I didn’t manage to get my video setup working this week. Problems. Which sucks, but problems are a part of, I guess... virtually everything. Basically the only problem I don’t run into is having problems with having problems. Having problems seems to work fine, constantly.

I curse a lot, even on good days, but it sorta goes through the roof when I run into problems in the studio.

I started thinking of how I solve problems (and how much cursing is involved). I recall using the first version of Pro Tools that was released. This was back in, like, 1991? It was brand new, and it sucked. It crashed constantly, like an overzealous Kamikaze pilot, and had so many totally counterintuitive bullshit functions... there was an overall level control in the EQ section and its default position was all the way down. So you’d switch in the EQ and it would cut the channel out completely. And the knob was tiny, so looking at the EQ, you thought it was a filter or some such. And who in their right mind adds a level control IN THE FRICKIN’ EQ????

After god knows how many crashes, I took the manual - it was in a ring binder - and threw it out the studio window. The rings opened up and the pages blew in the night air and rained down over the parking lot like Nazi propaganda dropped from a plane. The assistant was a lovely girl named Yoshimi. She started crying. It was because I was cursing so much, I think, but on the bright side she learned a lot of new English vocabulary that session. I am still not fond of Pro Tools.

Problems happen. You must get through them. It does suck. Especially with clients there and the clock running. You will not be feeling good about yourself, so you need to find the problem fast and fix it fast. Here are some ideas and thoughts on the matter.

Gear Doesn’t Usually Break

I’ll tell ya right now, broken gear is almost NEVER the problem, because gear seldom blows up. Now, if you’re working with old tube stuff or vintage equipment, yes, this stuff does break, but generally analog stuff gets noisy or crackles, or the switches and pots are intermittent, and it’s really clear that something is wrong with the piece of gear.

I have thousands of hours in the studio. Blown gear has been the issue like five times. Every other time it was me or someone else (usually me) being a fucking moron and setting something wrong, or patching something wrong. If your gear is modern stuff, it doesn't blow up. The smart money is on you making a mistake.

Check if stuff is plugged in and switched on. I cannot begin to tell you how often this is the problem.

Mics Don’t Usually Break

Rarely do mics just stop working. They’re very reliable, even my vintage 1961 C-24 condenser. I've NEVER stopped a session because it had a problem.

If a mic is going to break, or is going to get broken, it will probably be a condenser or a high end, vintage ribbon, but again, this almost never happens in a good studio. Yes, I have been in shitty studios that had broken mics in the mic cabinet, which is utter bullshit, and if you’re putting stuff out in the studio that you know is broken or intermittent, like broken mics and cables, then you deserve to go out of business.

Dynamic mics are practically bombproof, the exception being AKG 225E’s, which will break if you look at them funny. Chances are you’ll never run into one of them in the studio, though, because they’ve not been made in years and they’re all broken.

Yes, mics can break, but it is very uncommon. Again, usually the issue is dumb stuff by the engineering staff.

What About Cables?

Cables are definitely a point of failure. But at a well-run studio, there shouldn’t be ANY broken or intermittent mic cables, patch cords, guitar cables, speaker cables, etc. Because a well-run studio staff pulls broken cables out of use IMMEDIATELY and either fixes them or tosses them.

Seriously, there is no excuse for a session to grind to a halt because the absolute cheapest thing is broken. What the fuck is that about? Fix it or chuck it.

If, during a session, a cable seems dicy, pull it out of use, tie a knot in it, and either throw it into the shop area, or into a box, or in the corner where no one will use it. After the session, test it thoroughly. Wiggle the wire near the connectors, etc. If it makes noise or cuts out, fix it or toss it. But do NOT put it back on the cable rack or in the cable closet. I was at a shitty studio for a few days that kept returning broken cables to the rack after we packed up. So, when I found a bad one, I’d cut a connector off with a pair of wire cutters I had with me. Fuck ‘em.

I was never a house engineer; I was a freelancer. And I would work in studios ranging from the best in the world to the worst in the neighborhood. I had a cable tester in my “producers toolbox,” and one of the first things I would do at a session in a strange studio was test a bunch of cables. If I found a bad one, then I learned something about the way the studio was run. But more importantly, I now had a pool of cables that I knew worked, so those would be the cables I would use for the duration of the session.

