Pro Sound Blog

I really didn’t like Michael Jackson or his music.  I left town for a camping trip and came back to find he’d died.  Maybe I should go camping more often.

I felt sorry for the guy really.  He never had the chance to be a kid when he grew up.  He was thrown right into the spotlight and had to perform and tour at a very young age.  Later in life he tried to be a kid, but had the hormones of an adult.  Not a good combination.

He owned the rights to the Beatles and married Elvis’ daughter.  He really tried to be the King of Pop and whatever else he could.  Then he died, apparently just like Elvis, via a prescription drug overdose.  You have to wonder if that was actually his plan.

I for one am glad that chapter of the freak show is over.

mediaguru Musicians, Random, Rants

Am I having a nightmare? Somebody wake me up.

A couple of posts back I said I’d be reflecting on the hell project of 2008, since it was done.

It isn’t.

Unfortunately my new vendor who was doing the replication (two of my old ones went out of business in this economy) screwed the pooch. I’m now waiting for the client to supply me with some samples of the screwed up discs to verify what happened so I can get it fixed.

I can’t write the closing chapter on “Hell Project ‘08″ since “Hell Project ‘08″ is now alive and well in ‘09.

mediaguru Random, Rants

I’m really getting sick of this latest craze of improper grammar. People are mixing up “then” and “than” more and more and I don’t know why.

Reading CNET news today I saw this quote under an image:

Palm CEO Ed Colligan is more worried about the Pre launch then a looming patent war with Apple.

I saw this one in a kid’s book:

Fact can be stranger then fiction.

When I was on vacation last summer in LA, there was a booth on the pier at the beach advertising tickets to a TV show which pitted adults against fifth graders in a Jeopardy like contest:

Are you smarter then a 5th grader?

Yes I’m smarter, and then I’m a 5th grader…  And apparently the people who did your PR aren’t smarter “then” 5th graders either.

mediaguru Rants

If you have markers you want to delete in a ProTools project, you can’t just select them and hit delete.  You have to use a pull down menu called “clear marker.”

This really sucks.  Let’s say you need to delete 10, 100, 1000, or even 2800 markers from a project like I had to once.  That means individually selecting 2800 markers then pulling down a menu 2800 times?  No f’n way!  That is at least 5800 mouse clicks and a case of tedinitis waiting to happen.

To be clear, there is a “clear all markers” in ProTools.  But in this particular project I had over 3000 markers, 2800 of which needed to be deleted.

mediaguru Rants, Why ProTools Sucks

I’m editing this book on CD. It’s a 350 page book where the author has read the entire thing. The author has a speech impediment and screws up constantly. So there are over 3000 markers in this ProTools project, each marker represents an edit or fix that needs to be done.

I’ve got the book edited and now I need to get rid of most of the 3000 markers and put new ones in. So about 2800 of the markers need to be deleted. Should be easy, right? Just select a marker, hold down the shift key, then select the end of the group you want to delete….right? WRONG.  Click and hold your mouse, then drag across the markers then?  NO.  You can’t select multiple markers in ProTools. You can delete ALL the markers, but you can’t say select 30 of them and delete them, leaving the rest.

I have the choice of deleting all 3000 markers, and losing the 200 I want to keep. Or I can delete 2800 markers, one at a time. Oh you can’t just hit the delete key when you have a marker selected either. You have to select the marker, then use a pull down menu to select “clear marker.” This process would take me close to 10,000 mouse clicks on this project. Is digidesign willing to pay my doctor bill for ligament damage which I’ll incur from clicking my mouse so many times?

See Why ProTools Sucks #9…

mediaguru Rants, Why ProTools Sucks

Amalgamut and Title Of Record are two of the most rockin’ and kick ass albums ever. The new Filter album Anthems For The Damned, though sonically good, doesn’t come close to having the balls and edge the two previous albums did.

I guess when rock & roll musicians get older they lose their edge? Or as my friend Matt theorizes, perhaps Robert Patrick being “clean” had something to do with it.

I still like the album, but I was hoping for another ball crushing release.

mediaguru Random, Rants

A couple of posts back I wrote about the mouth breathing fiber eating drummer who shits all the time. He was to come in last week and “spend 30 minutes on a few tweaks” on the first song. He came and was very nice, offering me a king sized snickers bar (I don’t eat candy) and a starbucks vanilla frappuccino (I definitely do those). Nice gesture.

Problem

He was to come and sit in on the mix for 30 minutes to do a few tweaks. That 30 minutes ended up being over 4.5 hours. It never ends. Once again I pay in the ass for my big mistake of taking a flat fee. I don’t think I can forgive myself for that huge blunder. I never would have done that back in my full time engineering days.

mediaguru Musicians, Rants, 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

Reason #7 ProTools sucks? Plug-ins cost more.

Say you find a plug for VST or other systems which runs around $200.
The same exact TDM plug for ProDrools would cost about $500.

mediaguru Rants, Why ProTools Sucks