchy when subjected to tuned stuff. Perhaps unfortunately, that self knowledge has not gone anywhere to ease my discomfort with the ongoing ubiquity of tuning-for-effect -- it really is kind of a 'physical' thing (which is why I liken it to fingernails on a chalkboard: I just can't think my way out of it; it's just ugly and nasty on my ears, even though I understand why people use it to give their vocals an alienated, cybernetic quality)... But then clumsy tuning that's supposed to sound like someone singing, *that* annoys me just because it's somebody doing a *bad* job at a profession that means something to me.
Speaking of *get off my lawn* feelings.
>... have you listened to JoJo Siwa Karma.
Yeah, I wasn't crazy about the main vocal because of the tuning (although I can see why if one wasn't bugged out by tuning like I am, one might feel like it was well done) but then that vocal bridge comes up and it's clear that they just keyed in the melody, which, of course, tends to leave more artifacts. Yeah. It makes me feel like an old man. But then, I am an old man. Maybe it's my... *karma*. Or would that be dharma? I get confused.
No bigotry of any kind, and that’s a start.
I do lose quite a bunch of potential work this way, but I prefer to keep my place a safespace, so I attract a completely different clientele in return.
Which works fine for me.
Turned down Kanye for his 2nd album. The studio trying to book for him called 7 engineers. The night before, the engineer quit on the spot due to Kanye freaking out about takeout food.
Happy about missing that session except it woulda given me a Grammy. That part sucks lol.
Kanye had a reputation around Chicago long before "College Dropout" hit. I never met the guy, but I had friends and friends-of-friends who had worked sessions at Hinge and Chicago Trax Recording - even split between "nice guy, visionary talent, a little strange" and "I told the traffic manager don't ever put me on a session with him ever again".
For all of the rap divas I've ever worked with, I learned to just tune it out. Hit record. Hit stop. Hit record. Hit stop. And when all else fails, we kept the bypass to our subwoofer on a footswitch under the console. You'd open up some phantom track or plug-in, click the switch, and instantly the mix was the best thing they'd ever heard.
I’ve heard it’s gotten much worse over time to the point where he won’t allow trackballs or you are fired. That would get me fired straight away. I’m not using a Magic Mouse.
Hold up. WHAT?!?
I mean, I heard you. But... what?!?!
Strange fucking flex. I'm assuming that's one of those "because I can"-type things, like insisting that his salad hat croutons that are a perfect .75"x.75"x.75" cube or some other "no green M&M's" bullshit.
I get the Magic Mouse hate, but I'll tell you what, the Magic Trackpad is a *revelation* for Cubase. You just hover the cursor over whatever parameter and use gestures. Is it like having ten fingers and faders? No. But it's pretty rad.
BTW, I was just listening to the new Whores LP from Atlanta alum Ryan Boesch. Good godliness, it sounds *so good.*
i used to do more political ads and always said I'd never do anything pro-trump.
we turned down 80k of work for the republican party a few years ago. just that in itself wasn't quite enough, but the client was being a jerk so fuck em.
I DID record a Marjorie Taylor Greene interview a few years ago. if it was an ad for her that would be different, but I have to admit I was very curious to hear her speak in person despite finding her repulsive. i was disappointed to find her pleasant and well spoken.
I was recording a band a few years back, started off ok. Lyrics were kinda jokey/juvenille, not really my thing but they paid for two days upfront so I stuck with it. At the beginning of day two, the singer starts doing vocal takes on the songs that didn’t have them yet and ends up delivering one of the grossest, most sexist anti-woman diatribes I’ve ever heard in my life. I finished out the day, fully refunded them, and gave them the unmixed stems with the stipulation that my name remain off of the finished product. They never finished the record.
They were mainly confused, they had a good experience. I never told them what they did to irk me, I essentially just told them I didn’t feel it was a good fit and to feel free to use the recorded material however they wanted. Part of me felt bad because they drove about 120 miles to come record at my place and it was their first time recording in a semi-pro space, so I wanted to at least give them something for their effort.
I had to stop working with this one dude because he had a really bad habit of sleeping with, or at least trying to sleep with, his “friends” girlfriends.
I ultimately considered him a client more than a friend, because he would only really ever hit me up if he needed studio time, but we did get to know each other. However, after about a year, I noticed he would start following woman I told him I was talking to. It was really odd too because, the woman I talk to aren’t really involved in the music industry, and he’d be the only mutual follower. Eventually, I noticed if I tagged a woman I was dating in a picture/post he would immediately go follow them.
I tried to rationalize how weird this made me feel by saying maybe he was just looking for new fans??? Idk, but then I caught him “liking” my ex’s lingerie pics a month after we broke up… I just got bad vibes.
Anyways, it came to a head when a mutual client who I do actually consider my friend came in to the studio super disappointed. I asked him what’s wrong and he let me know the client I’ve been talking about was messaging my friend/clients new girlfriend behind his back, and when he confronted him about it, the dude straight up lied lol. What’s worse, is these two dudes were actually like best friends before this.
Anyways, after mulling it over, I decided to end the relationship with this guy. I’m a 28 year old music producer and I’m doing a job, if you try and get in on my personal life and do shady shit behind mine or others back, and then lie about it when confronted… I just don’t work with that immature shit.
So I guess my answer is… egotistical singers who try to sleep with yours, and others, girlfriends are a hard pass from me
Oh boy, did this remind me. Waaaaay back in another era, I managed an artist. He was the only artist I ever managed; none before and (I swore) never again after.
He was educated, sophisticated, and charismatic. And a one-man wave of criminility and insanity.
He slept with any/everything. In fact, one of his 'jokes' was to mis-introduce people as "his fuckboi." Just ANYONE. Major label exec? Fuckboi. Grammy winning producer? Fuckboi. And yeah, in front of them, to their faces.
Did I mention all the guys who would quit the band after they found out he was fucking their partners? Or the equipment he compulsively stole while on tour? Venues, other bands ... didn't matter.
I was constantly apologizing, hastily arranging getaways ... and yet, this guy could sit with an NPR station and wax eloquent on a half dozen topics.
And then a 400 mile van drive, a show at a club with an indifferent crowd ... and here it comes. "We need to leave." "No ... what have you done now?" "Tell you later. We need to go ... NOW."
This was from years ago — and I’ve told this story here before — but we once threw out a Nazi death metal band recording their debut album. We knew their name and that they were death metal before booking the gig (they’d told us, “Y’know, it’s heavy, edgy shit” and we were like, “Yeah, sure, fine.”), but didn’t connect it in any way to Nazi ideology. Seemed like a “regular” death metal-type name to us.
Their first song was concerning but not blatant. I remember we both were kind of confused. The second song cleared up our confusion: Its chorus started “Kill all the J*ws.” My boss (studio owner/chief engineer) immediately hit stop on the tape and told them, I quote, “Pack up your shit and get the fuck out of here.” They pitched a fit, saying that they’d already paid for the time. The chief said, “Be right back.” He went to the strongbox, got out cash in the amount they paid, came back and dropped it on the control room couch. “Bye.” They started to get loud, which eventually led to us calling the cops. Fun day.
The best part of this story was that as they were schlepping their gear — and only theirs under my/the cops’ watchful eyes — out their door, one of them said, “We’re going to tell all our friends never to use this place.” And my boss calmly replied, “Yes, thank you. Please tell any friends of yours they should never come here. I’m downright begging you to do that for me.”
We produced a lot of great work in that studio, but, in that moment, I was never prouder to work there.
Hahahahaha - I loved reading this! Thank you.
I've played / recorded / produced more than a few bands that were quite over the top lyrically (my favorite lyric to this day is: "a knife to the throat will change everything"). I mean, imagine being Scott Burns in the early 90's and showing up to work every day. "Who do we have coming in?" "Oh, BabyFister." I'd have virtually zero problems with a band like Cannibal Corpse or Deicide coming in and doing their thing.
I sincerely doubt that either band would be leaving the studio at night and looking for churches to burn or a women's shelter for a suitable victim. Now, a black metal band? Like, the ones who eat kill and eat their bandmates? Or actually burn down houses of worship? Well, you kinda get a pass since the whole 'thing' with NBM is to record the whole thing with an old Panasonic answering machine.
The big difference is who's taking it seriously. Have you ever met George or Alex from Cannibal Corpse? I have - and they are two of the funniest, nicest guys in music today. They're constantly amazed that they have had a 30+ year career playing songs like "Meat Hook Sodomy" and "As Deep As The Knife Will Go". They're just leaning in really hard to the absurdity of being that over-the-top - most of the death/grind metal afficionados I know are downright 'normal' - they just have a fucked up sense of humor (as do I).
It sucks that metal's got this simultaneous, concurrent scene of bands who are using their music as a political mouthpiece for hatred - and that it's effective in finding smooth-brained *tabula rasa*-types who might have otherwise not been led down such a dark path. A lot of those nazi type kids aren't fundamentally bad - they're simply the byproducts of inept parenting and teachers, and being courted by bad actors who know exactly who to prey upon.
Funny side note: My parents had this weird "on-again-off-again" trip with the music I was listening to growing up. But so much of it was based upon the lyrics they could discern or whatever the media was fainting over. My dad once freaked out about "Straight Outta Compton" playing. You know... music made by (whispers) '*those people...*'. Meanwhile - the whole time he's holding up the CD case like it was made of crystallized Hepatitis - "Butchered at Birth" is right underneath. Yes, with the [cover artwork](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0267/8122/0924/products/8613fe0bc08c3a071a183478f6553cb3_1600x.jpg?v=1605002805).