I integrated this testing into my workflow. Generally, I started projects tracking the basic tracks live in the studio. So, that initial session might have 20 or more microphones and cables in use. The perfect time to test everything was during that initial set-up.

Cables do break, but yet again, usually it is dumb stuff by a person that is causing the problem. Get a cable tester. Use it a lot.

KISS ASS

This is an acronym: KISS means “Keep it Simple, Stupid,” and ASS means “Always Something Stupid” or “Always Something Simple."

KISS is naturally how you want to proceed in general in the studio, because if you’re keeping things simple, you can typically work faster. One mic is a lot faster to set up than eight, one mic will have no phase problems compared to having eight, etc. And eight mics plugged in means eight mics to break, eight cables to break, eight mic preamps to be set wrong, eight phantom power switches you forgot to press down. Tons of points for failure.

But you can’t always keep it simple, things get complex. Complex is fun, but it does have higher screw-up potential.

ASS.... always something stupid/simple. 90% of the time when I think something is broken in the studio, it’s because I patched it wrong. Or it's set to Line when it should be set to Mic. Or it's bypassed. Or it’s plugged into input #10 and I’m bringing up the fader on input #11. Or someone is singing into the wrong side of the microphone (unbelievably, this has happened. More than once!). Or it's turned off.

Start by looking for something simple and stupid: a human mistake.

But First - TURN THE VOLUME DOWN

Before you try to fix anything, drop the monitor volume way way down, so you don’t damage speakers or ears by throwing switches and pulling patches. There’s nothing that says idiot more than breaking more things while troubleshooting.

It’s nice if you can mute things entirely and go by the meters, but if I have my head behind a rack and I can’t see the meters, then I don’t know what the hell is working or not. So, at least, make sure you lower the speakers way down, but leave them up enough that you can hear something.

Of course, if what is going through all your gear sounds like a square wave, then keep everything down. Loud, continuous, distorted digital noise is to be avoided. Use. Your. Peanut.

Look at the Lights and Meters

Make a noise at the source and look at the meters. Does the preamp light up? Does the compressor meter kick to the left? Wherever the lights and meters stop working first in the signal chain is where your problem lies.

Check the Buttons, Switches, Knobs

Check all these on all the gear in the signal chain. Chances are the problem is a Mic/Line switch, or something is bypassed, or the volume is down, etc. Is there a trim turned down? Is there a knob that has a switch in it, and you have to lift the knob or press it down - this was a common SSL problem. Phantom power on? Hidden level control in the goddamn plug-in panel?

Check Your Patching

It’s so easy to fuck up a patch. On a dense patchbay, where you can barely read anything and there are cables going everywhere and the whole thing looks like worms at a swinger party, patching really requires paying attention. Don’t be embarrassed if you screw up a patch.

Double check your patching. Make sure output goes to input. Make sure you’re not off by one row or point in the patchbay. Make sure you’ve pushed the cable down all the way. Make sure some damn assistant didn’t slip in a phased reversed cable because he wants to “test you” (true story.... bastard).

Be Anal about Patching

If you want to be anal, which is not a bad thing in the studio, patch things one at a time. This is a really good idea if you’re working with unfamiliar gear or in a new studio or setup.

Start with the source, get it to the output, and confirm that you’ve got sound. Then add the compressor, and confirm you have sound. Then add the EQ, or whatever, and confirm you’ve got sound. This is a slow way to go, but this is an excellent way to avoid problems and learn. I find I do this a lot especially when I’m interfacing my DAW with analog outboard. It helps me to find and fix latency issues, which, coming from my analog background, is sort of an “unnatural" thing for me.

Another trick: say what you’re doing out loud. I still do this: Preamp out to compressor in.... compressor out to EQ in... It keeps mistakes from happening, especially when the patchbay gets crowded. Saying it out loud also slows you down a bit. Yes, engineering should happen quickly, but taking a slow moment while setting up allows for faster overall speed later. And NOTHING in the world feels worse than trying to find a problem while the clients are watching you, waiting for you to figure it out.

Confirm What Is Working

Well, now you’re sweating, because you’ve checked all the obvious stuff and it still ain't working. So, you might have a genuine gear issue on your hands... I still would bet you patched shit wrong and just missed seeing it, but I digress...

