Pro Sound Blog

Here are four reasons to stay out of the recording business.

Yes they are all bounced checks. One is for 18 bucks and one is for 5 freaking bucks. My bank charges me $30 for each bounced check I deposit. So that $5 check cost me $30.

Frigging musicians….

mediaguru Rants, Recording

The two things I hate the most are weddings and funerals. The only thing worse than going to a wedding is gigging at a wedding.

I really can’t understand why someone would hire my band for a wedding. We’re a loud, fast, obnoxious rock & roll/punk band. We don’t do sappy slow tunes. Your wedding isn’t going to be like the gig we played for you at your frat house.

The first problem with weddings is the dress code. When I play drums I wear shorts, tshirt and usually no shoes or sandals. I HATE long sleeves and I get really freaking hot playing the drums so I just won’t wear them. No disrespect to the bride & groom, but this is rock & roll. I’m up there bashing the skins and working up a sweat and I need to be as cool and comfortable as possible.

The 2nd and terribly corny thing I hate about wedding gigs is the “theme song.” The bride & groom always want to you play some stupid ass, gay, sappy, dreary love song. My band hasn’t rehearsed since the 80’s and you think we’re going to learn some stupid Huey Lewis song for your wedding? Think again. So we bring a CD and let them play their stupid theme over the PA.

The 3rd problem with wedding gigs is the fact that you are going to please just about no one. You have grandma coming up to the band asking for Frank Sinatra, the kiddies are asking for the Hokey Pokey and the pot smoking teens asking for Metallica. Ok folks, we’re going to do a combination of Metallica’s Master Of Puppets and the Hokey Pokey, sung in the style of Frank Sinatra. Perfect.

4th issue is the “schedule”: They always want you to setup at freaking 10:00am so they can do their full day of wedding celebration. Memo to you folks out there. Don’t ask a rock & roll musician to set up at 10:00am. Hell, by 10:00am I’ve been asleep for about 20 minutes.

Rolling in at number 5 of the most irritating things about a wedding gig is that they want you to play “dinner music.” My band is a punk/surf/modern rock band. If we played dinner music for you, you’d probably choke on your terrible hotel food.

I love it when they have an open bar at the wedding gigs. I hit the wine pretty hard and it makes the gig much more entertaining. Our guitar player makes things very entertaining during wedding gigs. We’ll be playing and looking out at the audience. Just about nobody is paying attention to anything we’re doing on the stage. We could be blowing fire out our asses and no one would notice. So that being the case, our guitar player will intentionally hit terribly sour notes. First he’ll hit one and then look at me for my watery-eyed reaction. Then he’ll hit a couple of sour notes. By the end of the tune, I’m about ready to die from laughter because the guitar player is now playing every chord and note 1/2 a step off. So every note he plays is about as bad sounding as it can get. No one notices. Then I look out in the audience and see that happy guy video taping this beautiful event. I start to think about 10 years from now when the bride and groom decide to get that old wedding video out and watch it. They’ll then realize that my band has absolutely butchered the show.

We tend to weed out the old people at wedding gigs pretty fast. We’ll play some pretty “loud” music and I’ll bash the shit out of my drums. If they have real balls they’ll ask us to turn down (which we won’t). The old folks take off early which leaves the drunk younger people who for some strange reason think we’re better than the Beatles. “Dude, you rock.” Yeah pal, right. We’re frigging rocking out at a wedding…right.

By the last tune, I’m so ready to go home I’m about to throw up all over myself. We finish the last tune, then the 3 boneheads that are still there start yelling “encore, encore.” Holy shit are you kidding me? Encore for 3 drunk boneheads at a wedding? Yes, sure. Unbelievably our guitar player/singer obliges them and starts up an encore tune. I could just about kill him for making me stay another 3 minutes in this hell.

mediaguru Gigs, Rants

In this post I showed some very cool analog synths. Some of you got excited about them. I had hoped for more comments on that post but I’m going to break the news to you anyway.

Those pics of the analog synths are not real. They’re 3D modeling.

Gotcha.

mediaguru Gear

I’ve recently gotten some nice comments on my review of the OTEP show a few months ago. Thanks!

I’m still trying to do my review of the latest OTEP show which was last Saturday night. I did a small blurb on it for my golf web site. CLICK HERE for that blurb.

Until I can get the review done, here is a pic for you from last Saturday’s show.

mediaguru Gigs, Musicians

I got this email from a client:

I need a website. a real good one. please give me a price range for a project of this kind. Thanks

mediaguru Boneheads

I’ve had this one client for years. He is very cool. He wants SO bad to be a rock star. He hires great musicians for his albums and the tunes are pretty good. There’s only one problem. He has no ear for pitch and he can’t sing.

It is a nightmare trying to get a take out of this guy. For years it has been like throwing darts in the dark and hoping you hit something. We’d try lines over and over again, hundreds of times until we found ONE good one to keep. Then move on to the next line.

Thanks to today’s technology we have a new way for this guy to write and perform his vocal tracks in the studio. Most everyone knows about “Auto-Tune” hardware/software. I prefer to call them pitch correctors. You basically punch in the key of the song and it automatically makes every note the person sings fit a note in the key, even if they are way off. The most famous misuse of this is in Cher’s “Do You Believe In Love” where her voice starts to sound like a robot. That is what the pitch corrector sounds like when it is set too high.

Anyway, enough background. So the new way we have to get vocal parts written and recorded for this guy is just plain sick (in a good and bad way). I’ll basically run the track and he’ll just sing the words as best he can (which isn’t very good). He’ll just freaking butcher the vocal parts but he’ll get through the tune. Then we’ll put the auto-tuner on his voice and set it to the “Cher setting.” That thing takes all of his bad notes and puts them in tune.

Then he goes through over and over again, singing to his new found notes and melody. Then he lays down the track, as close to the pitch corrected version as he can. After that track is down, we take out the old one, and auto-tune the new one. Voila! New vocal part!

To me pitch correctors should be used only sparingly, to tweak great vocal parts that just need a little help. But in this case, the auto-tuner just plain helps me get the job done.

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Recording

A pal of mine made me aware that the blog was displaying poorly on Safari. I used to use Safari but now I use Firefox and I like it a lot better. So I had the site looking good in Firefox and Explorer, but Safari was whacked. Now it should be fixed.

Post comments if your browser doesn’t seem to display PSB correctly.

mediaguru Random

The hall is called Abravanel Hall. This is an absolutely beautiful hall. It is acoustically amazing. There is an aura about the place just walking in. This shot below is a couple of hours before the gig while they were warming up.

Here’s a funky shot below of the stage from the closest seat on the 3rd tier.

mediaguru Gigs, Musicians, Recording

The pic above shows the console and the racks they use. In the racks are tons of patch bays which literally can connect anything in the building. Not only that building, but the convention center next door! The 4 small screens are remote control cameras so you can zoom in on all the pretty ladies!

In the pic above the big screen is a monitor showing the stage. (I should have taken my drink down from next to the monitor). The little monitor is for the lighting system. The console, well you should know what that is for.

mediaguru Gigs, Musicians, Recording

Intersted? I have an interesting story to tell about this awesome new analog synth. But you are going to have to wait to hear it….

mediaguru Gear