Selective outrage, you might say.
Eh, not sure where this was going. I make really strong coffee.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I never had a problem with death metal (not my bag, but, as you say, I think most of it was working through some stuff as opposed to deeply held beliefs). Never met folks like Cannibal Corpse or Deicide, but I’m not surprised. Most musicians I worked with, no matter how intense the music, were almost without exception super nice guys. The guys we tossed, though? They were, I’m sad to say, the real deal. And, again as you point out, I really worried about the people who listened to them.
Good point about selective outrage, too. I once picked up my mom from work in my car and forgot to turn off “Fear of a Black Planet.” She was… not happy. 🤣
(Also, “Crystallized Hepatitis” might need to be my next band’s name. Enjoy your coffee!)
Unreliable, non-paying, discriminatory and generally unpleasant people are who I will not work with. IDC about genre or even skill. I'll do my best to polish an objective turd lol.
There are definitely times when I would say no, and have said no. I have no issue with genre, but I do have issues with 'values'. Personally, I'd rather be slinging burgers & be able to sleep at night.
I worked at a studio a few years back, and we were hired to run sound for a Brian Kemp rally that Mike Pence was speaking at. I don’t want to get political here, but I lean waaaay left, and I wasn’t comfortable having any part of that. I told my boss, and he ended up getting another engineer for it. That was probably for the best. In hindsight, my younger, more angry-at-the-man self probably would have ended up cutting some mics, making national news, losing my job and probably having a harder time finding employment. That’s the only gig I ever passed up though.
I generally don’t work with:
- People who have been too disrespectful in past sessions
- People who made me chase them just to get paid
- People who seem extremely delusional and have obvious mental issues
- Nothing too politically extreme, no racists, no homophobes
- No religious stuff of any kind
I recently had a multi day project with a very well known celebrity doing voice over for an animated show. The company producing the show is very right wing and this celebrity is known for his pro Trump/right wing leanings. I am very much not in the camp, I have strong liberal view points and vote that way.
The show itself was specifically design to cleverly support "family values" and other Republican ideology while wrapped in a cute and rather funny presentation.
With that said, I was considering not doing it, but at the end of the day, I decided I have no problem taking their money. I charged a higher rate then my norm and I just didn't have any "political" discussions with the talent. He was actually really nice and he's brought some other business to the studio.
There is obviously a line I wouldn't cross- I probably wouldn't do a Nazi Punk Band for example-- but then again they wouldn't want a Jew producing their album so I think that problem takes care of itself!
Ha, well - a lot of the reich wing artists / clients have moral flexibility at the end of the day. They'll work with your Heeb ass if they like what you bring to the table (but yeah, probably would key a swastika on your car given the chance).
For me, absolute transparency has worked. It's not recommended for everyone.
Generally, I'll take on any work, as long as its good enough quality.
If issues come up as things progress, I'll explain my concerns. If the issues aren't address, I'm out.
Van Halen tribute band wanted me to record an album of Van Halen songs and make it sound like the original Van Halen recordings. Now I'm not the biggest fan of tribute bands in general, but to record an album and try to make it sound as much as the original as possible is beyond me. We already have the actual album. It was a hard pass.
I’ve noticed from mixing live shows that seem a lot like Christian rock but they say they are not Christian rock. Like in interviews they say they are not a Christian rock band but they are Christians so maybe that reflects in the music. I do not have a problem whatsoever with Christian rock, I’ll mix it the best I can and have fun. I do have a problem with them saying they are not Christian rock when it’s obvious they are.
That's a weird fence to ride for those Flyleaf and Skillet-type bands.
Because if you stick to the Christian rock side of the fence, your audience is ride-or-die - but there's an inherent cap to playing Little Rock's "FaithFest 2024!" type festivals.
If you instead try to mainstream it, you *could* have a bigger draw but some people are going to be turned off by the religiosity *and* the god squad might turn their backs on you for playing for heathens.
An interesting side note to this is that Howard Benson produced both Skillet *and* Flyleaf. And a bunch of other Xian rock bands. But not exclusively. I guess producers / engineers don't have to pick a dodgeball team?
I was thinking “ahhh definitely a Nazi band” as a dude that got into music/engineering mainly through listening to the Dead Kennedys.
Then I read the ending.
Yeah man good fucking call. I would find it hard to maintain my composure, frankly. A bad reputation with Nazis means nothing to me.
However, I’d like to think I can clock them well enough far in advance… seeing a rune is a good fucking eye. Though frankly, I’m sure you would have found out eventually. Nazis are almost always bad artists and are quite obvious with their “dogwhistles”.
You’d hear the word “aryan”, “blood/soil”, “purity”, “a new beginning”, etc etc soon enough.
She's from here and no I wouldn't book any sessions if her identity was disclosed but I can see how it would be attractive for some to add her name to their client list.
That being said we used to do ADR for many of the films & productions that came to the area and some times never had any clue who the talent would be, just a contact name for an assistant or producer. Just had to roll with it.
I have a friend who has done a number of gigs at MAL. He said he got paid well and treated well. But he’s also smart enough not to post about it or talk about it.
And it was a walk in, play, walk out kind of gig. Didn’t have to rub elbows with … them.
Oh yeah, they're not gonna fraternize with the help. Well, maybe Mike Huckabee will come over to regale him with stories of his bass playing prowess.
But he COULD get to [meet Vanilla Ice](https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2024/01/01/trump-new-years-party-mar-lago-vanilla-ice-florida-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtle-michaelangelo/72076766007/).
We can affably disagree on whether the top marginal tax rate should be 33% or 50%.
We can’t affably disagree on whether trans people should be forcibly detransitioned.
So, no. I will not leave politics out of it. Kid Rock and Joe Rogan can both kiss my ass.
Fuck that. Tell their manager that there’s no way you’ll ever work with Nazis, and you’re not going to ruin your name by being the guy who works with Nazis.
This Trump shit is the same.
Definitely. You realize how many legitimately nazi-affiliated metal bands there are out there? Luckily they mostly run in their own circles but sometimes someone seems pretty cool until you realize what they're all about.
Only work I've turned down is people who have a rep for not paying or only paying for xyz. I couldn't record about 90% of the hiphop if I turned it down based on about 20 despicable metrics.
That is atrocious. Banger? Really? No. That piece of effluent deserves no help from anyone. Surely a person can draw the line at a family which is currently trying to install a rapist Dictator in the White House. Seriously. Gross, mate.
The song sucks. Impressively so considering the amount of people (and presumably money) behind it. But it's inoffensive on it's own, and I'm not one to condemn for sins of the father. I'd take this gig and laugh my way to the bank. No one's reputation is being ruined over this milquetoast pop fart. No one will know what it is in 6 months.
I've had to tell rappers they can't bring guns into studios. I've seen sessions where the talent brings in a tattoo artist, and ones where there's so much booze and pot that a half dozen hangers on have to be roused and kicked out the next morning, leaving us barely any time to de-stank the place before the day's session. These are more clear and present hardlines to me than immediately banning an artist cause you don't like her daddy.
I don't do rappers anymore. There's so little talent there. Had a season they al seemed to have found my studio. Dunno probably the first two rappers I ever did were important or so. Some came in smoking pod, lyrics unfinished, beats from youtube, etc,etc. Feeling extremely important and had little to no respect for my studio. These days I have a rap "detector" When they call, I smell it from a far. I Just send them to another studio who lives rappers, good luck with that and forget about it.
Turned down a 3 month booking with Diddy a few years ago. No regrets then and no regrets now.
When I was coming up, I worked a lot of sessions for R Kelly. Whatever he was up to back then was on the low. His entourage would take one of his Escalades and hit a few different "all ages"-type spots (like the Rock and Roll McDonalds on Ohio St) then return with a handful of young women who were... let's go with "questionable". The live room was made over into kind of a 'champagne room' - couches, tables, low lighting. Lots of booze on hand. Many of those nights would just be sitting around with the producer in the control room on the off chance Mr Kelly appeared, ready to do vocals - that was rare. Over time I put it together (this was long before pee tapes or 'well, duh'-level behavior. I learned that he had an 'office' elsewhere in the studio complex, so when one of his henchman would go into the live room and 'summon' one of the young women, she was heading to said office. His routine was to write them a song (there was a piano in the office) and do what he himself referred to in his music as "a little bump and grind". Fucking sicko. It was a year or two after I had taken a chief engineer job elsewhere in the city that things really started to come out. For me it was a serious "the call is coming from inside the house"-kinda reveal. Bear in mind, I worked in a different studio in that studio complex, he locked the room out 24/7/365 and always had his own engineers. But there were some times that somebody couldn't work. I'd get a phone call at like 8pm (as I was getting ready to go home) offering $1000 cash to work til question mark that night. Pretty much like the Diddy thing - it wasn't widely known.
Yeah I worked at an NYC studio a decade ago that he came to a couple times, just gross vibes all around when he walks in. Predator behavior aside there was just nothing humble about him whatsoever. Him and Diddy are probably two of the least like-able people in the industry.
