Pro Sound Blog

Played a strange gig tonight. It was a fundraiser for a guy who is close to dying. He’s on oxygen, 20% lung capacity. He’s broke and the show was intended to raise money for this guy’s funeral. Brutal.

56

This guy is only 56 and he looks baaaaad. He really does look like he’s about to die. He’s damn near white as a ghost. No skin color. Then I realized why while loading my gear. Here’s this guy with 20% lung capacity, on oxygen, coughing his guts out… while having a cigarette. Amazing.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs

I never saw the light with Michael Jackson and his whiny little girl voice. I also don’t see the fascination losers people have about him.

The big news today on the front page of CNN.com is that Michael Jackson had lethal levels of some sort of drugs in his system.

Gee really? Ya think that’s why he died?

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Random, Rants

The recession is hitting rappers hard.  No more stackin’ bank for these mofos.  Sales of gold and diamond “grillz” are down 60%.  Some hip hop artists are resorting to fake gold and cubic zirconia in their bling and their grillz, yo.  That ain’t dope.  That ghetto.

“A lot of these rappers simply don’t have the money for real stuff anymore.”
“It’s to the point where they are wearing imitation jewelry, and that’s ridiculous.”
“People think these big pieces are blindin’ but they be like D-quality diamonds, and when you try and sell them you learn they ain’t worth a thing.”
“If you admit you wear fake jewelry, it is over for you. It’s like bragging you drive a Lamborghini when you really drive a Toyota.”

“Times are hard, ain’t nobody rocking it like that anymore,” says rapper and record executive Bryan “Birdman” Williams.

…actually Mr. Williams, you’ve employed a what is called “double negative.”  What you stated means that they are in fact “rocking it like that.”

The vultures opportunists are circling

Now places are popping up like SellYourGoldTeeth.com, where rappers can exchange their bling for cash.  I’m sure it is pennies on the dollar…. Pardon me, “dolla” yo.

Perhaps it is time for President Obama to step in?  It is time for the government to bail out and socialize the hip-hop industry.  Hip-hop is just too big for us to allow it to fail.

More fun reading about is in the WALL STREET JOURNAL

mediaguru Boneheads

Got an email from a client today.

“Hey we recorded in your studio back in 1991.  Do you still have our master tapes?”

Wow.  And I can’t even find my car keys.

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Recording

I listen to Pandora every day.  Lately though I think their algorithm has gone haywire.

While listening to the Peter Gabriel channel, Pandora played The Used and The Osmond Boys.  Uh, no.

mediaguru Boneheads, Random

Client: “What is the turnaround time on your five business day package?”

Me: “Five business days.”

Client: “Great thanks.”

mediaguru Boneheads

Man what a cool web site for women called Don’t Date Him Girl @ www.dontdatehimgirl.com.

It is a site for women to write about and rate the bad men they’ve dated. If you want some pure entertainment read some of the posts these women have written about their men. I’m not sure what is more pathetic, these lousy men, or the fact that these women stay with them for years.

Quote:

“dated him for 5 years. He was nothing but drugged out the whole time. When I was sleeping he would steal my cell phone, my car and my money and go god knows where and wake up at some whores house. He lied and lied to me about having to work late but he was really sleeping with one of his managers. He also slept with 1 of my best friends and 4 other friends. He is nothing but a compulsive liar who will manipulate you to no end. Then when I broke up with him he stalked me and would break into my car and follow me when ever I went anywhere. STAY AWAY FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!”

How pathetic or desperate is this person to stay with a guy for 5 years who was “drugged out all the time” and slept with all of her friends…

mediaguru Boneheads

Now that it is officially over I’ve been reflecting on the big hell project of 2008. There were many “come to Jesus” moments during that period and I learned a lot about myself.

I’ll have my closing reflections soon…

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Random, Recording

This “project” I’m working on is a comedy of errors. The keyboard player has really gotten under my skin. There’s a guy like him in most bands. He’s the one who is very agreeable yet a total lazy flake. He fakes his way through everything and puts out a half assed effort.

