FUCKING HEEELLLL

[The Unavoidable]

godfuckingDAMN IT MOTHER FUCKER (loooong post ahead )

Backstory:

EDIT: Any hints towards the identity of the band has been removed, in an attempt to be a little less of a jerk than I already am. Let's just say that it's an album I did for sentimental reasons, that I didn't charge for waah. Just doing it for experience and other reasons I can't divulge without giving away to much. I'm doing the vocals.

It all started a few months ago...



Drumtracking was hell. A full week spent doing a redicoulous amount of edits and re-takes on 9 hour days (which after I went straight to work, OH GOODY) and constantly fighting off bullshit from people who like to hear themselves talk about shit they don't know anything about.

Him: "Dude, can't you just edit together the chorus and the vers right there?"
Me: "No, you jackass, since there is a 16 bar interlude in between which you should know SINCE YOU WROTE THE FUCKING SONG AND HAVE PLAYED IT FOR TWO FUCKING YEARS!"
Him: "Oh, well can't you just maximize the snare with the EQ? "
Me: "WHAT?!"


Oh, and in between the part about the interlude and admitting that he was wrong yet again, insert about 20 minutes of "No there isnt. Yes there is.No there isnt. YESITFUCKINIS"

Guitar tracking was about the same, except now we recorded in my home studio so now I had the added pleasure of having my furniture molested by all their shit and their continuing violation of my "NO FUCKING COFFEE MUGS AND/OR BEVERAGES ON MY FUCKING DESK YOU SHITHEADS" policy. Good times.

Again, add sixteen thousands retakes and arguing about parts since neither of the guitar players who have been playing these songs for almost three years have any clue what they are doing.

Bass tracking was a breeze. Yeah, really. Me and the bassplayer are good friends and we had fun dialing in a crushing bass tone, and jamming out pretty much all of the songs in just a few hours. The only reedeming factor in this entire ordeal.

All through out this beast I was doing editing/mixing on my own time. I spent about 10-12 hours atleast on the drum edits alone. (Not just the drummers fault, I fucked up some too and had to mess with the triggering quite a bit)
and I guess an additional 15 grueling hours mixing. Not to mention the 5-6 hours OF MY OWN TIME that I spent dialing in guitar tones for them.

None of this is of course anything out of the ordinary, many people here probably spend way more time fixing worse things, but this is all part of a bigger picture.


So come time to record the vocals. I get two songs down, then my interface breaks down. I sent it in to get repaired, a 5 minute soldering job they said. I got it back two weeks later with a hefty fucking bill attached. Yiipee.

Headphones are next. They got them repaired in just two or three days. I'm impressed.

Next up is "the move". Me and my GF moved to a new place, and of course that means that my studio has to be taped up in big boxes while all the renovations are taking place. They finished yesterday, and I got the studio up and running today.

Which brings us to what this is all about. This morning I started, what I hoped would be, the final tracking session. All was going to be over. Any suprise that I was dead wrong?

I tracked two songs. Killer sound, was very happy with how my vocals were turning out. Did some overlays that were turning out fat as hell. But it was all too good to be true. Cubase, for whatever reason, deleted all my inserts on all channels. This includes many fine-tuned instances of ApTrigga, careful EQ settings and amp settings (8505). Fortunantly, I have most of the settings saved, so it's not a complete disaster. I'm just so fucking sick of this. This project has been like a fucking cancer on my brain for the last 5 months, and just when it had an ending in sight I got massively fucked one again.


Sorry for being a whiny bitch, but I just wanted to vent. And I'm hoping that writing this will give me the strenght to get back in there and fix this shit once and for all.


During this entire process, I get about 1-2 text messages a week, asking "what the fuck is taking so long dude" Any attempts of an explanation is just met with "Well can't you just fix it?"


Also, my headphones are acting up again.


I have yet to recieve a 'thank you'.

 

[SocialNumb]

Wow, well, thank you.

I guess these things are just Unavoidable.

 

[BrettT]

Wow, well, thank you.

Took the words out of my mouth!

Seriously, though...that does not sound like fun at all. Once again a reminder why I just do this stuff for myself and not for a living.

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

Dude... I am so sorry to hear that man! That' sucks, but, look at it this way, if you can get through these sessions without commiting a murder, then you can do anything!

 

[Matula]

Maybe if you'd charged for your work everything would go perfectly. A little bit of Murphy's Law here.

 

[Gnash]

Free shit and "favors" always seem to go down like this. I had a similar experience like this that ended in a law suit!

 

[KillDivision]

Thank You!!!

Post those 2 songs, we will cheer you up.

 

[006]

Maybe if you'd charged for your work everything would go perfectly. A little bit of Murphy's Law here.

That's what I was thinking too. I know personally every long drawn-out project that is eating me from the inside out has been when I didn't charge. Now that I charge everyone, even close friends, projects tend to go much smoother. Plus I am being compensated for the time so it kinda works out

Sorry about the Cubase hiccup, however from a recent near disaster in the latest project I can't stress enough how important it is to make backups of your sessions EVERY DAY that you work on something. If you get up and open the session just to tweak the guitars a tiny little bit - don't just save it, make a backup too! Cubase do (File -> Save project to new folder) it will copy everything over to a different folder, but remember that until you close that project and re-open from the original you will be working in the new folder version. I also like to go to the folder on my drive and duplicate it so there is 1 "live", 2 backups of each project. This is pretty much the only way to be safe.