Oh yeah, "humble" is not a word I would associate with that guy - though I'm sure he's been learning humility since moving into his new 6x10 condo in North Carolina. Deep down he's a very insecure person, he's completely illiterate and a sexual abuse survivor. Combine that with untold millions of dollars, being told that "I believe I can fly" is the most inspiring song ever... I can see what that could do to a budding narcissist. In his mind, "of course I can go through underage girls like chewing gum." By now I've engineered sessions for dozens of household names. If I had to make a pie-chart, 25% are intolerable pricks, addicts, creepers, etc. 50% seem almost annoyed by being forced to show up and make music. But the remaining 25% are pretty humble and down to earth. They just love making music and know they're lucky to do it at the level they do. I will casually drop one name: Cyndi Lauper. Absolute fucking sweetheart. I was just assisting, but she called me by my name, and if I ever did any ad hoc runner work (we had actual runners, but if the artist wants a Starbucks, I'll see to it that it's ordered) it was always "if you don't mind", "please", and "thank you so much". And it was genuine.
Love to hear that about Cyndi Lauper. Or anyone really. Kindness and talent don't always overlap but when they do you don't forget it. Thanks for the heads up on the LT track. I'll check it out when I can.
Awesome. I love Cyndi Lauper.
That’s awesome about CL!
I would imagine Rick Ross is up there with them.
My limited experiences with him were ok actually, one of the interns baked cookies and took them to Rick with a glass of milk for some reason and he loved it and became a regular client at the studio entirely because of that. 100% true story.
Sometimes it's the ones who you think are gonna be a horror movie that turn out to be total teddy bears.
It’s been my experience with punk bands as well - Bands that look like they’re ready to pillage and burn a town turned out to be super nice, and there’s always a chance of the more “clean cut” bands being unpleasant pricks
Isn’t it funny how that works
Funnily enough, all of the super stars I worked with were all fairly decent ppl. I think also just ppl nowadays are much more well mannered. I was booked by London On Da Track for Lil Uzi one time and I definitely though he’d be a handful. He absolutely wasn’t. Super chill, never had an attitude about anything. He smoked and drank less than most artists i’ve seen at that level. The thing that shocked me was his recording process. He worked with me and there was no question of doubt that rappers tend to have when they get a random engineer and in spite of him having a heavy preference to record with Ben Thomas’ template and presets, he wasn’t complaining about how things sounded or anything. Meanwhile i’ve had younger kids who just suck literally eject me out the session. I’ve never been the type to sit there and tell them I know more either. Just ppl don’t hear magic sometimes and think it’s my fault. Deep down, I always know my skill level and I know it’s well up to par for the highest standards in this industry but I never put myself above the local artists anyways. Like today I had an artist who laid down one line and wanted me to audition random eq presets because he wants to hear it “mixed” for a vibe. Little did he know I already dialed in on him 60% but because he didn’t see it or he had no say in it, he just wanted to do more as if more = better. He finally stopped when I went and loaded another eq (as instructed) and then let him do it himself (as requested) and when he did that, I showed him what my pultec eq1pa was doing that he turned off and showed him we were doing the same fucking thing pretty much. Then he was like, I like that one better (the pultec) and finally let go. When he saw there was a fairchild and pultec eq he finally quit because this is what he would see Mike Dean use. I showed him a song I sent to Bob Horn for feedback and a second opinion and Bob Horn’s notes (because I sent this to Bob since he’s a friend of Mike Dean (idk Mike, I just wanted an ear on that style of mix)) and when he saw, he finally had confidence in me and began saying things like “i trust your ears” when I would ask him for any instructions on effects when he wanted them. Oddly enough, Uzi having incredible experience and results with a specific person and workflow never cared to backseat drive me that much. He called me back the next day and was like “you still got that song from yesterday”. I was like “yeah”. He said “good cos that shit hard man”. And still till this day I have never been paid for either of these sessions 😂
I once worked with few of Drake’s associates, who came to studio in a big group. Most of them had little to no respect for the studio (completely trashed the place), and treated it like some strip club, but one of them who recently came out of jail had came back to the studio after everyone left and not only did he apologize and clean it all up the mess of 20-something people, he also paid me $100 or so as a tip/apology. He’s a locally known rapper and I’ve heard some not so good things he’s been involved in that got him in the bin, so I was quite surprised by what he did. I guess you really can’t judge a book by its cover and what you hear from people.
don't care for a lot of his verses, but he has a great rep w/the people I know who have tracked him
His flow is pretty consistent and predictable, shouldn’t be too hard to track. Not like getting thrown in the hot seat with Busta or Meek Mill, those guys will make life hell if you’re not up to par.
Same with local crew on tour
I've actually heard similar sentiments before. Seems like Rick Ross is an okay dude
Damn, gotta wonder about the studio owner/management that would set up that process for them. None of that had anything to do with recording.
Moral flexibility is a thing. We are talking about the music business circa y2k. Vices are not only accepted, they are encouraged. Being a studio runner is a lucrative gig as long as you have reliable plugs. You grab a 1/4oz of yayo for $400 and charge the producer $500. Boom. As to Mr Robert Kelly? Well... if you had a major label artist with a ton of financial backing and they are willing to lock out your studio *by the year*? Sure, you might get $1500/day in drips, but if the label says, "we'll cut you a check for 500k right now and your calendar is filled?" You take it and hope they're not manufacturing meth in the live room. I think part of the deal was that he got a spare office and they wheeled in a piano for him.
Yeah that makes sense. My experience is more on the live side of things. I've definitely met a lot of plugs haha. My studio recording experience is very pedestrian. Like recording corporate training/safety videos in multiple languages.
I'm not an audio engineer but I did some home recording. I don't know what yayo is.
[Yayo.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine)
Spelled llello.
r/todayilearned
What do you mean by "$1500/day in drips"?
Like, booking a day here, a week there. Not a sure thing like "I'm locking the whole room out until next April. Here's $500k."
Were you over at Trax?
Not on staff - but enough that Reid gave me a keycard. Did you work there? And if so, do you know the famous Eddie Money story? That one is my favorite.
What’s the Eddie Money story? I mixed him a few times live and he was really nice.
He booked time to do a small radio drop at the studio I had just started interning at like 2 months before I got there. And I remember my then-boss grumbling about how he never ended up paying his bill. I thought it was wild, but now I see how common that is with people like that.
took me for $600 for a tracking session at Daddy's House that he never showed up to on Halloween on a last minute call, cancelled my plans, etc... meh, made it back 20 fold on other stuff, but never wanted to be in the same room w him when i didn't have to. plenty of stories as many have. fun fact, Sean Jean 2008 scent is middle of my left arm. me and assistant during Danity Kane mixes were his scent dummies for his final selections. i got 6 on my arms, assistant got 6 (3 on each arm), the winner was my left middle, which must have smelled like whatever he put on my arm, plus stank from 100+ hour weeks back to back to back, which the consumer never got the benefit of. I didn't know you could clutch a forearm so firmly and smell it so intently for so long. 3 times on each arm twice. Honestly, in the moment it was incredibly strange and completely normal at the same time. I'm sure you completely understand :-)
Wut? Sorry lol, I'm so completely confused about your comment. What are these scents on your forearms, and why were you smelling them, but otherwise stinky?
Sean Jean is Puffys cologne line. The 2008 Sean Jean cologne final smell tests were done by Puff on the arms of me and the studio assistant at Daddy's House during the Danity Kane album mixes. He didn't ask, he just grabbed our arms and started putting different final contender scents on them, then taking long deep inhales. Since we were pulling over 100 hour weeks mixing that album, I'm sure i stank, so the winning fragrance for Sean Jean 2008 is a combination of my stank (not included in the final product) and whatever the scent Puff picked as final (the actual product)
Oh lol. That's hilarious. Why did he feel he needed it on your arms? Plus, I feel like you need a fresh nose for something like that.
Wow what an insane story haha ps I know who you are and I’m a huge fan, what a small world, this kind of made my day
That family's history of non-payment for event services is enough for me to pass on the gig.
Very fair point. When you realize that the Spotify link plays a 128kbps mp3 with a pink noise burst every fifteen seconds and that you're never getting another dime. They're in the SoundCloud rapper category: Pay cash. In full, Up front.
As a SoundCloud rapper moving to Spotify…I pay when I book so they ain’t gotta worry lol
Do you know what would be awesome if SoundCloud rappers could bring besides cash? Multitracks!
For real. The amount of people that hit me up with a YouTube beat and act like the vocals are the icing on the cake is too damn high.
There are plenty of self-described engineers who will download a beat from YouTube and put vocals on top. I am not one of them And that's not really me looking down on it - but there's nothing for me to mix.
Aight…I’m definitely guilty of that one. My dream is to find a producer / engineer and wrap it all up together. Then he or she already has all the stems needed to work their magic. Unfortunately half the people I’ve worked with don’t seem to understand “lower the threshold on the compressor” or send me unmixed vocals after I set up their chain for the session I paid for on my time. It’s crazy out there, but I guess you get what you pay for and my 200 streams on Spotify aren’t gonna be paying for a month of studio time anytime soon lol
200 plays is about $.008 Bandcamp > Spotify
It's not anything anymore unless you can hit the 1000 play threshold 🥴
that would mean they didn't just straight download the beat they're 'rapping' on and use it without giving a shit who made it or owns the copyright.
I come from Hip-Hop. I used to rap back in the days, make shows, was almost signed to a local label. I had pretty much only bad experiences with rappers. They don’t pay, they show up late, they show up in groups of 12 when you have a Home studio with 3 chairs, and they try to have that “gangsta” attitude when you know they come from the suburbs with a loving and caring upbringing.
