Hey guys, not a gig story but I think this is the best place for it anyway..
Just thought I'd share my band's awful studio experience this weekend.
A student at a certain sound engineering college contacted us via MySpace, wanting a band for a recording.
We accept the offer - hey we might get something we can release later, even if we have to get the masters and remix.. the college's studio looks pretty good.
Anyway, we're all rehearsed, have given the student engineer (let's call him Ali) song-sheets, equipment rundown etc etc, he even has live recordings.
Plan is our drummer get there first, sets up drums, and soundchecks. I get a call before I arrive "What sort of drum sound do I want?"
"err.. have you asked the drummer?" "don't we just get a reasonable sound then make adjustments later?" I tell him "just make it sound like Joy Division" (it transpires later that he has no idea who Joy Division are)
I get there an hour after the drummer.. all miced up, ready to go I think!
But no! After myself and guitar are set up (we are DIing for now so we don't spill into drums), he THEN starts to soundcheck! Our drummer's been there and they have just been waiting for us to arrive, before starting.. incredible.
All this while, the two student engineers say about 4 words to us, and only in reply to us asking them something.
OK, so we get the drums soundchecked, we go for a listen, it all sounds a bit feeble to us. But no worry! We just need more microphones on the kit. This takes another 20 minutes.
All this while the 2 engineers barely speak to one another except for when Ali barks orders to his assistant 'Karl'. They seem to not like each other very much. Ali has a pungent aroma all of his own, so perhaps it's no wonder. We try to stay out of the control room, which has Air-con set to 25 degrees for some reason. I figure perhaps Ali is trying to simulate a Bombay-Calcutta express like environment for himself.
We then move on to giving us a headphone mix for the band, so we can hear the guitar, bass and vocals.
Unfortunately, the guitars and bass sound totally distorted as if the batteries are running down somewhere. A horrible sound, which then becomes totally inaudible when we all start to play. This is blamed on our effects boards, so we end up going straight in. Not what you tend to do with electric guitar (bass maybe), but hey, we just want to record.
The problem remains.. distorted.. or inaudible..
I try to explain this to Ali. He looks at me like I'm out of my mind and that I am being unreasonable to expect the instruments to be audible and clean through headphones. I'm not actually sure he understands me at all.
I pare down my use of the English language to a very very basic level in an attempt to accommodate him. "Yes, no, good, bad, louder, distorted'
This is made doubly difficult by his inability to use the studios talkback. We spend half our time saying "Ali? Ali? Hello? Can you hear me? ALI?!" and waving madly through the glass.
We attempt to soldier on and go for a take. As soon as the drums start (which are not going thru the headphones), the guitar bass and vocal become inaudible.. we can just about hear the vocal, which sounds like it is going through a telephone.
We've had enough. 3 hours have gone by and we can't even get a headphone monitor mix for a simple 3-piece band. We tell Ali we are taking a break, hopefully he can track down the problem before we get back.
We break for 40 minutes...
Upon our return, we try again.. nothing has changed. In fact it seems worse. Ali says he doesn't know what it is, but it is clear he hasn't even really tried to track the problem down.
We decide to screw the separation, we will record our amps, just monitor the vocals.
We go for a take. We can't even hear the vocals but we play a good take of our first song, great.
"How was that Ali? Hello, Ali? Ali?"
"Yes"
"How was that?"
"Yes"
"Did you get a good take?"
"---"
"Ali??"
"Yes?"
"Did you record that?"
"No"
"F***!!"
So, we play it again. Again when we are finished there is deafening silence from behind the glass. Karl is looking at his monitor. Ali is just standing there (we are beginning to think he's on the mushrooms).
Finally we've had enough. We play though half the songs from our set, one after another. In between songs not a word is uttered from the control room.
We are patient guys (even our drummer, who deals with the mentally ill on a daily basis is pissed off), but we've REALLY had enough this time!
We brave the control-room to tell Ali (not for the first time) that he needs to COMMUNICATE with us.
He proceeds to tell us how good he is, how he's recorded lots of bands and that he's doing a great job.
I tell him no, he is wrong. He is not doing a good job and we are leaving, it's just been a total waste of time and we are not putting up with it!
He just shrugs his shoulders "OK then".
And that is the last he says to us.
Unbelievable!
