Hilarious things bands have asked/said to you

[if6was9]

Some recent threads here and on other forums have led me start this thread. We've all had bands ask crazy, hilarious things of us or come out with insane things.

Here's a few to get the ball rolling.

Had a singer in a band ask me if I had a needle so he could give himself acupuncture to rid his nasally quality in his voice. No needle on hand? He grabbed an off cut of a guitar string and proceeded to do it. Needless to say it did not work.

Had a guy ask me to turn down the level of delay effect on a miced guitar track. I told him I'd no Di ( was a live recording) so it was not possible. He insisted a friend told him that it was and I just didn't know about it yet. No amount of explaining that the mic picks up the overall picture would do, his musician friend was more in the know than a couple of sound engineers.

Had a guy ask me what digital device would yeild the best quality to bring a mix to the mastering engineer. I told him email, usb stick, hard drive it didn't matter as it was digital. He wouldn't let it go- his usb drive was a few years old so must degrade the sound quality!

Another classic. A guy finishes recording, comes into the control room and asked me for his CD. There and then, finished tracking merely seconds ago. I told him it wasn't that simple that I had to mix it and it would take time. When I get home there's a mutual friend of ours waiting for me asking why wouldn't I give him his CD!

Got loads more but I'll save them for later.

 

[Pman]

Some recent threads here and on other forums have led me start this thread. We've all had bands ask crazy, hilarious things of us or come out with insane things.

Here's a few to get the ball rolling.

Had a singer in a band ask me if I had a needle so he could give himself acupuncture to rid his nasally quality in his voice. No needle on hand? He grabbed an off cut of a guitar string and proceeded to do it. Needless to say it did not work.

Had a guy ask me to turn down the level of delay effect on a miced guitar track. I told him I'd no Di ( was a live recording) so it was not possible. He insisted a friend told him that it was and I just didn't know about it yet. No amount of explaining that the mic picks up the overall picture would do, his musician friend was more in the know than a couple of sound engineers.

Had a guy ask me what digital device would yeild the best quality to bring a mix to the mastering engineer. I told him email, usb stick, hard drive it didn't matter as it was digital. He wouldn't let it go- his usb drive was a few years old so must degrade the sound quality!

Another classic. A guy finishes recording, comes into the control room and asked me for his CD. There and then, finished tracking merely seconds ago. I told him it wasn't that simple that I had to mix it and it would take time. When I get home there's a mutual friend of ours waiting for me asking why wouldn't I give him his CD!

Got loads more but I'll save them for later.

Jesus they're all ridiculous.
I worked in a studio for a short amount of time last year.
The norm for rap/hip-hop clients was to rip a track from youtube, ask us to loop it and rap over it, but you get used to that.
One time a group of gangster hiphop guys came in and gave me a 192kbps mp3 of a 'beat' with their friend rapping over a portion of it. They said they had recorded it at home but wanted me to move the rapping onto a different verse so they could do some different vocals on that part. I spent about 30 minutes trying to explain why that wasn't possible until they just walked out the studio assuming I had no idea what I was talking about.

 

[PhilTheBeard]

Band- This really isn't the direction we wanted to go in. can we get a partial Refund

Us- Learn to like it

 

[LoftMusicRob]

I had a bassist for one band ask me and the rest of the staff if we had any heroin and then asked if we could send a runner to find some after we all declined. Side note - in that same session the vocalist was so frustrated about not being able to complete a good vocal take that he banged his head down on the rack/producer dest and accidentally knocked himself out.

I also had a vocalist ask if he could bring his yappy little dog into the booth with him during takes.

 

[Jordon]

How about the client that "listened to the mixes on a flat response system" that turned out to be a combination of iTunes and laptop speakers.

The kick and bass were apparently not loud enough. hahaha.

 

[arv_foh]

"can you make that sound more digital"

 

[Jordon]

Or the friend of a really young (quite good) Nickelback-esque rockband listening back to a rough prepro track and exclaiming "dude, that's djenty as HELL." I proceeded to yell and threaten them with a terrible demise if they used that word again.

 

[Djentkitty]

Talking about amp settings....

"naw man, just turn all knobs(including gain) to max, trust me it will sound totally metal"

 

[bryan_kilco]

I've only (partially) recorded a friends band, so that was my only outside experience other than my own band(s) ever.

Chick drummer, could BARELY play drums....just never really had the ear to even learn simple covers, timing ALL OVER the place....

"Make me sound like a million bucks!!"

That band broke up before I could even finish tracking a few songs.

 

[Bmenz]

This thread is already amazing!

 

[Tommy Evans]

Me- Why do you keep getting off the click?

Guitarist- Oh sorry I was tuning it out.


Whale face.

 

[~BURNY~]

in that same session the vocalist was so frustrated about not being able to complete a good vocal take that he banged his head down on the rack/producer dest and accidentally knocked himself out.

Hahaha! Holy shit!

 

[LoftMusicRob]

Hahaha! Holy shit!

Bands give me a double take when I have them sign liability waivers, but that shit comes in handy!

The knockout was my favorite, but there have been some other good ones..

There was the drummer who was standing behind his kit and went to adjust something on the front...proceeded to fall OVER his kit and land flat on his back. The whole kit fell on top of him and a cymbal stand punctured his leg.

And then you have the guy who was too high and bit a chunk out of his own finger because it was INSIDE (I shit you not) his sandwich.

And who can forget the the kid who invented and built his own instrument but shocked himself because the thing wasn't grounded.

 

[Siriun]

And then you have the guy who was too high and bit a chunk out of his own finger because it was INSIDE (I shit you not) his sandwich.

Laughed my ass off.