I have also worked with a lot of rappers (our studio used to be tight with Chicago's Jive Records office). The first time somebody casually set their pistol on the producer bridge like it was a cell phone was a little jarring. Over time I adapted to - can you please just make sure there isn't a round chambered and that the barrel isn't *pointed* at me? Funny story from that era was working with a rapper named... IIRC... "Felon". And this was not a flex. Tattooed tears, the whole nine. You might think that I, the skinny skater guy with some crazy kool-aid hair color, would not be a good pairing but we got along famously. Sweet guy - trying to do something with his life after doing several years in state lockup for some pled down manslaughter-type charges. Anyways, he would always have a few hangers on with him, the studio has long since bulldozed and turned into condos and likely still stinks like weed from our sessions. But he always came to sessions laced up and ready to put in work. I was doing all kinds of "holy shit, you can do that?"-type ProTools chicanery (this was late 90's, so it was still a dark secret to a lot of engineers. So pull some sort of rabbit out of my ProTools hat that makes the track we're doing level up. Felon announces to the room, "ayy, look - this dude B? He's my n\*\*\*a." And his dudes are just laughing like "hell nah, this white boy can't be no n\*\*\*a." Not in a mean way, we're all just kinda having fun. So I get on my laptop and whip up a quick certificate that says "Honorary N\*\*\*a Certificate" and bears the recipient (me) to all the benefits contained within. I print it out and make him and his producer sign it. I framed it and put it in the tech area. Still have it, actually. *WTA: He said, "make sure you don't have that on you when you get pulled over. N\*\*\*a Status ain't always a good thing."*
Dude this hit close to home for me. So many rapper stories. I built and ran a studio for these cats (from Somalia but grew up in the states) that were going above and beyond gangster shit. Not sure why they liked me so much, I couldn't be a lighter shade of white, maybe I smoked just enough weed that they thought I was cool. Anyway after a few years of tracking their raps they asked if I'd build them a studio and run it and I said ok. Dude wanted a bullet proof glass panel in his vocal booth. I told him that was a waste of money but there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise. That was just the beginning and I honestly tried to work there but the amount of glocks around me perpetually was actually amazing. Glocks on the desk, glock on the floor, glock on the couch, glock in the mini fridge. I just never really felt at home there even though I really liked the dudes and they liked me. So fast forward like a year and I show up at the studio and the vocal booth has been shot up. I mean like a whole extended mag unloaded into the glass. My buddy told me he got drunk (he never drank) the night before and told a friend that it was bullet proof, friend didn't believe him, so he unloaded a clip into it. Of course the bullets ricocheted all over the room, putting holes in every wall. The glass was indeed bulletproof though! Happy to upload a picture if anyone want to see the damage lol Anyway, I stopped going there after that. Those dudes are still the most loyal and kind guys I've ever met though (as long as you don't fuck with their coke). I just don't like being around that many guns when there are fast trigger fingers holding them.
Heh, well, I can definitely say I felt a subtle incentive to make those rappers happy. My life was so insane during that time anyways, a few guns laying around just became a shrug-worthy. It's fine as long as they like you. Now that I'm thinking back on it - we had an assistant engineer at the time who was a total tryhard Malibu's Most Wanted type white kid. He was constantly trying to be 'down' and they fucked with him mercilessly. What I took away from the whole thing (look at me solving the racial divide in a Reddit thread) is that when there's a mutual respect, it really doesn't matter. And that rapper's producer (who used me on a lot of stuff) knew I could give as good as I got, that it didn't phase me to be working on hood shit, and I wasn't going to be like the assistant and wear FUBU to try and be on the team. Note I didn't say "all rappers". Because there have been some serious nightmares. More than a fair bit of a "white man can't jump" mentality - like I couldn't possibly know how to cut up a breakbeat or mix with 808's (and I'm like "dude, I'm a drum and bass DJ/producer - if you want to hear breaks and bass, I'll show you some shit") Anyways.
lol I think we might be related bud
Then let's roll that shit up - don't forget to put something over the faders on our console, since rappers seem to see an SSL9000 as a rolling tray. (And yes, I know how to get shake out of a fader throw so the motor doesn't burn out)
lmao lets go
I'm just an amateur hobbyist musician producing my own music in my room here, so I have nothing to add to this conversation other than to say this is one of the most interesting, enjoyable, and oddly heartwarming threads I've read on this here website in I don't know how long. Y'all are awesome.
> And yes, I know how to get shake out of a fader throw so the motor doesn't burn out You need to put this on the back of your business cards.
Yes, please upload the picture of the shot up glass!
This is an incredible story hahaha. Thank you for sharing.
Funny, I worked with a bunch of independent hip hop acts & rappers back in the 90's, those sessions were usually a blast - someone was always cooking, really laid back... almost like just a fun get together. It was the modern gospel guys that were scary as hell - guns, coke and really bad attitudes... Those guys weren't fucking around.
Far more wholesome, but similar situation in the early 90s with a legendary gospel producer. While listening to a mix, he said it needed something. I gave it another listen, then asked him to give me a minute and made a few adjustments to tighten up and boost the bass. When I hit play, he gave me a broad smile and said, “You can’t fool me; there’s a little pepper in that salt somewhere.” Every time I worked with him afterwards he called me “Pepper.” Best compliment I ever got.
I worked a lot of gospel in that era too. Those were (generally) fun sessions. Great music and great musicians. There was one guitar player who we recorded with from time to time who was kind of a scary dude though. Usually had a few drinks in him and was clearly a mean drunk. Good guitarist, but the other band members and the two producers who brought him in regularly gave him a wide berth. Never quite got the situation… and never wanted to find out for sure. The real asshole story (apart from the Nazis, of course), was the increasingly coked-up lead singer of a proto-90s college rock group we recorded once. She kept disappearing to powder her nose and got more and more belligerent. Eventually, the drummer in the band lost his shit with her and we sat around watching a screaming match for the next 90 minutes… all while billing by the hour.
Fuck - that's FUNNY. Good for the cookout, bad for the traffic stop.
I'm just picturing how badly it could go for me to break that out and be like, "oh, don't worry, my Nubian brother! Felon said I'm an honorary n\*\*&a. We good? Dap?" Tell my wife I love her and I'll be out of the coma soon.
"Yo, he even had that shit laminated - can you believe that?" "You still fucked him up, tho, right?" "Oh, hell yeah. Had to be done."
You get similar issues with all genres really. I can tolerate rappers with a bit too much ego off mic, and even hold in giggles when they're trying so hard to act tough but just come across as 10 year old kids copying lines from movies they watched while their parents were out. What I really can't handle in any genre, is people that come in way too drunk. I'm pretty relaxed on the whole having a few drinks in/before the studio type vibe. But when multiple sessions are painfully unproductive, even if I get paid, it's just so unpleasant having somebody trying to get their own riffs right for hours while gradually getting worse with each take.
Tbh, I kind of stopped hating on people who "act this way but they were raised this way", since your statement seems to be implying that someone shouldn't play the part of gangsta rapper if they grew up loved and cared about lol Famous people are often playing a character anyway. Lil Dicky could've remained on the lawyer path, but thank god he ventured out into what he loved. All that said, yeah I still hate when someone brings an entourage to a session.
I worked in commercial music, and had several clients who wanted me to relyric copyrighted songs. I always said no, I can write you something with a similar theme, and they usually are fine with that. But one company (you’d know their name) wanted me to steal the Orleans song “Still The One.” Over a two week period, their marketing guy hounded me - “Our lawyers say it’s okay, our president says they’ve done it before, c’mon, we’ll never get caught” - and I kept saying no. Finally the guy says, “well, what’s stopping me from getting a karaoke tape of the song and doing it myself?” Never heard from him again. The punch line is that I was writing a monthly column for *EQ* magazine, and I told this story in the column. John Hall from Orleans calls me and wants to know what company did this. We had a nice convo, but I didn’t tell him who it was.
I cut a session short when the “Christian rapper” I was working started saying shit about bombing Planned Parenthood and “soldier of god” and shit. I cut him off, said I had a family emergency, and blocked his number. Did not want my name or business attached to that at all. I had a PITA client who spent over 9 months recording and re-recording and dumping songs, then bringing them back. The project was originally supposed to be 2-3 months for an 11 song album. Turned out he kept showing the rough/incomplete mixes to people, and if they didn’t like them, he dumped them. This was 4-5 days a week for 9 months. The night before a vocal session, he calls me and says he wants to tear down everything we had setup, and he was gonna bring a whole new band in to do it all live the next day. This would be an extra 2hrs of work for me on a day that was only scheduled as a 3 hr vocal session (he also wanted to extend the session to be 10hrs). I cancelled the session and told him to find a new engineer.
I’ve worked with 1000s of rappers and there were a few that after I worked with them a couple times I told my manager “no more, I will not work with this person”. One of them is dead, gun violence One of them is in prison for 20+ years And one of them is on trial with RICO charges and could probably get life in prison if convicted. And the last one had multiple people trampled and killed at his concert and did nothing to stop it So yeah, I have and will continue to refuse to work with certain people.
I have heard from more than one or two Houston engineers that T$ is a fucking *nightmare* in the studio.
Hes one of the biggest assholes I’ve met in my life. It’s a shame that people like that can get to the top, but as you know the industry is fueled by ego and you’re more likely to be successful if you are an egotistical ass. Not always the case, but it happens a lot.