Take a deep breath, or two, and start swapping out one element of the signal chain at a time.

So, if you’re using a microphone, a cable, and a preamp, after checking all the switches and the patching, because ASS, swap the cable and see if you get sound. If swapping the cable doesn’t change anything, then swap the mic. Still no change? Swap the preamp. Don’t swap more than one thing at a time, because then you don’t know what is causing the problem.

What is very handy is having two fairly identical signal chains to test against each other. If you’re in a drum session and you can’t hear the kick mic but you can hear the snare, unplug the cable from the kick mic and plug it into the snare mic. If you can’t hear the snare, then the problem is on the kick’s signal chain. If you can hear the snare, then the issue is with the kick mic.

Simplify the Signal Chain

If you have a mic plugged into a preamp, plugged into a gate, plugged into a compressor, plugged into an EQ, plugged into an interface, that’s a lot of points of failure.

Find the problem by simplifying the signal chain. Speak into the mic. Is the preamp lighting up? If it is, patch the output of the preamp right into the interface and see if you get sound. If you do, you now know the problem is between the gate and the EQ. So, patch into the preamp output into the gate, and patch the gate output into the interface. Can you hear it? Repeat this process, cursing liberally, until the problem is solved.

If you’re in a digital situation, do the same thing. Figure out a way to get the source directly to the output, confirm the source is working, and go from there.

Avoid Problems in the First Place

The easiest way to solve problems is to not have them. Keep your gear in good shape. Fix, or toss, bad cables immediately.

Dust everything and vacuum often. Dust screws up everything. Make sure your control room chair isn’t running over cables.

If a channel, or a preamp, or a piece of outboard dies, either pull it from the rack or put a piece of artists tape on it. Now, use your peanut here. I was in a session and we found a blown channel on the console, so I told the assistant, who was a dumbass, to mark it, so he put a HUGE piece of tape over the channel and wrote BLOWN!!! and drew flames and fire all over it. Yeah, that’s EXACTLY what we want the client to think, that the studio is shitty and on fire. What a fucking idiot. I put a piece of tape on the fader and another over the mute button.

I’ll have to compile my best moron assistant stories, one of these days.

Have great sessions and make great music.

In the fall of 1991, I was mixing some big ass rock recording on an SSL console somewhere. I think I blacked out a lot of the details of this particular experience.

It went something like this: I’m mixing along, all is good, and in walks one of the musicians from the band. He leans over the desk and listens... and he remarks something like, “That hi-hat... it’s not quite right..."

Hi-hat hi-hat hi-hat... the more I listened, the worse it sounded. Like someone hitting a spaghetti colander with a metal spoon. EQ EQ EQ EQ EQ... now it sounds like ass wrapped in aluminum foil... EQ EQ EQ gate compress EQ EQ. Fader up, fader down... check the overhead tracks... GAH!!!! It sounds like shit there, too! What has happened? Who stole the beautifully recorded hi-hat that was on this tape and substituted this thing that sounded like metal baby turds??? GAH!!! Throw out the whole mix! Quit the career! Lock me in the vocal booth and suck out the air with a straw and leave me to die like a gasping fish...

I did a dumb thing. I focused on one element of a mix, and the more I worked on it, the more I mangled it and the rest of the mix. The damn hi-hat became the CENTERPIECE of the mix. I got obsessed with it.

I quit mixing for the night, made a quick cassette, and split for home.

In the morning, I listened to the cassette. The mix was ok. The hi-hat went back to being a just hi-hat. I went back to the studio, finished the mix off, and started on the next song.

I still don’t know exactly how it happened. I guess I was tired—probably 8 hours in on a mix or something. It's really awful to sweat through a mix over a fricken’ hi-hat. To spend an HOUR dicking around with a HI-HAT. What a dumb ass move. But I learned from it.

And I evolved a series of rules to keep me from falling down an obsessive hole again, to get better mixes in general, and, probably most importantly, to have a better experience mixing.

Now, the rules can be broken—sometimes you have to break them. They’re more suggestions then commandments, but try a few and see what happens.

How To Avoid This

1) Automate your mutes first thing if there is a firm arrangement. Then push up all the faders, and with NO SOLOING (and no effects or EQ), get your initial mix. Run the song from beginning to end. Mix EVERYTHING—every instrument and every section. Don’t touch an effect or a processor or an EQ (or solo anything) until you get something cohesive that makes sense.

