So I'd sound like an electric guitar if I sing into a 57??
By that metric, singing into an RE20 either makes you sound like a kick drum, Trombone, or Stevie Wonder.
Pyscho-acoustics is an amazing phenomenon. I worked with a very well respected producer once and he said, the snare need to be a bit brighter as I am loosing it in the mix.
I reached over to add 2-3 at around 3.3K on the Neve 1073 EQ but I didn't engage the EQ as I hadn't had time to clean the noisy EQ gain pot.
So, I planned on engaging the EQ after I turned the pot.
Before I could engage the EQ the producer said, "that's better, its punching through now".
My old friend Laurie Wallace who won a Grammy or two working with the Hudson brothers in the early 70's had some great stories.
On day he is recording a Country Band to 8 track.
The guitar player lays down a guitar track which is well played but doesn't really work with the song.
Laurie's asked him to do redo the guitar part but the guitar player is adamant that its one of the best solo's he has ever played.
So, without raising the tension in the room Laurie decides to move on to another tune. After the band leaves for the day he copies the guitar solo to another machine.
The guitar solo track is also shared with tambourine in the chorus.
The next day they are recording the tambourine part in the chorus before the guitar solo and Laurie leaves it in record erasing the guitar solo while banging on the tape machine with his fist and yelling, "the damn tape machine won't come out of record." He tells them how sorry he is but they will just have to re-record the guitar part.
The 8 track was a Scully and it had huge red record indicator lights that you could see through the studio window.
Laurie was recording Maria Muldar and every time the track went into record she would get nervous and you could hear it in her voice.
I was the Tape Op and Laurie knew I was a tech and said, "Dave, stand in front of the tape machine and remove the record lamp."
So, I quickly removed the record lamp on the vocal track.
Laurie hits the talkback and say's "Maria let's just run through and rehearse it one more time before I record it".
They roll back and Laurie puts it into record but no red light and the slight quiver in her voice is gone.
I am in control room "A" at Ocean Sound and we are mixing a 22 minute cartoon that has to be finished and out the door by 4:30 pm.
We take 45 minute lunch break around 12:30 to let a local rock band do a piano overdub on the C7 that was miked up with two C414eb microphones.
My ex-partner had arranged this "free session" for one of his publishing company bands. I had the assistant mike up the piano while we were starting our mix.
We work on our mix until the rock guitar/keyboard player arrives about 12:30.
The piano is tuned at least once a week and more often than not a couple of times a week but the rock band guitar/piano player is convinced that the piano
is a bit pitchy, doesn't sound as good as the last time he played it and it needs regulating. He's only playing 3 F**CKING CHORDS.
On the previous Sunday I had recorded and opera singer and a 14 year old Korean piano prodigy who was already at the Piano Conservatory Advanced level.
I still had the DAT recording in the machine.
I had let this very shy Korean teenager play a solo piano piece from memory which was Chopin's Fantaisie Impromptu a very difficult piece but perfectly executed by this young girl.
After several failed attempts the rock "god" managed to get through the part and came in to listen to his mediocre playing and said, "that the best I can do with the current condition of the piano."
This was my beloved Yamaha C7 Grand that he was slagging.
This was the piano that KD Lang and Roy Orbison has worked out their vocal parts on for CRYING without a word of complaint.
We had to get back to the cartoon mix, if we didn't get it finished before FEDEX arrived at 4:30 then somone was going on a RED EYE with it to LA.
This was not going to be me if I could help it plus I had missed out on lunch and 45 minutes of hearing bad piano playing was making me cranky.
So, as ROCK EGO is going out the control room door I couldn't resist hitting play on the DAT and saying, "That's strange cause I though it sounded pretty good on Sunday when I recorded this and the player never complained but she was only 12".
We have given advertising executives dummy faders so they can mix dialogue/FX and music on one or two occasions.
So, they would quit calling out fader moves as we trying to get the jingle mixed.
Bring up the Fx here it really need punch to get the listeners attention
or the fade needs to be longer "really cause its a 30sec radio jingle"
Push up the name of the product and make it pop
Push up hook line where they sing the name of the car dealership
Can I hear it on the big monitors instead of the 5" speaker on the Studer 2 track? "Sure cause those 15" JBL's and bi-radial horns really relate to the 5" TV speaker in a 1980's TV."
We actually in some cases would mess-up on little part of the mix so the advertising executive could say, "Yes it was me that made that hook line pop out!!!!"
I find engineers often have to take the rap for a lot of stuff that isn't really their fault.
You call up the drummer and guitar player to make sure they have new heads on their drums and new strings on their guitar.
But when they arrrive at the studio you find they are all completely dead and they expect you to fix it with EQ.
The vocalist could do take, after take, after take but if the engineer missed one punch he could be fired from the session.
Back in the day there was no undo, if you erased a part it was gone for ever.
By the time we got to 24 track we could take several vocal parts and then comp them later but working with a 8 track tooks some pre-thinking.
Cheers, Dave
