Recording TERRIBLE bands

MEGA DAVE

MEGA DAVE

Member
Mar 5, 2008
408
1
16
Cincinnati, Ohio
Ok, so where I come from (Cincinnati Ohio) it seems like all we have out here is shitty bands. I'm decent at recording and with the right band I've gotten some pretty killer mixes, the problem is though that most are terrible and waste my time. I spend hours fixing mistakes and it's driving me crazy. My biggest problem is drummers (sorry guys) as I've yet to meet a single one that is good enough to play to a click and they all have these super huge ego's and refuse to let me program them. I try time and time again to tell them that after editing their tracks and sound replacing I've pretty much achieved the same sound as if I would have programmed, only now nothing is on time. Basically what I'm getting at is how the hell do you all go about telling a drummer they suck and need to be programmed, or do you all just let them by with a shit recording and let them learn for themselves? Most times I've just let them go by with their shitty playing (after taking hours just trying to get them to get a usable take) and then spent even further hours trying to line hits up to make them work well enough. I just fear that in letting them leave with a shit product (playing ability-wise, not production quality-wise) that it's gonna look terrible on me as a recording engineer, and even worse most of these bands are HAPPY with their terrible playing. I don't get it. Insight anyone? I'm tired of working my ass off doing unnecessary edits.
 
I know what you mean. I dont want to have shitty CDs out there with my name under it.
I always track real drums and then edit edit edit and more editing.....can take up to one week for a full length. The band has to pay the time and I´m fine with it....

And nothings sounds better then real cymbals
thats why it is worth recording real drums
 
I just had this experience with a local band i recorded here..
Their drummer is shitty. He's only just started playing, and they didn't know their click track, couldn't play to it, etc.

So I just let them do their thing and then spent the next 4-5 hours editing all the drums. Thankfully the guitarists are pretty damn decent and stayed on time.

And now the drums are FAIRLY listenable, though WAY far from perfect.

Fills are off, and the kick drum is off in some parts, but i can at least make it through the song now. Furthermore, this was a demo I'm doing for them. They're just trying to get their name out there, and it's their first time recording with someone other than themselves with one mic and a laptop.

That being said.. The next time they come record, i'm going to INSIST that they learn to play to the click track, and that we'll work together to get it right. Because in the end, the more time you spend on tracking, and the more effort you put into getting a good performance out of the musician, the better your mixes will sound. Period.

I have learned this the hard way, and you're just going to have to insist that the band trust you as an Audio Engineer, and that by doing it your way, they will have much better end results.

Be a tracking NAZI! :)
 
haha yeah I understand being a track nazi, I think what I'm gonna do is tell them for now on if they can't play to a click track that I'm programming seeing as I charge a flat rate per song, but just to be clear when I say programming, my method is to first record them playing together live with a few room mics and guitar mics, then program out the core of the drums (kick, snare, toms) and then once that's complete giving them the option to mute out the drums and play live cymbals. I've done it in the past with my projects and can achieve this in a 1/4 of the time as opposed to all real drums and triggering.
 
Half the time they can't even fucking hear it. I've heard drummer lay down beats that are sloppier than me playing drums whilst blind drunk only to say "yeah man, I think that was a pretty good take". And the band will usually AGREE!

It'd be nice to be a clicktrack nazi, especially when recording these fucking useless teenage deathcore bands. But the net result of this is that they will simply go somewhere else and money will be lost.


Something else as well. I like China cymbals. I have a big 20" china cymbal on my kit. It sounds like a football stadium going crazy and could probably scare a cat to death and as such I give very real consideration to where playing it is appropriate. But these bloody deathcore bands that have the drummer bashing incessantly on his china ALL. THE. TIME. make me want to round up every china cymbal in the entire world and have them thrown into a volcano.
 
haha sadly enough i toured in a deathcore band on Metalblade and recorded a cd with them. Some of it i like, but most I feel are just clones of everyone else, but yes I do agree with you on the china issue, and just remember, every deathcore kid wants that August Burns Red annoying china aka the Ziljian China Trash (which I think they named it very approately :p )
 
yea dude most dayton/cincy area bands seem to suck

and when they don't suck from a talent standpoint, then they're just broke as shit and have crappy drums/heads/cymbals/guitars/amps/basses/whatever, and refuse to use anything but their own worn-out bullshit
 
oh my god, i hear ya, don't even get me started on the shit equipment these bands come in with. eclipse drumsets with more duct tape than metal harware, the most recent band came in with a guitar to record guitar with a neck that i could have probably shot arrows from it was so bent, and i even had one band that made a drum rack from bamboo and pvc pipe!
 
I usually just go pretty oldschool, especially with demobands; I demand skills from the musicians, and I am being a nazi especially on the drummers and singers, and refuse to time edit or autotune them just because they suck. I don't force them to play to a click if they haven't played to it before (but do note that I don't record extreme metal bands), but I usually atleast try it. If they can't play to it, then I just turn it off, but I do demand them to play atleast semi-decently, so that the only thing I would need to do is stitch good takes together instead of time editing every hit. Only one customer has complained about this procedure when they were recording their demo, but they had reserved mere 3 days to record, edit, mix and master 4 songs and he did indeed suck and the band broke up about 1 year later, so no real harm done there.
 
yeah, only problem is that around here almost all of my clients are death metal or deathcore bands, as this city is plagued with them so it's sort of become my area of specialization, and without perfect timing things just dont sit right, with all the 16th note double bass and blasts that every kid wants to try to do. I would love for the chance to start getting a wider range of bands coming in but they are few and far between around here, and surprisingly it's all the deathcore kids who have all the money for the recordings... which always leads me to wonder why they never invest in better equipment
 
why not tell the bands that your flat rate per song fee incorporates sample replacement and programming on the drums (better sound, more efficient, etc). But if they want to "keep it real", you charge by the hour for drum editing (pick your rate here). then you can see how authentic they want to be with their wallets.

otherwise if you truly are spending hours upon hours just on drum editing, your flat rate fee could easily drop below minimum wage.
 
Do you guys in the US also get the problem with bands where EVERY member of the band considers himself a guitarist, at least 2 of them will consider themselves drummers, yet none of them can play anything worth a shit beyond sitting in the control room endlessly failing to play the latest sick sweeps they got from some magazine?
 
yeah i think you hit that one right on the head. I had a band in recently that was sweeping their asses off warming up but when it came to a simple 4/4 rhythm to lay down they played as if they'd never played a day in their life
 
Haha that's why I am somewhat proud of my guitar skills..I may play mostly simple stuff but I can actually play it all on click...
 
MEGA DAVE said:
i would kill for a guitarist that could play perfectly to a click lol
Click to expand...

i can riff my dick off to a click all day long

totally fail at sweeps and shit though

I grew up in Cincy. We used to have some really awesome bands. East Arcadia, UNX, Thistle, Based In Theory, etc.

Sorry deathcore's all the rage.
Click to expand...

if they aren't deathcore bands, they're TDWP wannabes
 
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