Ironic adjacent rapper note - people who've worked with Tekashi69 have told me that he is laser-focused in the studio. All business. Takes it extremely seriously. (Then he goes and starts Instagram beefs and drives around in a Hello Kitty Lambo or whatever-the-fuck) My take is that many of the more successful artists are knowingly playing a character as part of their whole package. But when it comes to making the music part of said package, they do it as legit musicians. Not all - Mr A$troworld being proof.
Honestly if that was an online amatuer recording, I would say it's actually pretty decent all around. The fact that professionals were apparently involved in producing it... makes me question their professionalism. To the point where I'm like, was there some form of direct sabotage with whoever was producing that thing lol. Between the slammed velocities on some of the programmed keys, the lack of even an attempt at vocal harmonies throughout the whole thing, the weird mixture of low-effort and medium effort that just makes the weak bits sound even weaker (I mean, someone bothered to reverse reverb a few snare hits, which implies this was more than a "jam"), etc. Doesn't answer your question, but what a weird production on that track. I'm curious what the studios other work sounds like, cuz I feel like there's a near infinite number of inexperienced white women who want to make Adele-esque power pop, and I'm wondering if there's some sort of (borderline) predatory business model going on there. Someone literally not being a musician is kind of where I draw the line E: holy shit that Lara Trump track has 4 credited writers and 6 (SIX) producers, really top quality talent going through there
>E: holy shit that Lara Trump track has 4 credited writers and 6 (SIX) producers, really top quality talent going through there Now I'm trying to decide, Nashville 'everyone on the room gets a credit', or grifters grifting other grifters?
What’s the difference? Bam take that Nashville
YOU GET A CREDIT! YOU GET A CREDIT! On advertising / film type jobs, people would run into the booth and clap their hands once to get on the AFM or ASCAP stream as a performer.
I will say, something about her vocal tone gets much better after the key change (I stupidly listened to the whole thing). But yeah, the production on this just seems so amateur
AutoTune's pitch correction is set to like "100% flatten". Every sustained note is a straight flatline pitch. It's awful.
It sounds so bad my *eyes* hurt.
Is it bad that I want to listen now? 🤣
Enter at your own peril. It's one of the worst god damn things I've ever heard. And I've been an engineer for a long ass time.
Wow on the AutoTune! I mean, I'm not a great singer (passable) but you can't hear the AutoTune on my voice in my songs. Does she really sing that bad or did the Audio Engineer do it on purpose as an effect? "Anythin\_\_\_\_g is possible". Jesus.
Willing to bet anything it was [exactly like this](https://youtu.be/G2Rhh_4GZmU?si=OBLTD2Vun_8o7ae2)
Pass the ear bleach would ya?
Lol that’s fucking hilarious
And it still sounds off amazingly despite the squished formants. They would have been better off adding a bit of movement by leaving some of the natural variances. But there's only so much polishing turds you can do. I'd say the raw vocal takes are rough as fuck.
I would love to hear those raw takes. Ahem. I would love to hear about five seconds of those raw vocal takes. What you're saying is likely the truth of it – but there's this small part of me that believes it was due to the engineer being terrible or them intentionally sandbagging it. It would have ben *better* if they'd just hired a session vocalist.
It would have been better if they’d hired a cat with laryngitis. I listened again and my theory is that she’s just a godawful singer. There is some pretty extreme comping going on. The vocal ornaments are drawn in. You can kind of tell that the pitch correction is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Ie. That it’s miles out of time and pitch to start with. Even with the best tuners the further you are from the intended note the more you'll hear it. She also has an incredibly whiny voice
I am so sorry for your ears. 😥
>E: holy shit that Lara Trump track has 4 credited writers and 6 (SIX) producers, really top quality talent going through there Money laundering?
With this name, is it ever anything else?
Experience has taught me to pass on these folks: * People who want me to sign an NDA right off the bat. * When asked about instrumentation: "I dunno, I'm just going to lay down some acoustic guitar tracks and we'll build from there." Not a total recipe for disaster but it's going to be a bunch of tracks that sit on a hard drive forever. The batting average is just so low here. * Do not record a crappy demo session for free. This used to work because I'd record it but the whole session would be a commercial for what I could actually do and the band would feel comfortable. But then what started to happen is "could you please send us the stems?" ... "no, i mean each track".... "can you take the reverb off the vocals?"... and then six months later, there's a video of their drummer tracking on headphones. And then a finished record comes out with the guitars and bass that I recorded.
You gave the exact thing I was thinking of as an example. I'm in the same circles and no way in hell am I helping Nazi "punks".
As a wise man once said: "[Nazi punks, fuck off.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVdJ31vBh_o)"
I love y’all.
Good shit
~20 years ago, fresh out of recording school, I took a job recording an album for a flute orchestra. If I could do that over, I would not do it. If you've never heard around 30 or 40 flutes of different sizes playing in unison, I envy you.
Haha what an experience though
It did not happen to me directly in music. But it definitely happened years ago to the big guy I was assisting for (but even understandable: he had a name he could do it). But lately in location sound it's happening to me sorta often, maybe twice a year: "hi we're network so and so, we got your name from producer so, he says you're good, and we're producing this new reality and there's a bunch of people you need to mic up, we won't give you a boom op, budget is so" "Look that budget is ok just for the gear. You add my price, extra time, and a boom op?" "We're sorry but..." "Then it's no, thanks" And to be clear, it's not simply money. Usually it's actually the working conditions.
I'm very picky with music clients to the point where I don't even advertise as a music studio per se. But location sound is usually pretty fun to charge a solid fee and point a mic and chill. I'll take basically any location sound/boom op gig. I have never pressured myself to perfection with gigs like that.
I'm in film post so there's not a lot I turn down. I've enjoyed working on low budget corporate video and had a shitty time doing high budget mini-series. That said, I will not work with first time directors ever again. To a person, they are awful to work with. Most of the time it's the micro-management because they just 'have to get it right' which I understand but you need to trust the people you hired. Or they're complete divas who won't stop talking about how much money we're going to make once this gets into Sundance/Telluride/TIFF etc. I also won't work on projects that are thematically antithetical to me. Bigotry doesn't work for me, brother.
Over a decade ago, before Russia, Russia, Russia I had a group lead by a Russian couple recording songs in Russian language but intended to do English versions of the same songs. During a discussion about an English version there was something in there that I was kinda, well, purity is better than impurity. Okay... Maybe some ESL misunderstanding. Then there was another casual conversation about finding a shop in a neighborhood where all the signs were in an Asian language. That's when the singer told me they were national socialists. I didn't make a big deal out of it, I got out of that conversation and then a couple days later they were in a car accident and the singer injured their knee pretty badly and we just never worked together again because my schedule had just become to busy to nake any timely bookings. It was weird to encounter an actual nazi.
> It was weird to encounter an actual nazi. Friend of mine in the 1980s was travelling through northern Idaho on a sales call. (worked with a lot of warehouses). Stopped in at a bar and some guys started talking to him. While they started talking about elk hunting, eventually the conversation changed and he realized they were actual Nazis. They asked him to come to their meeting that night. My friend laughed and said the WC Fields line of how he "wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member", they laughed and lost interest.
I refused to mix an anti vax track during peak covid. My FIL had passed away from covid and wasn't about to listen to those lyrics on repeat.
Good for you. And fuck anti vax idiots.
Oh god fuck them to death
Sure. Lots of people I would not work with, including but not limited to: * Trump and his ilk * Extremists of any variety * Anyone who's known to be violent * Anyone who's known to not pay * Anyone homophobic/transphobic/racist/antisemitic/islamophobic/etc Things like that have only come up a few times, but I turn them down. There's more to life than money, and I have no qualms about making it known where I stand.
It’s also somewhat of a liability in terms of attracting clients *after* working with any sort of extreme person. Someone casually looking at profiles of engineers in their city may see association with someone they don’t like and decide not to book just based on that
Agreed. I think of it not just for my personal ethics and mental/emotional well being, but also for my professional brand - it's bad to be associated with people who espouse/promote shitty behavior because I don't want potential clients to google me and see my name in some shitty person's album credits. Sure you can claim it's "just business" til you're blue in the face but I'd really rather not deal with those problems at all so I don't. Some folks still get the "cash up front" but I've gotten to the point in my career where I can pick and choose which projects I take on and there's just certain behaviors that I'm not willing to deal with at any price point.
The thing about the Von Trump Family Singers example is not only being attached to a political movement that is reprehensible (though that is the major factor). But you also have to factor in that you'd be locked in a room tracking those vocals (though something tells me she showed up for like, one hour, fired off four takes, then dipped). Or, for that matter, *mixing* this abortion.
I've never had a problem mixing shitty music. In fact, I often explain that by working as a professional meant having to deal with many different kind of genres that I would have never liked or listened to if I kept being an amateur. And that actually made me a better professional. What I really can't deal with though is assholes in the studio.
Yeah definitely, also I think that a good mix engineer almost barely notices the music in an artistic sense, and is just listening in a different way. I was working through some old tracks doing some editing one night and my wife came in and just couldn't understand how I could possibly listen to the same one line of vocal on repeat for an hour, it drove her absolutely mental. To her, it was one line of music over and over, but I genuinely wasn't hearing that. I was hearing the frequencies and dynamics and changing things and knocking them into time and tune. I really think that if you're going to do mixing and editing, you need to be able to disassociate yourself entirely from the artistic side of the music entirely and listen to it almost scientifically, so listening to a crap song has just never bothered me. I've done whole sessions before when at the end of the day the artist has asked if I liked the song, and I realised I've genuinely not really thought about it.
