Dumbest studio mistake(s) you've ever made?

[JeffTD]

I must have missed this story. What happened?

That's all that happened? The drive Bendeth was sent didn't have OH tracks, that's it.

 

[Nebulous]

I didn't have it armed to record

Most commonly this. Most times that it happens I realise just as the musician is about to start. I feel bad for the vocalists because they draw that great first breath, then it's wasted when the music stops becuase I see what I've done.

 

[jangoux]

Well, the list is big for me, but the main ones are:

1) Incorrect sample rate on the external clock (easily fixable tho'...but didnt knew it at the time)
2) Missing that GREAT take, because i didn't hit record, hit play instead
3) Deleting a whole project when doing that shitty clean up thing inside Nuendo
4) Tracking with too much Fatson on the snare on a song with just light snare hits, and then forget to re-set it at the next song with strong hits. That was an annoying PINGY snare
5) Didnt check the OH just before tracking..so the drummer stepped on a cable and the mic moved from being pointed to the floor/cymbals to the ceileing.

THe list goes on eheh

 

[JeffTD]

I feel bad for the vocalists because they draw that great first breath, then it's wasted when the music stops becuase I see what I've done.

I've come to absolutely hate that sound... the huge inhale and then the kind of "oh shit there's nothing playing pfffsshhhttt" exhale thing. No matter how many times I explain to vocalists that I record things line-by-line so they can use their full breath on a section and avoid dying off at the end, they still think we're recording multiple huge lines at once and do that inhale/failed exhale thing as soon as I stop the playback.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

One thing I've done a couple of times recently when having to work in Cubendo is saying "Aaand go" into the talkback, hitting record and looking at the artist contently through the window when instead of starting to perform he looks back at me like I'm retarded. I never seem to remember the click has to be enabled in the monitor output in the VST Connections tab in Cubase

 

[SkybluestudiosBEN]

When I was trying out the whole "elastic time" in pro tools I forgot to put a warp marker at the end of the selection and ended up shifting the bands drums completely out of time for the whole song.......Therefore I had to re quantize a bunch of shit.

 

[Shaun Werle]

I had my At4040 mic set up in input 2 and a few other mics set up throughout my room, I set up some vocal tracks/AUX and i set the input to input one which was an sm57 5 feet away on a cab. It didn't take me long to realize that something was not right. haahahahaha

 

[Shaun Werle]

I had also had L OH panned center and R OH panned 100% right. I also had guitars running through my tom bus.

 

[Shaun Werle]

I had also had L OH panned center and R OH panned 100% right. I also had guitars running through my tom bus.

 

[crillemannen]

Ok here it goes.. I spilled coffe on my 8000$ preamp beat that

 

[Forceps]

Ok here it goes.. I spilled coffe on my 8000$ preamp beat that

Ouch....
In my case it's usualy the client who destroys my stuff, one in particular... But I always hide the expensive stuff when he's around

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

That underoath thing is hillarious. Didn't Adam D tracked them? Why couldn't he just send him the missing OH tracks then?

Either way, never had much problems though, only simple stuff like when you're pretty tired and you talkback to the signer in the vocal booth, "ok ready? lets go", I press play with my finger on top of the punch in and never press it then I blame his take

 

[HeadCrusher]

That underoath thing is hillarious. Didn't Adam D tracked them? Why couldn't he just send him the missing OH tracks then?

Well, couldn't he just have replied to that message Ermz sent him a while ago as well.

 

[plague_rider]

"Where's the talback button?"

*whilst the button sits in front of me and couldnt be any clearer if there was a naked chick pointing to it*

 

[fitzrangerhoodngarb]

I used a clients tape as a work reel to do a mechanical tape path alignment of a 2" machine. A proper mechanical lineup can involve quite a bit of stress on a tape, particularly on the edges, but it also involves recording of tones. Somehow I managed to not damage the tape and miraculously record tones in between songs and over an outtake. One track was 8 minutes with a few expensive guest artists...I had to sit through the whole tape, sweating, waiting for tones to cut in. I still don't know how that never happened.

Another time I did an entire record with a 2" machine that had faulty code printed for syncing back up to pro tools. Because the machine was also resolving to a faulty clock (where the machine got it's faulty code) whilst tracking, everything appeared normal until the sync box came out of fault condition. Then it became apparent everything had a nice wow to it. Unfortunately, in this instance, it wasn't as simple as re-striping or jam syncing, everything had to be re-tracked.

Another one I just remembered is knocking over a JD and Coke into an Avalon U5 DI during a quick demo tracking session in between festival shows. The bass player liked to use his own always. I forgot about it, the stage guys turned up and packed all the gear for the next days show. Inexplicably it worked for line check. It wasn't till the band were walking on stage that I remembered (an 'o shit' moment) and naturally it shit itself first note. Confession time after the show.

 

[B36arin]

When I was just starting out we had a talkback mic with an on/off switch on the mic itself in the studio. It wouldn't work, so I raised the volume and gain of it quite a bit until I got a really vague signal from the mic. A friend of mine was in the studio at the same time and said "Hey, the mic isn't turned on" and then proceeded to turn it on... Needless to say our hearts skipped a beat as the feedback started. Luckily we didn't blow any speakers.

I was mixing a demo a few weeks ago, and was really stressed out because I was busy and the demo was a favour for a few friends, I wasn't getting paid. I didn't track it, and the OHs sounded like shit, so I put them as low as I could get away with. When I showed the mix to one of the guitarists in a band, about 2 minutes in he said "you should raise the drums a bit in this piece, it feels like they drop out after this break."... I had somehow managed to delete the OH track for the rest of the song without noticing it But I had the tracks fully edited in an older version of the project(THANK GOD for saving projects under multiple names after each phase of editing) that I could just import back into the song.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

just gotta know how to talk to them

easy for you, you've got a German chick

 

[Skinny Viking]

easy for you, you've got a German chick

Ja doch

although, to stick with the humor a bit, the Frenchie I dated gave up quicker

 

[brianhood]

just wanted to add to this real quick:

I tracked an entire album with a band last year, but we couldn't do vocals because the singer had to get some sort of surgery done to fix her vocal chords. Long story short, all of their files were in some other band's folder, and i deleted everything. They were coming in today to start vocal tracking, and i opened the session up to "4000 missing fades, 931 missing files".

Not only is this a huge bummer to me and the band, but it was also a waste of 3 fucking weeks. This tops the list of the dumbest studio mistakes i've ever made.

 

[derekmoffat]

just wanted to add to this real quick:

I tracked an entire album with a band last year, but we couldn't do vocals because the singer had to get some sort of surgery done to fix her vocal chords. Long story short, all of their files were in some other band's folder, and i deleted everything. They were coming in today to start vocal tracking, and i opened the session up to "4000 missing fades, 931 missing files".

Not only is this a huge bummer to me and the band, but it was also a waste of 3 fucking weeks. This tops the list of the dumbest studio mistakes i've ever made.

Holy santa claus shit. Just re-tracking everything again?

2TB externals are perfect for this kind of thing man! haha