His assignment was to have his parts recorded and bounced down and ready to submit so we can start mixing the next songs. He supposedly worked for over a month on these tracks. I get a flash drive with his audio files on it which only contains the aliases (shortcuts for windows). He never copied the actual files to the drive, just an icon which points to the files resident on his hard drive.

Naturally he didn’t notice that these audio files, which would take several if not dozens of minutes to copy, copied in a split second. He also didn’t bother to check the drive and see if the files were there. Or did he simply click the alias which opened his internal hard drive and he didn’t know it?

Problem

Ok, so no big deal. Just get the files off his main hard drive which the aliases are referring to…right? Uh, of course not. The problem now is that the files those aliases pointed to are probably in a pawn shop somewhere, as his laptop was stolen. Yes, this guy worked for a whole month on something and didn’t back it up.

I’d laugh at this guy because he put a whole month into something and because of his own stupidity and half-assed way of doing things, he has to work another month. But I’m not laughing because it effects me. This means another fucking month of waiting around for him to get his shit done. Another month of my time. Another month of dealing with this project which should have been done months ago.

I’m tempted to pull the plug and just eject on these unprofessional boneheads.

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Rants, Recording

This has been a very rough summer. In fact, this summer has changed me. I’m one grouchy mother fucker now and I’ve never been like that in my entire life. I don’t like being this way. The other day I almost assaulted my landlord. I got in a “heated” discussion with him about broken shit that has been bugging me and told him I was leaving. My grouchy attitude forced me to move which sucks, even though my new place is way better.

This summer I took on a project and made some very stupid and negligent choices in doing so. The main one being that I settled on a flat rate. Big mistake. Little did I know that this project would be several months long and that I’d be in the absolute hell of listening to a horrid vocalist who is so sharp he makes Ginsu carving knives look dull. Seriously. This guy sings entire freakin’ songs sharp and he doesn’t even know it. “Dude you’re sharp. Dude you’re sharp. Dude you’re sharp.” Working with this guy is like biting into rotten lemons all day. Then after spending hours on sharp vocals and doing hundreds (I mean hundreds) of takes per song, I have to go in with a pitch correcting software and fix every goddamn note. What a waste of my time, spending dozens of hours fixing some hack’s vocal tracks rather than spending time with my kids, my woman, golfing or just picking the lint out of my ass.

I can barely look these guys in the eye now for blowing my whole fucking summer and wasting my time. Damn the freakin’ keyboard player is so clueless I can’t begin to write about it. After being told his tracks would be all pre-done and ready to lay down I find out they’re not. Then, rather than doing so on his own, says he’d rather have me there to lay them down. No thought about my time, my gas or whatever. I drew the line there and said now way. It would have taken days and days to do that work he was supposed to have done previously.

That flat rate is looking pretty f’n small now since it has been spread out over months and months and months. Did I mention I had to drive 45 minutes each way for 2 months just to go listen to out of tune vocals? Bonus. Good thing gas hit $4.00/gallon right when I started this project. Perfect timing. Might as well take that flat fee and pour it down the fucking gas tank and dump what’s left into auto maintenance and repairs…

My personal life and other business ventures have suffered severely as a result of doing this gig and I’m just plain irritable as hell.

Bran for breakfast?

Now, thank God, we’re mixing. The problem is that we’re doing it at my personal residence. Now the drummer needs to come in and tell me to make his playing and his kit sound like someone other than his own. This guy is a fiber nut and eats about 1704% of his daily allowance of fiber. So he has to take a shit every 24 seconds. Freakin’ wonderful. I’ve got to go to coscto now and buy 120 rolls of toilet paper just because this bran/shit addict is invading my private space. And I wonder. How is shitting 63 times a day enjoyable?

I’m done dealing with musicians. I really mean it. I used to like engineering but I don’t anymore. It isn’t fun. It is grueling, monotonous, frustrating and insanely infuriating when dealing with amateurs. My ears have started ringing too and that has me worried.

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Rants, Recording