In this article The Who’s Pete Townshend blames wearing headphones in the recording studio for his hearing loss.
So touring for decades with The Who, standing next to the insane Keith Moon’s drum kit and standing in front of huge stacks of Hiwatt amps cranked to 11 had nothing to do with his hearing loss? I remember going to see The Who and there were actually disclaimers saying if you were in the first 30 rows in front of Pete’s rig you might experience hearing damage.
But no, it was the headphones…. Ok Pete.
mediaguru Boneheads
I had to laugh at the new year’s gig watching my scatter brained guitar player. He was eating fish and chips while singing, playing guitar and trying to light a cigarette. Always entertaining.
So I thought I’d provide the general public with a “real” diagram of a guitar player’s rig, not one of those phony ones you see in guitar player magazine.
mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs
Sometimes my clients amaze me with what they can find. Look at this new form of CD/DVD disc storage. This could change the whole disc storage landscape for years to come.
You’ve spent hundreds of hours working on your album. You’ve spent thousands of dollars in recording, mastering, musicians etc. Your new master is the culmination of countless hours worth of work. You wouldn’t want to trust your master to just any old CD case. You need:
mediaguru Boneheads
Got off the phone with a dude who is the “manager” of a death metal band here. Now, if you’re a death metal band in this town and you have a “manager” you’ve got to wonder…
Anyway, he was explaining to me on the phone today how he “knows about this business.”
And why is this guy such a vast wealth of knowledge about the music industry?
“His x-wife’s dad used to know Don Henley’s old neighbor.”
Man. Does this dude have connections or what?
mediaguru Boneheads
Part of my business is in the duplication world. I do tons of CD/DVD work. The Christmas season is the busiest time of year for the duplication industry. I’m slammed right now. I’m going through tons of materials and need more.
There’s a company right down the street from me that manufactures an (unnamed) certain material that I use constantly. This material is made out of plastic.
This company is a little strange. They have a several hundred thousand square foot facility for manufacturing and warehousing their “product.” At any given time they can have millions and millions in the warehouse.
Given that this season is the busiest of the year, I placed an order with this company early in November. On my purchase order I specified when I’d be by to pick the order up. When I got there, the warehouse was empty. No product, no humans.
I wandered all through the warehouse and finally ended up talking to a lady I’ve dealt with before there. I asked where my buddy the warehouse manage was. Turns out, he doesn’t work there anymore. She wouldn’t tell me if he quit, or was fired.
I asked if my order was ready and she then informed me that they were out of stock. Now I’m not talking about a big order. I’m talking about 2000-3000 units, where they usually have millions in stock.
She informed me that they weren’t manufacturing the product for about two weeks. The reason? It costs them less NOT to operate than it does to produce their product. What??
I checked in again today (close to 3 weeks after my last discussion with them) and they’re still shut down. They’re not out of business. They’re just not manufacturing during the busiest time of year.
Business 101:
- If you don’t have a product to sell, you can’t sell it.
- If you don’t have employees, they can’t serve your customers or make your product.
- If you don’t operate your company during the busiest time of year, when do you?
mediaguru Boneheads
I do a little “consulting” now and then for people who can’t figure out why their recordings suck. This is one of those occasions:
This guy has a home studio and he’s got a TON of killer equipment. His gear is top of the line, worth thousands and thousands of bucks. But for the amount of gear he has, he can’t make a decent sounding recording. (Most crappy studio engineers think buying more gear is the answer, but it’s not)…
He has me listen to one of his recordings and sure enough, it sucks. It takes me about 7 or 8 seconds to figure out what his problem is. I reach down to his console and “do my magic.” BOOM! His mix opens up and all the sudden you can hear everything much more clearly!
He starts to freak out. “Wow! What did you do? That sounds so much better! You’re amazing!” I then inform him what a frigging PAN KNOB is. He had all of his channels panned dead center. $50,000 worth of gear and he doesn’t know what a pan knob is.
Someone shoot me now.
mediaguru Boneheads, Recording
Hmm. Tough question. The one last time you have sex before you die. Who would you do for one last fling? Would it be Wilbur?
mediaguru Boneheads
Much has unfolded over the last few days.
Mainly I had a knock down drag out email bashing contest between me and a client. This client has been one of my best for over 10 years. All the sudden he says I’m a price gouger and accuses me of jacking up my rates because “I saw his house.” I guess this guy is so into himself and how much dough he makes he’s flipped his lid. I’ve never seen his house and I’ve actually given discounts to him for all my services.
So the big album project that was slated for later this month has been shit canned. More details to come, but I’m too tired to write about it now…and I’m just finishing watching “The good, the bad and the ugly.”
mediaguru Boneheads, Musicians
My studio world has been all messed up with moving a couple of times and having 75% of my gear in a storage unit. I’ve been operating out of home office setups for a while which is a pain in the ass. Soon I’ll be out of that situation and in my new place….soon.
A client called me and wanted me to do some work on her project. I let her know her master was in my storage unit and I’d get to it as soon as I went over there and got it.
I got it this morning. Not easy to get to. Move the two bikes, lawnmower, tape machine out of the way to get access to the “master vault.” I found her master, put it on the back of my car, locked up the storage unit and headed back to my office.
I get to my office and for the life of me I can’t find her damn master. Then the horror dawns on me. I left her master on the back bumper of my car. Oh shit!
I drove back (about 2 miles) to the storage unit and there was her master on the round just as you exit the unit. There are probably thousands of cars per hour driving down that street and luckily the master didn’t even have one tiny scratch on it. Talk about a good break.
This is all info she’ll never know…
mediaguru Boneheads, Gigs, Random
Good God. Now rappers have an “instrument” they can put in their hand like a gun so they can control scratching, lighting, midi sounds and more. This device can be “intuitively” used? So it’s intuitive for a rapper to be holding a gun shaped device? No wonder I’m sick of this business.
midiGun 1.0
“The ‘midiGun’ is a novel handheld midi controller. This gunshaped interface was especially designed to remotely control realtime music softwares like Ableton LIVE, Traktor DJ or others.
The ‘midiGun’ replaces the classical DJ mixer and the keyboard at the same time. The ‘midiGun’ is a new kind of device that can be intuitively used because of its handy shape and easy accessible knobs, buttons and sensors.”
mediaguru Boneheads, Gear