2) Mix from beginning to end and not specific sections. I used to loop the tape deck and set it to autoplay, so I would work the whole song, have a pause as the deck wound back, and then work the whole song again. This keeps you from spending any more time than the length of maybe a verse working on any one element of the mix. You’re working on that guitar solo and OOPS! Over! You’ll just have to wait 'til it comes back 'round.

3) Set a time limit. Give yourself 20 seconds to work on a part or instrument, then move on. Go fast. Rule #2 generally makes spending too much time on any one element hard, but reinforce this by setting a limit. Set your phone to beep every 20 seconds. When it beeps, move on.

4) Try not to solo things, which is impossible (let’s be real), but do try to solo things in pairs or small groups. Working on the bass? Solo it, the kick, that low drone keyboard part and maybe the room tracks, and then perhaps work on that whole group, jumping from channel to channel, a little touch here, a little touch there. Think of groupings of sounds and instruments that occupy the same frequency range, and solo that group. Working on vocals? Make sure you have the hi-hat in there, any acoustic guitars, any keyboard pads. Instruments in the same frequency range will affect each other, so think of them and treat them as groups.

5) Round-robin your monitoring. Work for a minute on the near fields, switch over to something that sounds like a shitty iPhone, and then to a headphone, and then to the big monitors. Do this as the song plays from beginning to end. Break up the order of switching as you do this. Switch in pairs—listen on the iPhone, then on the bigs. Of course, don’t do this for the whole mix because you’ll drive yourself crazy. Maybe at the end of an hour, lean back and have a listen. Have the assistant randomize the switching of the monitors for you—they’ll feel important!

6) Fuck bleed. It probably isn’t a problem. Headphone leakage on a vocal is almost never a problem unless you decide to do an acapella vocal thing by muting out all the other channels of the mix, which is unlikely. Drum bleed is usually a non-issue unless you’re doing some extreme eq’ing and processing on something like a tom track, and somehow that is effecting the snare. Bring up the faders of all the tracks of the kit, balance it out so it sounds good. Once you chuck in all the other stuff of the mix, there’s going to be so much masking you won’t hear any bleed. Not always, but in hundreds of mixes, bleed was never an issue unless I made it an issue in my own dumb head. Go listen to a great live album like Rock ’n' Roll Animal or Donny Hathaway Live. Tons of bleed on these records that you’ll never notice, and they sound amazing. Don’t get hung up on bleed.

7) Take a break every hour. Get out of the studio, and if you can, go outside. Let nature reset your hearing a bit. Breath some air. Fart. Have some water. Remember caffeine and sugar screw with your blood pressure and screw with your hearing because of that.

8) Be REALLY CAREFUL who is in the studio with you while you’re mixing. Choose your company wisely. Get the band out of the room, or out of the studio totally, if possible. I can’t emphasize how important this is. To do a great mix, you have to be in a really good headspace. The wrong comment at the wrong time can totally fuck you up. I used to tell my assistants that they weren’t allowed to say ANYTHING unless there was a technical issue or an emergency. And if I said anything positive—“This sounds good”—that they had to agree even if they thought it sounded like shit. AND if I said anything negative—“This sounds like shit”—they had to either shut up or say, “I dunno, I kinda like it.”

The band... it really is for everyone’s good that the band isn’t at the mix. The Beatles used to go to the pub around the corner from Abby Road. Encourage the band to go to the pub. I used to work out of a studio that was adjacent to a strip club. It was a great setup. Give the band a bunch of singles and get that mix done!

9) If you find yourself obsessing, or spending too much time on an element, STOP. Stop right there. If you can get away for a few hours, or even a day, then do that. If you’re stuck working because of a schedule, take a good break. When you return, if you’re still getting caught by the problematic track, mute it out—even if it’s the lead vocal or the kick or the bass (or the hi-hat) and work on something else for a bit. Let your focus widen to the rest of the song. Maybe tell your assistant (they can be handy, these assistants) to sneak the problematic track back in when they get a sense that you’re somewhat normal again.

There is no tenth rule.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send a message.

Float above your mix like a cloud. Don’t fall into it like a raindrop.