 

[VH1]

Now that is a really crappy situation!
Back on charge-free works, I kinda' went through something like that. It sucks, but happens to everyone. uke:

 

[Williamn]

Oh I feel bad for you.. sounds like living hell.
At some point im gonna search around for a band I can record and produce for free, but thats only for the sake of learning.. as soon as I can take cash for it I will do it (not including friends, would feel bad demanding money for doing a favour for a close friend)

 

[ahjteam]

I have noticed that charging even the minimal amount instead of free, say $20 a day, will save you from a lot of whining.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Studio Commandment #1: Always back thy shit up.


Seriously, you moved, and didn't dump the files to DVD or another hard drive? What were you thinking?




Never had a complete disaster like that happen, but then again, everyone thinks i'm crazy for using SawStudio.... hmmmmm.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Thanks for the support everyone, it feels at least a little bit better now! I'll try to just start at the beginning, and copy the settings channel by channel. I might not be able to get it all down today like I was hoping but maybe at the end of the week, if work doesn't get too much in the way. I can't even begin to describe how much I've learned from this ordeal though, especially about workflow and planning a session ahead. My next project is my current band, a death metal three piece with me on guitars and vox. We are gonna record an EP/Demo later this year and I'm gonna wear this project like a peter north facial to remind myself over and over how NOT to do it. I guess that's how you learn. Again, thanks for the support, and hope you got some laughs out of my misery!

 

[Russtopher]

Yeah... I just learned the hard way as well why you never do a project for free, even if it's for friends/a good learning experience/whatever.

Nothing like showing up for guitar tracking and having the guitarist tell you "yeah I wrote the solo I didn't know last time!" and have you think "ok this'll go smoothly" as you're setting up mics. Then they pull out their laptop and start playing 1 note at a time, reeeeeeeeeeal sloooooooooooooowly.... when asked what they were doing, they responded "well, I wrote the solo, now I need to learn how to play it. I might be able to do it tonight, how long do we have here?"

And this is why 4 songs took 4 months.

 

[blags]

Man I`ve been doing an album for the band i used to played in 12 years ago for two bloody years.I accepted to do it for pretty much same reasons you did(bass player is an old friend of mine,getting some experience,I wanted to help local Heavy Metal scene somehow...)
But now I see that it was a mistake.I finished editing guitars uke: in January or shall i say guitar because there is only one rhythm guitar the second could not be played because the drums are changing tempo most of the time so you need to have a degree in combinatorics to play along those drums.Then they had some personal changes so it ended up with me doing solos for three songs(nothing special but at least there is a solo in a song of some kind) `cause i was fed up with waiting.So I`ve learned my lesson no more favors,no pro bono work for me.Needles to say that when i presented this attitude to some friends who wanted me to do a demo for
them their reaction was like ".... dude 120 euros for three songs is way to much,we are just students we don't have that money.you only need to hit the record button whats the big deal...."Ok the price is now 200 euros."
They never talked to me about making that demo again.
The point is to respect yourself ,your time,space(they recorded solos at my place,breathing my air,) and the craft that you hold in your hands(ears).I learned that the hard and very unpleasant way.But there is a light ahead:danceboy:.I`m currently recording a sludge metal project.The guys are super tight and well rehearsed.I was hired to record their stuff and they are doing all producing deciding which take is the best etc.And I`m enjoying myself doing this project(although they should listen to me when i say that the guitar is slightly out of tune but I`m prepared to rerecord song or to again when they come to their senses)

 

[AudioPhile777]

Him: "Oh, well can't you just maximize the snare with the EQ? "
Me: "WHAT?!"

I personally think that everyone here should learn how to do this... this is how you get the boom.

 

[PhilR]

I personally think that everyone here should learn how to do this... this is how you get the boom.

Man, I paid big bucks and couldn't get the boom.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I hate the mentality of McDonalds in the studio.

It's not "your way right away" it's "the right way on a reasonable day"

I'll get guys who just want to slap down their guitars in a few hours lol: yeah maybe if you didn't suck so bad) have me mix in less than an hour (huge when this happens) or expect me to meet their deadline of unreasonably.

I'm pretty up front with things now though. If I say "it will be ready on _____ day" then it will be ready on that day.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Good news: I figured out what caused the deletation of all my vst inserts.

Bad news: The reason I figured it out, was becuse it happened again.

Somewhere in the middle: I have all the settings written down now, so I can just tap them in again.


Turns out that what happened was that when my headphones gave out I started fiddling with the headphone output on my Inspire, trying to determine if that's were the problem was (it has happened before). When I was doing this, I accidently knocked out the firewire cable from the interface. No biggie I've done that many times, just re-connect it and wait 20 seconds, HOWEVER if this happens when Cubase is running it apperently deletes all the inserts. I'm so sick of this piece of shit interface, can anyone recommend something else in the same price range? Is the firebox any good?

EDIT: Scratch that, the firebox cost almost as much as a firepod so fuck that. Any other cheap FW interfaces that don't suck?