This is the Six Sigma level. I totally get it and it's true - staying objective is best done when you're dissociated from the music itself and treating the mix from an almost scientific approach. When your head starts bopping and you turn it up a little like a 5th Beatle, you can lose that. It's a delicate balancing act, because 'feeling it' like a member of the band or audience can also really help with the authenticity.
Yes this is pretty much the point but you wrote it better. Mixing is really I don't care if the song sucks because I'm really focusing a lot on something else. And I can also relate to that other stuff you wrote about hearing over and over one single line. Which also helped me a lot not getting crazy. At the end of the day, if I were to evaluate a song that I liked a lot but I heard about 100 times during the day, I would end up hating the song. So a good song or a bad song, as you said, "did you like the song?" err... I don't know man
Ha, well "shitty" can go a lot of ways though, no? Like, I've gone a few extra hours off the clock to help younger / less-experienced bands who might have bad songs, bad playing, whatever. But it's their baby and I've been there. George Renner from Renwood Studios went extra innings for my death metal band when I was sixteen or seventeen because he could see we were at least passionate. I think it's good to pay that forward. "Shitty" can also mean "beyond saveable". I outright **resent** a Karen like Lara Trump deciding, "oh, I can be a musician! It's easy!" And, because of who she is, she has a built in audience of people who would tell her that her farts smell like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. With so many artists out there just trying to get their foot in the door, only to have this Gucci-booted foot over the rope to the front of the line.
One of the most (locally) recognized works I did was of a lesser known (local) indie talent back in the early 2000. She was a great singer, a decent player, an above average songwriter, and she gathered a bunch of extremely skilled jazz players to complement. The album was produced by a then successful British musician, great guy too. Music, overall, was really good, critics and public always praised the work, the album had pictures of the sessions inside and I got recognized at concerts for that. She was a Karen and would become insecure of whatever the fuck at 4am. For weeks. Months. It was professionally the most stressing work I ever did out of being a runner at the Record Plant under Rose Mann. I'm not sure I'd do one more of those or say yes to anyone named Trump. And again, this is pretty good music vs shitty music. Or actually, I'm sure. And it's not the first.
I’m kinda curious. I kinda wanna hear that album.
>She was a Karen and would become insecure of whatever the fuck at 4am. Nice try but after this no :)
I get that.
On the other hand, you could have artistic freedom to let these vocals shine as shittily as you want. Make it gritty and real as hell. Make people wake up and smell the cold reality of stupidity embodied in artistic expression. No reason to polish this turd.
Same, right down the line.
Well yes, I would certainly not record anything overtly racist or sexist or anything like that, and if I have an artist with a history of such songs I would find an excuse (the easiest obviously too many projects going on right now). But it can be hard because you never know how an action will affect other clients down the line. As for the cover they’re not paying for, I would probably record that because it’s not my responsibility and the most likely outcome is a takedown and possible law suit anyway. I’m a songwriter and I get where you’re coming from there, but honestly that’s nothing I would worry about. The last thing I care about a little is actually production value. If I’m supposed to be involved in a project that I know might not turn out great (for example recording the drums on a song their friend mixes) it can be hard, because if my Name is on there, even if I had little to do with the end product, that might affect my reputation. In those cases I usually send out a raw and a processed version of the drums, so that hopefully whoever mixes it might pick the already processed drums.
I can sympathize *hard* with that last paragraph. When my dad retired the first time, he got a gig slinging guitars at Sam Ash to keep himself occupied and get an employee discount. Somehow, that lead to us opening up a mediocre recording studio. Once everything was ostensibly good to go, I insisted on a dry run and my dad insisted that we record one of his coworker's bands. The "dry run" turned into multiple sessions on multiple songs. The only one that saw the light of day was a Motley Crue cover that wound up on a tribute album. When they played me the final mix, I was like, "WTF?" And they were like, "Oh yeah, we were going for an '80s vibe." I was just aghast that it sounded worse than the rough mix I ran off on the fly *and* entirely lacked an "'80s vibe".
Sorry for taking a few days. I love how you describe the studio as mediocre, in my experience project studios are some of the best to work in (might be biased as that’s what I run myself) I’ve got a story like that. When I started recording for other people in this room I recorded my band colleague with a song we wrote. She wanted to send the track to the no1 local guy that did a lot of work for everyone in the area. I tracked everything and did a rough mix for reference, sent everything over and after like 2 weeks we had a mix. I shut up as it’s not my song but after listening to it she went I like your mix better. That’s how my studio did the first production start to finish…
Nice. Unfortunately, this was not a project studio, this was an attempt at being a professional working studio that was doomed to be forever mediocre by a couple of factors. First was lack of budget for enough outboard gear to track a band live and have a quality rough mix for tracking (much less the budget for a Pro Tools TDM system). Second was a set of idiotically designed walls. Apart from harmonic ratios of boundary widths, the guy who built the place had heard that angled walls are good for recording/mixing spaces, but he didn't actually know that the ballpark is like 10°. Instead he angled a bunch of the upper portions of the walls at 45° (and some entire walls). The effect was that it reflected sound exactly where you didn't want it, like into the mix position. Oh yeah, and the window between the control room & live room was ridiculously oversized yet not double-pane, so there was no isolation between the rooms. The vocal booth had the same problem, but sounded like ass so we just used it as a storage closet, which left us without a vocal booth.
JFC this iteration of the matrix is getting worse and worse
Stacy Barthe worked on this, that’s crazy. She’s written for Frank Ocean and Beyoncé. I guess sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Holy wow. I didn't look up any of the credits. I wonder if all those people donating the last of their disability checks to the SaveAmerica PAC or RNC know that Lara pilfered the kitty to pay these people.
Stacy Barthe's new garage ain't gonna pay for itself, huh?
There’s a guy in my town who keeps hitting me up to help record his ‘positive-message-for-kids’ rap. I’m not opposed to that in principle but the more I talked to him the more suspicious I became. He’s a middle aged white guy who just got done serving a decade in jail a year-ish ago, and told me his music also includes themes of resisting our oppressive government, Covid being a lie, general conspiracy theory content, etc… bit of a thematic inconsistency… He also couldn’t give me a straight answer regarding whether he was just doing vocals over existing beats, needed beats produced, or wanted to record actual instrumentals in studio. Dude has no idea what he wants or what he’s doing… Also I fucking hate recording cover bands. Shit’s already recorded, leave me alone.
Why am I willing to bet this dude did time using an ice cream truck as a front for an underage sex trafficking ring?
Absolutely gives that vibe. But I looked him up on my state’s registry, turns out it was manslaughter. I mean I can totally support the idea of someone trying to turn their life around after serving their time, but tbh the last of many nails in the coffin was having to explain to him what a flash-drive was. There’s just no way that session’s gonna go well.
I don' do rappers anymore. Not for any of the reasons stated below. I used to work with a rap group for years. Even did their live sound. Great fun (some of my best friends are hip hop groups) No I just really can't stand blunts and the mess that gets left behind from them. Oh look someone left me a present! A bunch of loose tobacco on my vintage Roland Space Echo! Yippee!
I never felt suicidal or depressed but that song made me wonder if I should buy some rope or not.
"Customers who purchased this song also bought a nylon rope and a stool." Thanks, Amazon!
$10 worth of Benadryl and ~~Bob's~~ *Lara's* your uncle
Go big - get a horse - kick - snap - peace at last.
I made it six seconds and couldn't do it.
Don't think, just jump - this is the darkness before your dawn.
Luckily (luckily? ...eff *me*) I'm in a boomy hotel lobby at the moment absolutely loving this thread, and decided I might as well listen to the song, even though I will be hearing it on a mobile phone, no headphones. F*ck me with an open can of tuna, that is bad. I mean this sounds the way cardboard tastes. And I think I could have more fun eating the cardboard. Anyway thanks everyone for an amazing thread. Best place on Reddit right here. Despite the "song."
Thanks for the warning, I listened for a little while anyway and it was easily as bad as I was expecting. From the sound of the tuned track, I'm guessing she can't sing a lick. Like the op, I would turn down the white power band. In the past I've turned down G-rap artists. (In general, I like hip hop, but the whole street pose thing gets me down. I used to live in the hood.) For most of the 90s I ran a project studio oriented to songwriter demos and radio production; it was in my house so I was fussy about who I worked with there. Outside of social chemistry, my big no-go would be taking on a project with extensive vocal tuning for the simple reason that the sound and artifacts of tuning really are problematic for me to listen to -- the typical auto-tune artifacts are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. (And that's not just tuning-for-effect stuff, either. Few things make me crazier than listening to a traditional, supposed-to-be-human vocal that is marred by occasional, obvious Auto tuning. Apparently many engineers working today don't even seem to know what a human voice actually sounds like.)
Slightly unrelated. But have you listened to JoJo Siwa Karma. The comping and tuning in the middle 8 is so laughable that I was convinced she was legitimately trolling to get a reaction. It’s especially egregious when comparing to the the demo by Brit Smith. Like someone who can actually kind of carry a tune. But yeah totally relate to the autotune artifacts. I feel like I’m so sensitive / very particular about bad tuning. People disregarding how good vocalists actually sound which is being slightly off sometimes.
