Pro Sound Blog

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

Phone call this morning:

Large corporate client: “Yes I’m wondering where that order we need is.”

Me: “You haven’t placed an order.”

Large corporate client: “Oh, can we have it by this Friday?”

Me: “Does that mean you want to place the order?”

Large corporate client: “Yes. So can we have it Friday, in four days?”

Me: “Ok great. But as you recall I told you this job will take 7-14 days.”

Large corporate client: “Ok we need 10,000 of them.”

Me: “Ok great.”

Large corporate client: “Maybe 15,000.”

Me: “Um, well I need a number.”

Large corporate client: “I’ll have to call you back…”

Synopsis

Large corporate client wants to know where the order he hasn’t placed is, which is an unknown quantity.

mediaguru Boneheads, Random

I don’t watch TV anymore. There’s too much entertaining stuff on YouTube.

Here’s a Van Halen concert gone bad. Seems that the “pre-recorded” keyboard parts have been accidentally transposed without the knowledge of Eddy or anyone else. Perhaps the sampling frequency on their DAT machine was set wrong.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs, Musicians, Random

Thanks to my friend Matt for this video. This clip is of HIS old band but some bonehead father does something terribly stupid in the audience. Watch and enjoy…

mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs

1. Never argue with a drunk
2. Never argue with a mormon.
3. Never argue with a drunk mormon.

mediaguru Boneheads, Random

I’m out there fighting the battle and trying to prove to the general public that not all musicians are on drugs. Just when I thought I was making progress this article pops up… F’n musicians.

mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians, Rants

Nice phone call:

Client: Yes I’m wondering where my CD’s are.

Me: I have them ready to go right here.

Client: Why haven’t you sent them to me?

Me: Because you haven’t paid for the production of the CD’s which took place about 4 months ago. I’ve told you as soon as you pay your bill you can have your product!

Client: Oh, I’ll drop a check in the mail.

Me: Like the check you said you’d send three months ago, and the one you’d send two months ago and the one you said you’d send last month?

mediaguru Boneheads, Rants

Only in my neck of the woods do you see stories like this.

This guy was running from the cops on a bumpy road and his pitbull got so irritated with being bumped around in the car that he bit his owner’s nose off…

mediaguru Boneheads, Random

Client: My company is about to go public. They figure the shares will be worth $6-$8 each and I have 300,000 shares.

Me: Awesome! That’s so great for you. By the way here’s your latest invoice for $600.

Client: Oh. Uh here’s a check. Can you hold it until next Friday?

mediaguru Boneheads, Random, Rants

Since my switch from the dreaded blogger lame ass blogging software to WordPress I’m now able to take advantage of some new features here.

I’m now working on categorizing all the posts. I have 8 categories currently:

Boneheads: A category dedicated to stupid people and the things they do.
Gear: Recording gear, musicial instruments, computers or any gear I deal with.
Gigs: Stories about my gigs or other peoples gigs.
Random: A blanket category when nothing else works.
Rants: When shit pisses me off I use this category.
Recording: Recording studio war stories, recording techniques etc.
Uncategorized: Means I have yet to decide what category to put the post in.

Now some posts may have multiple categories. For example: A dumbass musician jumps on my stage and plays my drums. He’s drunk and he breaks my snare head and won’t get away from my kit. That post alone could be a combined boneheads, gear, gigs, musicians and rants. I can already see that the boneheads and musicians categories will be selected together many times.

I’m about 25% of the way through categorizing the old posts so be patient.

mediaguru Boneheads, Gear, Gigs, Musicians, Random, Rants, Recording