Let me preface this by saying that I'm recording (recorded in the case of one) these two bands for free, which is probably the root of my problems. Unfortunately I have zero clients.. the two that I'm talking about here I approached about recording trying to build up a name and discography. That hasn't worked at all.
First band recording went smoothly, everything was fine until I gave them the song and they uploaded it. Awesome. Except they took my mp3 and converted it into another mp3. God knows why but now it sounds awful obviously. I didn't bother them about that but I did ask them to put my name on their page saying I'd recorded them. I'd done the recording for free, its pretty fucking obvious that's the least they could do.
It took ONE MONTH for them to do that. ONE FUCKING MONTH. By which time any 'buzz' that may have been there at the release of the song is long fucking gone and no-one knows that I'm the engineer at all.
To top it off, the guy who runs the website is also the drummer, who is the worst drummer I have ever recorded. He was about 5-10 bpm out constantly. I had to edit fucking ghost notes because even they were ridiculously out of time.
Second band. Amazing players, the best mix I've done, except that its taken like 5 months. We did all the instruments in like 4 or 5 hours, really quick, then we were gonna do vocals but he had a cold. Then he had exams. Then more exams (to be fair, in his last year of school). Then schoolies (end of school celebrations.. everyone gets shitfaced for a week). Twice. Then I finally got him in, we tracked some clean guitars and then he tells me he's sick again.
Christ.
So I book him in for the following week, which he cancels. Then he offers Thursday, and gets in a car crash (everyone involved is fine, but his car got totalled) the day before and chooses to spend Thursday filling in paperwork instead. He offers Saturday (today). I get an SMS at 1am last night saying he's out, hasn't worked on the lyrics at all, and will be hungover, can we do it another time.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I basically told him to fuck off until he could be assed to stop wasting my time and get his shit together. In somewhat nicer words.
I don't mind doing favours for people. I spent a fuckload of time editing both bands, got some good reamps for the second, was even going to get Slate to master the second band with his new plugin, but now I've delayed him so much I don't know if that's happening. I do mind people fucking me around, especially when (and probably BECAUSE) I'm doing this for free.
Fuck.
First band recording went smoothly, everything was fine until I gave them the song and they uploaded it. Awesome. Except they took my mp3 and converted it into another mp3. God knows why but now it sounds awful obviously. I didn't bother them about that but I did ask them to put my name on their page saying I'd recorded them. I'd done the recording for free, its pretty fucking obvious that's the least they could do.
It took ONE MONTH for them to do that. ONE FUCKING MONTH. By which time any 'buzz' that may have been there at the release of the song is long fucking gone and no-one knows that I'm the engineer at all.
To top it off, the guy who runs the website is also the drummer, who is the worst drummer I have ever recorded. He was about 5-10 bpm out constantly. I had to edit fucking ghost notes because even they were ridiculously out of time.
Second band. Amazing players, the best mix I've done, except that its taken like 5 months. We did all the instruments in like 4 or 5 hours, really quick, then we were gonna do vocals but he had a cold. Then he had exams. Then more exams (to be fair, in his last year of school). Then schoolies (end of school celebrations.. everyone gets shitfaced for a week). Twice. Then I finally got him in, we tracked some clean guitars and then he tells me he's sick again.
Christ.
So I book him in for the following week, which he cancels. Then he offers Thursday, and gets in a car crash (everyone involved is fine, but his car got totalled) the day before and chooses to spend Thursday filling in paperwork instead. He offers Saturday (today). I get an SMS at 1am last night saying he's out, hasn't worked on the lyrics at all, and will be hungover, can we do it another time.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I basically told him to fuck off until he could be assed to stop wasting my time and get his shit together. In somewhat nicer words.
I don't mind doing favours for people. I spent a fuckload of time editing both bands, got some good reamps for the second, was even going to get Slate to master the second band with his new plugin, but now I've delayed him so much I don't know if that's happening. I do mind people fucking me around, especially when (and probably BECAUSE) I'm doing this for free.
Fuck.