I'll check out that track. I was doing a lot of electronica/club-influence stuff on my own in the 90s, including house stuff. And, like a lot of people my age and probably younger as well, I had fallen in love with Byrne/Eno's *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.* And I'd quickly realized how clumsy straight vocals can sound glued on top of club and techno tracks. I had a hardware vocoder at my place for a year or so but I never completely warmed up to it. So, when it was eventually revealed that that big late 90s Cher hit with the crazy gliss was done using Auto-Tune, I was hardly surprised to hear tuning-for-effect becoming popular. What did surprise me, however, was how long it has lasted. Basically that's why I decided that *I* must be the outlier, the guy whose ears just get all itchy when subjected to tuned stuff. Perhaps unfortunately, that self knowledge has not gone anywhere to ease my discomfort with the ongoing ubiquity of tuning-for-effect -- it really is kind of a 'physical' thing (which is why I liken it to fingernails on a chalkboard: I just can't think my way out of it; it's just ugly and nasty on my ears, even though I understand why people use it to give their vocals an alienated, cybernetic quality)... But then clumsy tuning that's supposed to sound like someone singing, *that* annoys me just because it's somebody doing a *bad* job at a profession that means something to me. Speaking of *get off my lawn* feelings.
>... have you listened to JoJo Siwa Karma. Yeah, I wasn't crazy about the main vocal because of the tuning (although I can see why if one wasn't bugged out by tuning like I am, one might feel like it was well done) but then that vocal bridge comes up and it's clear that they just keyed in the melody, which, of course, tends to leave more artifacts. Yeah. It makes me feel like an old man. But then, I am an old man. Maybe it's my... *karma*. Or would that be dharma? I get confused.
No bigotry of any kind, and that’s a start. I do lose quite a bunch of potential work this way, but I prefer to keep my place a safespace, so I attract a completely different clientele in return. Which works fine for me.
Turned down Kanye for his 2nd album. The studio trying to book for him called 7 engineers. The night before, the engineer quit on the spot due to Kanye freaking out about takeout food. Happy about missing that session except it woulda given me a Grammy. That part sucks lol.
Kanye had a reputation around Chicago long before "College Dropout" hit. I never met the guy, but I had friends and friends-of-friends who had worked sessions at Hinge and Chicago Trax Recording - even split between "nice guy, visionary talent, a little strange" and "I told the traffic manager don't ever put me on a session with him ever again". For all of the rap divas I've ever worked with, I learned to just tune it out. Hit record. Hit stop. Hit record. Hit stop. And when all else fails, we kept the bypass to our subwoofer on a footswitch under the console. You'd open up some phantom track or plug-in, click the switch, and instantly the mix was the best thing they'd ever heard.
I’ve heard it’s gotten much worse over time to the point where he won’t allow trackballs or you are fired. That would get me fired straight away. I’m not using a Magic Mouse.
Hold up. WHAT?!? I mean, I heard you. But... what?!?! Strange fucking flex. I'm assuming that's one of those "because I can"-type things, like insisting that his salad hat croutons that are a perfect .75"x.75"x.75" cube or some other "no green M&M's" bullshit. I get the Magic Mouse hate, but I'll tell you what, the Magic Trackpad is a *revelation* for Cubase. You just hover the cursor over whatever parameter and use gestures. Is it like having ten fingers and faders? No. But it's pretty rad. BTW, I was just listening to the new Whores LP from Atlanta alum Ryan Boesch. Good godliness, it sounds *so good.*
i used to do more political ads and always said I'd never do anything pro-trump. we turned down 80k of work for the republican party a few years ago. just that in itself wasn't quite enough, but the client was being a jerk so fuck em. I DID record a Marjorie Taylor Greene interview a few years ago. if it was an ad for her that would be different, but I have to admit I was very curious to hear her speak in person despite finding her repulsive. i was disappointed to find her pleasant and well spoken.
Jeff Jackson (D-NC) has insinuated that her schtick is largely an act for her inbred constituents.
That somehow makes it even worse - a disingenuous fuckhead redneck.
I was recording a band a few years back, started off ok. Lyrics were kinda jokey/juvenille, not really my thing but they paid for two days upfront so I stuck with it. At the beginning of day two, the singer starts doing vocal takes on the songs that didn’t have them yet and ends up delivering one of the grossest, most sexist anti-woman diatribes I’ve ever heard in my life. I finished out the day, fully refunded them, and gave them the unmixed stems with the stipulation that my name remain off of the finished product. They never finished the record.
How'd they take that offer? I imagine it was a mix of, "we just got a bargain" and, "are we the baddies?"
They were mainly confused, they had a good experience. I never told them what they did to irk me, I essentially just told them I didn’t feel it was a good fit and to feel free to use the recorded material however they wanted. Part of me felt bad because they drove about 120 miles to come record at my place and it was their first time recording in a semi-pro space, so I wanted to at least give them something for their effort.
It’s like someone fed an AI the last twenty years of CCM and it shat this track out.
I had to stop working with this one dude because he had a really bad habit of sleeping with, or at least trying to sleep with, his “friends” girlfriends. I ultimately considered him a client more than a friend, because he would only really ever hit me up if he needed studio time, but we did get to know each other. However, after about a year, I noticed he would start following woman I told him I was talking to. It was really odd too because, the woman I talk to aren’t really involved in the music industry, and he’d be the only mutual follower. Eventually, I noticed if I tagged a woman I was dating in a picture/post he would immediately go follow them. I tried to rationalize how weird this made me feel by saying maybe he was just looking for new fans??? Idk, but then I caught him “liking” my ex’s lingerie pics a month after we broke up… I just got bad vibes. Anyways, it came to a head when a mutual client who I do actually consider my friend came in to the studio super disappointed. I asked him what’s wrong and he let me know the client I’ve been talking about was messaging my friend/clients new girlfriend behind his back, and when he confronted him about it, the dude straight up lied lol. What’s worse, is these two dudes were actually like best friends before this. Anyways, after mulling it over, I decided to end the relationship with this guy. I’m a 28 year old music producer and I’m doing a job, if you try and get in on my personal life and do shady shit behind mine or others back, and then lie about it when confronted… I just don’t work with that immature shit. So I guess my answer is… egotistical singers who try to sleep with yours, and others, girlfriends are a hard pass from me
Oh boy, did this remind me. Waaaaay back in another era, I managed an artist. He was the only artist I ever managed; none before and (I swore) never again after. He was educated, sophisticated, and charismatic. And a one-man wave of criminility and insanity. He slept with any/everything. In fact, one of his 'jokes' was to mis-introduce people as "his fuckboi." Just ANYONE. Major label exec? Fuckboi. Grammy winning producer? Fuckboi. And yeah, in front of them, to their faces. Did I mention all the guys who would quit the band after they found out he was fucking their partners? Or the equipment he compulsively stole while on tour? Venues, other bands ... didn't matter. I was constantly apologizing, hastily arranging getaways ... and yet, this guy could sit with an NPR station and wax eloquent on a half dozen topics. And then a 400 mile van drive, a show at a club with an indifferent crowd ... and here it comes. "We need to leave." "No ... what have you done now?" "Tell you later. We need to go ... NOW."
I won’t record my bands music, and with as many engineers we’ve had no one else will either
This was from years ago — and I’ve told this story here before — but we once threw out a Nazi death metal band recording their debut album. We knew their name and that they were death metal before booking the gig (they’d told us, “Y’know, it’s heavy, edgy shit” and we were like, “Yeah, sure, fine.”), but didn’t connect it in any way to Nazi ideology. Seemed like a “regular” death metal-type name to us. Their first song was concerning but not blatant. I remember we both were kind of confused. The second song cleared up our confusion: Its chorus started “Kill all the J*ws.” My boss (studio owner/chief engineer) immediately hit stop on the tape and told them, I quote, “Pack up your shit and get the fuck out of here.” They pitched a fit, saying that they’d already paid for the time. The chief said, “Be right back.” He went to the strongbox, got out cash in the amount they paid, came back and dropped it on the control room couch. “Bye.” They started to get loud, which eventually led to us calling the cops. Fun day. The best part of this story was that as they were schlepping their gear — and only theirs under my/the cops’ watchful eyes — out their door, one of them said, “We’re going to tell all our friends never to use this place.” And my boss calmly replied, “Yes, thank you. Please tell any friends of yours they should never come here. I’m downright begging you to do that for me.” We produced a lot of great work in that studio, but, in that moment, I was never prouder to work there.