Last week, I managed to screw-up our email automation and bombarded a bunch of people with lots of emails. A minor screw-up, really. But it got me thinking about mistakes made in the studio and the best way to handle them.

You Will Screw-up

I actually managed to fall onto a tape deck and break it

You will definitely screw-up in the studio. You’ll erase something, or record it at the wrong rate and resolution, or spill a drink into the console, or say something dumb to a client, or knock over a valuable musical instrument, or snap the head off a microphone, or step on a mic clip, lose files, tapes, or backup drives, or completely forget a session and show up late or not at all, or record something like shit, or fall onto a tape deck... that’s a partial list of dumb stuff I’ve managed to do.

How you respond to your screw-ups is critical to your career. It’s critical to your business and personal relationships. Some of you are young and starting out; some of you are older and established. Screwing up and dealing with the ramifications never stops being an issue in life. I’m 57. I haven’t screwed up today yet, but it’s still before noon.

If You’re Responsible, Take Responsibility

If you’re the lead engineer in the session, any mistake that happens is your fault. You’re in charge. Your job is to catch everything.

I was producing and engineering a session, and Steve, the assistant, rewound the tape after a great, final take of a song—it took hours to get this particular take—and then recorded a new song over it. He discovered the mistake about halfway through. He slid his chair over to mine, face bright red and tears welling in his eyes, and said, “I’m so sorry. I think I just recorded over the last song."

He went to hit the STOP button, but I grabbed his hand. “No, we’ll let them finish. Maybe they’ll get a good take of the next song,” I whispered to him.

The band didn’t get a good take. And regardless, we had to tell them we erased an entire song.

“Guys. I’m sorry. We made a mistake. We recorded over “No Reason Why.” We’ll have to do it again. It’s my fault."

The band’s collective jaws dropped open and all their eyes went wide. Then, a remarkable thing happened. Steve, the assistant, spoke up:

“It was my fault. I was running the tape deck." A tear ran down his cheek.

The band was quiet. Then Mike, the lead singer, blurted out in his southern drawl, “Well, hell, son. I guess we’re gonna have to fire your ass.”

And then the whole band burst out laughing—we all started laughing. Hugs all around. Steve didn’t get fired. We redid both songs and put out an EP a month later.

Take responsibility if you screw-up. Just doing that alone will defuse any sort of anger or tension. Not always, but it works better than the next option:

Mistakes are Forgivable. Lying Isn't

When you screw up, you’re a screw-up. When you lie, you’re untrustworthy and dishonorable. How would you like to be labeled?

Lying might seems like a good idea in some situations. Maybe it’s a good idea to lie if the truth would really hurt someone’s feelings...

A: What do you think of my haircut?

Choose one or the other:

1) Looks great!

2) Makes your head look small.

I’d usually go with #1.

However, in situations involving your behavior and things you’ve done, lying is almost never a good idea. In fact, what happens is you get caught and the lie becomes a bigger problem than the mistake ever was.

My junior year of college I was the darling boy of the theatre sound department at Purdue University. I was defacto #2 to the department chair, Rick, as an undergrad, and was doing all sorts of cool work. I was also 20 and a dumb kid.

I was collaborating with another student on music for a play and we were behind in getting it done. I was also acting in the play and was exhausted from days of classes, nights of rehearsal, working in the studio until 5am, and then repeating that endlessly for weeks.

We were supposed to deliver a set of rough effects cues and music for rehearsal the next day, and we just couldn’t get it done. So, rather then just tell the director that—and she was nice and she would have totally understood—we decided to tell her the tape deck broke.

Dumbest lie in the world. The director, of course, ran into the department chair the next day, mentioned the broken tape deck to him...

Later that afternoon, I bopped into his office just to say hi. Rick was sitting at his desk. He looked up at me and said very, very quietly, “You lied to Marsha. A dumb lie, too. And after all the times we’ve talked about honesty... I’m so disappointed in you. Get out of my sight."

This remains one of the worst days of my life. I stumbled home to my apartment crying. I was devastated. Rick was/is perhaps the most important mentor I’ve ever had. To lose standing with Rick was awful. I still cry thinking about this almost 40 years later.

I had to apologize to Marsha and Rick, and regain their trust. I had to walk around campus, live life, and complete the rehearsal and run of the play, all while feeling simply awful about myself. Looking back, I still can’t understand why I lied, and older me says to younger me, “Dude, get over it.”

