Pro Sound Blog

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.

In the Mac operating system, hitting the tab key while in an open or save dialog box tabs you through to the filename and highlights it. So say you want to save a new file, you hit save as and then a save dialog pops up. If you hit tab, the file name becomes active and highlighted and you just start typing your filename.

This function is a time saver, especially if you deal with a lot of files. In ProDrools, this doesn’t happen. Tab does nothing. But ProTools isn’t about saving time, it’s about taking MORE time, so your big expensive studio can bill your client more hours and make more money, thus helping you afford your overpriced recording system.

Tonight I just completed the setup for the big double album technical rock band 1.5 month project. Now I know it is likely that some of these band members I’m working with will be reading my journals here, so be warned not to take any of it too deeply. It’s all in fun… maybe.

The setup went fairly well with a few problems due to the drummer.

First the drummer was late because his dog was “pissing diarrhea blood out it’s ass” and his wife was puking because she was pregnant and couldn’t smell it. Man I couldn’t imagine the hell that guy is going through (not with the dog, with having a pregnant wife).

2nd the drummer’s setup is enormous. He must have literally 20 cymbals. Don’t forget the rototoms and octobans. His kit is so tightly set up, there’s almost nowhere to get the mics into place. Before he could set his kit up he had to vacuum his carpet (see picture)! Believe it or not, that’s happened more times than I can count. Anal drummers… Can’t live with them, can’t kill them.

I haven’t worked in this studio for a few months. It was an experience for me trying to remember how the studio’s patching from room to room was setup, along with remembering the basic functions of the Euphonix console. The main owner/engineer was there to help, which was very good.

One of the tasks before we can record was to figure out how to get all the keyboard tracks into ProTools (or ProDrools as I prefer to call it). The keyboard player, bless his heart, doesn’t know much about what he’s doing. He didn’t even know what or if he had an audio interface with his Apple Logic Express system. He didn’t.

When importing the midi files, the individual takes or chunks were all broken up into separate tracks by ProDrools. I figured that I had to use a merge function in logic to merge each track individually first, before importing into PT. I’m not sure if Cubase is the same, but maybe that’s an entry #3 for my section called “why protools sucks.”

The setup took almost 6 hours, protools issues and drummers included. Tomorrow we start at high noon with the tracking of drums and bass. Noon is pretty late for me. The guys in the band have been complaining a bit about the schedule and not having enough days booked in May/June, yet they want to start at noon. If we started at 9am each day instead of noon, we’d gain one of those precious days back every three…

Off to bed.

I had a gig scheduled for tonight. It was to be the biggest paying gig of the year and perhaps even the biggest paying gig I’ve ever had. I got a phone call from some lady I don’t know who said she’d been “calling the band leader for a month straight” trying to confirm the gig. She said she was getting someone else if I didn’t call the band leader and get back to her in 1/2 an hour.

I didn’t hear back from the band leader in time and she booked someone else. When the band leader did call me back, he said “fuck ‘em. I don’t feel like playing for them anyway.” Hmmm… Fuck them? Fuck me too. How about considering that this gig was going to pay a shit load of my bills?

My 2nd gig last weekend was at “Tattoos-R-Us” club. We had an opening band so I didn’t have to show up until about 10:45. When I got there I noticed that they screwed up again and didn’t have our band name on the marquee.

I got in the club and grabbed my usual cranberry juice. I checked out the opening band and they were pretty good. They were a surf band and the guitar player had a Theremin.

When I walked back stage to open the back door and load my gear, I noticed another drum kit. I started adding up things in my head and went to talk to the sound guy. I asked him how many bands were playing and he said two. I asked who the 2nd band was and he pointed at a table in the audience and said “them.”

My band wasn’t playing.

I called my singer outside and he confirmed that we were not playing and apologized for forgetting to call me. It appears our bass player’s father had a heart attack and she canceled. It’s nice to drive 189 city blocks just to go drink a f’n cranberry juice and breathe a bunch of 2nd hand smoke. How considerate.

The big box goes down

Comp USA is closing 105 stores. Gee I wonder why?

If you are in the need of some terrible products and the worst customer service on the planet, you’d better get down there soon. Better hurry so you can take advantage of your final opportunity to be ignored on the sales floor.

The little box

The big box of computer stores is going down. Hmmm… This is a chance for the little box to gain some ground, which is good.

I’ve added a new category: “Why ProTools Sucks.”

This section will be where I voice my opinion about Digidesign’s ProTools digital audio recording hardware/software. ProTools has become the industry standard in the recording world. It’s the buzz word everyone always knows.

But in my opinion there are many systems out there which can do what ProTools does, even better. Add that to the fact that you can get these systems for a fraction of what ProTools costs… Customer service? Yeah well i remember calling a 900 number for my ProTools questions, paying $3/minute, being on hold for 47 minutes and then getting asked “did you plug it in?” There goes $150 bucks… But if you have thousands of extra dollars to waste on an overpriced recording system, I guess you can pay $150 bucks to be on hold for 47 minutes.

CAN’T SELECT MULTIPLE MARKERS

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 is 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. 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?

I’ve had a very busy few days. I’m beat. I was finally had a chance to relax for about an hour and a half and have some dinner before I had to go play a gig at a really crappy club. I dragged myself away and got to the gig to find that there was an opening act. If I’d have known this nugget in advance I could have stayed home for another hour and a half rather than sitting in a damn smoke filled bar which only had people that were all tatt’d out (lots of tattoos).

I can think of many things I’d rather do than sit there breathing cigarette smoke looking at ugly chicks covered in tattoos…

The club sucks. My singer apologized for booking the gig and I took the opportunity to let him know that I don’t want to play there again…

So I’m working into the rotation at the big studio. Right now I’m not getting the most “prestigious” gigs.

I’m working with a hack acoustic guitar player and I just can’t get his guitar to sound very crisp. I’ve got a friggin’ $8000 Neumann microphone on this guy’s guitar and it sounds terrible. No crispness at all. It sounds like the mic is across the room pointing the other direction.

I go in the sound booth to see what is up. Maybe the guy took his shoes off and hung his shoe on the mic?

All thumbs

As it turns out, this guy is paying $100/hour to record his acoustic tracks and he’s playing the guitar with the meat of his thumb. DOH! I asked “where’s your guitar pick?” and he says “I don’ t use one.” Hmm… I say “that’s probably why it doesn’t sound very crisp.”

Later in the session when I go to set up an auto-tuner on his vocals I ask the same guy what key the song is in. “I don’t know” is his answer. So I ask “what chord are you playing on the last note of the song?” “I don’t know” again. The guy is self taught, doesn’t use a guitar pick, and doesn’t know what a chord is. He was playing a bastardized G chord…

Normally I’d say “kill me” in this situation, but I’m glad to have a gig at this point so no worries. Just get a friggin’ guitar lesson before the next session please…

Man there are a lot of poor musicians. Even the famous jazz musicians don’t make a lot of money. Yet “JayZ” (or however you spell it) made $34 million last year and is the richest rapper. For those of you rappers out that that mean he’s “stackin’ bank.”

Terrific news. Now all the hip hop losers out there who don’t know how to speak English, don’t know how to wear a hat straight and don’t know how to keep their damn pants above their ass crack will all be thinking they can be a millionaire. Boy are they in for a shock. Unfortunately we’ll all have to put up with their shiznit.