There was younger kid (18 or 19 or so) and he pays for 4 days at the studio
where I was working at the time. Tells me he's just got to lay down guitar tracks for his EP (he's got 5 songs to record on gtr). His time frame was 10-8 for all 4 days. and spends the entire first two days bullshitting around with his guitar, re putting strings on because he broke a couple sets doing it wrong, forgot to bring his amp in the first day, and insisted only his amp sounded good enough. (It was a Solid state Behringer 50 watt amp) and didn't want to track through the marshal jcm 2000 half stack or the Soldano SLO half stack we had there because he said it didn't have the gain he was looking for...

The 2nd day he brings his amp in, but apparently breaks a string before we even start tracking. (his high e broke) He tells me to continue on and that he would record all the parts without the high e and go back and record the part with the high e over it... *second epic facepalm*

He had a really hard time playing the parts cleanly and went out of tempo on several occassions after turning up the tempo marker 4 times because he said he couldn't hear it good enough...

3rd day he dosen't show up, and gives me a call at 2:30 in the afternoon saying he had to go do something with his girlfriend or something and wouldn't be able to show up....

Last day he comes in 2 hours late. He's got a total of 3 songs tracked sloppily and terribly improvised on some because he forgot parts. it takes him hours to even make it through the fourth song and he decides he's taking a break to go get some food. 4 hours go by, I haven't heard anything from him and he texts me later that night and says "Hey uh, so I wasn't able to finish the song tonight or the other song. can we finish over the next few days?" i tried to explain to him that he bought only 4 days worth of time and he couldn't understand that. He was so peristent that his pay for the 4 days meant he could track his whole ep no matter what. Worst. Client. Ever.

 

[Scott Horner]

I'm recording an elderly lady (favor for a friend) and she just wanted to record vocals to some karaoke backing tracks. Simple enough. She had the tracks and I make a few bucks. She calls with some questions and it goes as follows:

"Does your machine show me the words?"
What do you mean?
"Well normally when I do karaoke I can see the words."
No, ma'am. This isn't a karaoke bar. You'll need to bring the lyrics with you.
"But if I forget the words can I see them?"
(lengthy explanation of what my studio is and what is and is not available)
"Sometimes I forget the words, I just need to see them if I forget."
I would recommend printing them out and bringing them with you.
"Oh well if you can just write down SOME of the words I can probably remember."

At this point I regretted agreeing to this. Some of the words? Does she want the adjectives? Verbs? is she more of a conjunction type of gal? I ended up just printing them all out for her and she was blown away that I was able to so easily find these "words".

And this was after two cancellations, one because she was just too exhausted after shopping and another way too detailed explanation of her rash that she had to go get checked out to make sure it wasn't shingles. "You know us old people." Luckily she turned out to be a super nice lady and I laid down the young man charm so she had a blast. Unfortunately, i was not familiar with any of these songs she was singing so i couldn't coach her and there are some pretty serious timing and tuning issues that I couldn't completely fix because she didn't want to wear headphones and there is too much bleed from the mains. After quite a bit of work i finally got one track sounding fairly decent.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2375427/When I Think About Cheatin'.mp3

You're welcome.

 

[JeffTD]

acupuncture... Needless to say it did not work.

I see what you did there.

 

[Matula]

I was about to start tracking this band and the "producer" sat next to me with a stop watch. As I was charging them by the hour, he turned it on every time I hit "Record" and off every time I hit "Stop".

 

[if6was9]

I was about to start tracking this band and the "producer" sat next to me with a stop watch. As I was charging them by the hour, he turned it on every time I hit "Record" and off every time I hit "Stop".

Read something recently similar to this on gearslutz. 30€ an hour.... well our song is only 4 minutes so....

 

[Nimvi]

Haha Scott, that wasn't as bad as I was expecting

Don't have any really terrible stories, and the few odd situations I've had were all with friends, so they weren't a big deal. Just stuff that makes laugh when I think of it.

I've had the infamous "it sounds too orange, make it more blue" remark from a few people. I think I lack certain brainconnections to fulfil that request.

A project comrade asked me to make the bass more audible on a certain part of his recording. The only problem was, there was no bass in that part. But he wanted me to make it sound like there is. Ended up just adding some midi strings there.

I've been in a discussion with my father in law about not being able to remove noise from a very old very bad recording. The noise was at LEAST 50% of the signal. I couldn't explain to him that if you take that away, it just leaves a gigantic hole behind, with all the artifacts around it making it sound even worse. People in general seem to have real issues understanding this concept. They seem to think that if you take something out, it automatically gets filled up with a goodsounding recording of the original instrument...
The weird part is that he is a professional graphic designer, and those guys get a lot of the same crap we do in their job. Just visually. If I would expect anyone to get this concept, it would be him. He's a cool guy though, so it's all good.

I also get in discussions with the vocalist of my band every now and then about me using a tiny bit of effects on his vocal for the album. He fears that it ruins the purity of the vocal. While I can somewhat understand that idea, I just really think a pure dry vocal sounds like shit on an album. I think that stuff like EQ,Comp,delay,reverb and what not brings out the good qualities of the vocal, instead of the other way round. I just cannot imagine anyone listening to an album, and thinking: "hmm, this vocal doesn't sound pure enough".
I'm not talking about boatloads of reverb here btw, I'm just talking about tiny bits of delay and some distortion in rare cases where you want to make a sentence stick out in a brutal way. Anyone else having similar problems? I don't want him to dislike what I do to his vocals, but I think his idea of it is not realistic.

EDIT: Heh..my post turned out to be more frustrating than hilarious...

 

[AllanD]

^Dear god at the last two.