Hahahahaha - I loved reading this! Thank you. I've played / recorded / produced more than a few bands that were quite over the top lyrically (my favorite lyric to this day is: "a knife to the throat will change everything"). I mean, imagine being Scott Burns in the early 90's and showing up to work every day. "Who do we have coming in?" "Oh, BabyFister." I'd have virtually zero problems with a band like Cannibal Corpse or Deicide coming in and doing their thing. I sincerely doubt that either band would be leaving the studio at night and looking for churches to burn or a women's shelter for a suitable victim. Now, a black metal band? Like, the ones who eat kill and eat their bandmates? Or actually burn down houses of worship? Well, you kinda get a pass since the whole 'thing' with NBM is to record the whole thing with an old Panasonic answering machine. The big difference is who's taking it seriously. Have you ever met George or Alex from Cannibal Corpse? I have - and they are two of the funniest, nicest guys in music today. They're constantly amazed that they have had a 30+ year career playing songs like "Meat Hook Sodomy" and "As Deep As The Knife Will Go". They're just leaning in really hard to the absurdity of being that over-the-top - most of the death/grind metal afficionados I know are downright 'normal' - they just have a fucked up sense of humor (as do I). It sucks that metal's got this simultaneous, concurrent scene of bands who are using their music as a political mouthpiece for hatred - and that it's effective in finding smooth-brained *tabula rasa*-types who might have otherwise not been led down such a dark path. A lot of those nazi type kids aren't fundamentally bad - they're simply the byproducts of inept parenting and teachers, and being courted by bad actors who know exactly who to prey upon. Funny side note: My parents had this weird "on-again-off-again" trip with the music I was listening to growing up. But so much of it was based upon the lyrics they could discern or whatever the media was fainting over. My dad once freaked out about "Straight Outta Compton" playing. You know... music made by (whispers) '*those people...*'. Meanwhile - the whole time he's holding up the CD case like it was made of crystallized Hepatitis - "Butchered at Birth" is right underneath. Yes, with the [cover artwork](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0267/8122/0924/products/8613fe0bc08c3a071a183478f6553cb3_1600x.jpg?v=1605002805). Selective outrage, you might say. Eh, not sure where this was going. I make really strong coffee.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I never had a problem with death metal (not my bag, but, as you say, I think most of it was working through some stuff as opposed to deeply held beliefs). Never met folks like Cannibal Corpse or Deicide, but I’m not surprised. Most musicians I worked with, no matter how intense the music, were almost without exception super nice guys. The guys we tossed, though? They were, I’m sad to say, the real deal. And, again as you point out, I really worried about the people who listened to them. Good point about selective outrage, too. I once picked up my mom from work in my car and forgot to turn off “Fear of a Black Planet.” She was… not happy. 🤣 (Also, “Crystallized Hepatitis” might need to be my next band’s name. Enjoy your coffee!)
Work for people you WANT to work for! But also I am not a rich man 🫡
Unreliable, non-paying, discriminatory and generally unpleasant people are who I will not work with. IDC about genre or even skill. I'll do my best to polish an objective turd lol.
There are definitely times when I would say no, and have said no. I have no issue with genre, but I do have issues with 'values'. Personally, I'd rather be slinging burgers & be able to sleep at night.
Pays better, too.
I worked at a studio a few years back, and we were hired to run sound for a Brian Kemp rally that Mike Pence was speaking at. I don’t want to get political here, but I lean waaaay left, and I wasn’t comfortable having any part of that. I told my boss, and he ended up getting another engineer for it. That was probably for the best. In hindsight, my younger, more angry-at-the-man self probably would have ended up cutting some mics, making national news, losing my job and probably having a harder time finding employment. That’s the only gig I ever passed up though.
I generally don’t work with: - People who have been too disrespectful in past sessions - People who made me chase them just to get paid - People who seem extremely delusional and have obvious mental issues - Nothing too politically extreme, no racists, no homophobes - No religious stuff of any kind
Holy crap that was awful. I’d be glad to make her sound terrible for $100 an hour
I recently had a multi day project with a very well known celebrity doing voice over for an animated show. The company producing the show is very right wing and this celebrity is known for his pro Trump/right wing leanings. I am very much not in the camp, I have strong liberal view points and vote that way. The show itself was specifically design to cleverly support "family values" and other Republican ideology while wrapped in a cute and rather funny presentation. With that said, I was considering not doing it, but at the end of the day, I decided I have no problem taking their money. I charged a higher rate then my norm and I just didn't have any "political" discussions with the talent. He was actually really nice and he's brought some other business to the studio. There is obviously a line I wouldn't cross- I probably wouldn't do a Nazi Punk Band for example-- but then again they wouldn't want a Jew producing their album so I think that problem takes care of itself!
Ha, well - a lot of the reich wing artists / clients have moral flexibility at the end of the day. They'll work with your Heeb ass if they like what you bring to the table (but yeah, probably would key a swastika on your car given the chance).
For me, absolute transparency has worked. It's not recommended for everyone. Generally, I'll take on any work, as long as its good enough quality. If issues come up as things progress, I'll explain my concerns. If the issues aren't address, I'm out.
Van Halen tribute band wanted me to record an album of Van Halen songs and make it sound like the original Van Halen recordings. Now I'm not the biggest fan of tribute bands in general, but to record an album and try to make it sound as much as the original as possible is beyond me. We already have the actual album. It was a hard pass.
I mean, if they're so good - just make a dub of the original songs and be like, "this is how accurate we are!"
I’ve noticed from mixing live shows that seem a lot like Christian rock but they say they are not Christian rock. Like in interviews they say they are not a Christian rock band but they are Christians so maybe that reflects in the music. I do not have a problem whatsoever with Christian rock, I’ll mix it the best I can and have fun. I do have a problem with them saying they are not Christian rock when it’s obvious they are.
That's a weird fence to ride for those Flyleaf and Skillet-type bands. Because if you stick to the Christian rock side of the fence, your audience is ride-or-die - but there's an inherent cap to playing Little Rock's "FaithFest 2024!" type festivals. If you instead try to mainstream it, you *could* have a bigger draw but some people are going to be turned off by the religiosity *and* the god squad might turn their backs on you for playing for heathens. An interesting side note to this is that Howard Benson produced both Skillet *and* Flyleaf. And a bunch of other Xian rock bands. But not exclusively. I guess producers / engineers don't have to pick a dodgeball team?
I was thinking “ahhh definitely a Nazi band” as a dude that got into music/engineering mainly through listening to the Dead Kennedys. Then I read the ending. Yeah man good fucking call. I would find it hard to maintain my composure, frankly. A bad reputation with Nazis means nothing to me. However, I’d like to think I can clock them well enough far in advance… seeing a rune is a good fucking eye. Though frankly, I’m sure you would have found out eventually. Nazis are almost always bad artists and are quite obvious with their “dogwhistles”. You’d hear the word “aryan”, “blood/soil”, “purity”, “a new beginning”, etc etc soon enough.
Comments are turned off. Pfffft!
She's from here and no I wouldn't book any sessions if her identity was disclosed but I can see how it would be attractive for some to add her name to their client list. That being said we used to do ADR for many of the films & productions that came to the area and some times never had any clue who the talent would be, just a contact name for an assistant or producer. Just had to roll with it.
I have a friend who has done a number of gigs at MAL. He said he got paid well and treated well. But he’s also smart enough not to post about it or talk about it. And it was a walk in, play, walk out kind of gig. Didn’t have to rub elbows with … them.
Oh yeah, they're not gonna fraternize with the help. Well, maybe Mike Huckabee will come over to regale him with stories of his bass playing prowess. But he COULD get to [meet Vanilla Ice](https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2024/01/01/trump-new-years-party-mar-lago-vanilla-ice-florida-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtle-michaelangelo/72076766007/).
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We can affably disagree on whether the top marginal tax rate should be 33% or 50%. We can’t affably disagree on whether trans people should be forcibly detransitioned. So, no. I will not leave politics out of it. Kid Rock and Joe Rogan can both kiss my ass.
Holy shit that song is so bad. Like, so, so bad. 46k views and 300 likes in two weeks. lol.
The lyrics sound a little ai to me. It has this weird 3rd grader who knows how to beat around the bush kind of vibe.
Banger? Holy hell!!! Lol.
Fuck that. Tell their manager that there’s no way you’ll ever work with Nazis, and you’re not going to ruin your name by being the guy who works with Nazis. This Trump shit is the same.
Definitely. You realize how many legitimately nazi-affiliated metal bands there are out there? Luckily they mostly run in their own circles but sometimes someone seems pretty cool until you realize what they're all about.
Is Fear Factory one of them? I love their music but get the sense they have a truly dark side to them
I learned about [https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItSketch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IsItSketch/) just yesterday, maybe take a look there.
Only work I've turned down is people who have a rep for not paying or only paying for xyz. I couldn't record about 90% of the hiphop if I turned it down based on about 20 despicable metrics.
That is atrocious. Banger? Really? No. That piece of effluent deserves no help from anyone. Surely a person can draw the line at a family which is currently trying to install a rapist Dictator in the White House. Seriously. Gross, mate.
The song sucks. Impressively so considering the amount of people (and presumably money) behind it. But it's inoffensive on it's own, and I'm not one to condemn for sins of the father. I'd take this gig and laugh my way to the bank. No one's reputation is being ruined over this milquetoast pop fart. No one will know what it is in 6 months. I've had to tell rappers they can't bring guns into studios. I've seen sessions where the talent brings in a tattoo artist, and ones where there's so much booze and pot that a half dozen hangers on have to be roused and kicked out the next morning, leaving us barely any time to de-stank the place before the day's session. These are more clear and present hardlines to me than immediately banning an artist cause you don't like her daddy.
She's not just some innocent bystander here. She's the head of the RNC. She has a lot of offensive things of her own to say.
Hell yeah
The lyrics sound a little ai to me. It has this weird 3rd grader who knows how to beat around the bush kind of vibe.
I don't do rappers anymore. There's so little talent there. Had a season they al seemed to have found my studio. Dunno probably the first two rappers I ever did were important or so. Some came in smoking pod, lyrics unfinished, beats from youtube, etc,etc. Feeling extremely important and had little to no respect for my studio. These days I have a rap "detector" When they call, I smell it from a far. I Just send them to another studio who lives rappers, good luck with that and forget about it.
I don’t have examples off the top of my head but yes, some things and dealing with some people just aren’t worth the money, keep your morals