The only reason I can say that now is because I eventually did get over it. I got over it, Rick got over it. Marsha got over it. But the lesson stuck. I’ll NEVER get over that lesson.

Forgive Your Dumb Ass.

It's important to forgive yourself after a screw-up. We often hold ourselves to much higher standards than someone else would, and we beat ourselves up. We relive the mistake or the problem, play it over and over again in a tape loop in our heads, giving it all sorts of energy and power. Meanwhile, the “victim” of the screw-up—the band, the singer, the boss, our partner—has forgiven us and has already moved on.

But we can tend to hang onto the mistake. Thanks to that, we’re off our game, we make more mistakes, and feel worse and worse, the shit becomes a death spiral.

So, damn. Forgive yourself. If you’ve been forgiven, then let yourself be forgiven. If you haven’t been forgiven, but you’ve taken responsibility, then you’ve done all you can. Move on. That’s it.

Easy to write about, but hard to do. I have no formula here—I still walk around for a day kicking myself sometimes. But, perhaps the next thing might be a help...

Mistakes = Growth

Making no mistakes means you’re doing the same old thing a lot

You seldom screw-up common place things you do everyday. Most people don’t take a dump and somehow manage to break the toilet and flood the bathroom, right? Or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stab themselves in the eye. There can be accidents in common situations, but generally not screw-ups of thinking or behavior.

So, that means most of the time when you are screwing up, you’re in a new and unfamiliar situation, and that’s good. It means you’re getting somewhere. Perhaps you’re using a new piece of equipment or software, or you’re in a totally new studio environment. Maybe you’re working at the edge of your performance envelope—you’re working at a level you’ve not worked at before. Screwing up in a new situation is evidence of growth. It’s good to make mistakes upward. Try to have new and harder problems. That’s growth.

A toddler learns to poop. One problem solved; onto how to mic a drum set. Forward ho!

If you’ve not done something before, there is a much better chance you’ll do it incorrectly. In many cases, the only way to learn the correct way to do something is to screw it up a few times and learn. Anyone with experience has made mistakes to get that experience, and anyone who tells you, “Don’t do that, do this instead,” has, in fact, done exactly the thing they’re telling you not to do.

A long time ago I was recording vocal tracks at a studio in Queens. It was one of my first times as the lead engineer, and one of my first times working with an assistant. She was doing the punch-ins—they were, for the most part, easy. I noticed she was resting her finger on the RECORD button, and for this particular tape deck, I knew this was a bad idea. From experience, I learned that even the slightest twitch on that button could pop the deck into record, so I made it a habit to never get my finger near that damn button until I was close to the punch point.

I said to the assistant, “Don’t do that. You’ll twitch and put the deck in record and erase something important. Put your finger somewhere else."

She was a new assistant, and sometimes people new to things don’t fucking listen. And sometimes people have something to prove... two minutes later she twitched the deck into record and took out two seconds of a vocal part that was really, really hard for the singer to nail. And I was PISSED. I took over the deck remote, banished the assistant from the control room, and made her clean the bathrooms, vacuum the lounge—all the stuff an intern would do.

She handled it wrong. She should have listened to me, obviously. But also, she was new to being an assistant. She didn’t have enough experience with that deck. She hadn't screwed up a punch until my session.

And I handled it wrong. I should have communicated more clearly. I was new to assistants. I didn’t know quite how to talk to them, how to keep an eye on them without keeping an eye on them, how to exercise my authority.

But there we both were, making new mistakes we hadn’t made before. She was assisting on a session, finally. I was engineering the first album I’d ever produce. We were both moving up and screwing up at new and better things.

And for me, the screwing up continued throughout my producing and engineering days. Now I’m screwing up on new and different things, from parenting to email campaigns.

So, keep screwing up. Take responsibility when you do. Learn from it then move on to the next new screw-up. That is what I’ll be doing for the rest of the day! Week! Month! Year! Life!

Luke 7/29/2020

The What: Learn to write in block capitals and label everything.

You should get in the habit of labeling everything with a piece of Artists Tape and writing in block capital letters with a Sharpie. It will make your sessions run faster and cut down on the amount of time wasting (and session destroying) mistakes.

All your documentation should be written in block capitals: track sheets or track listings (if you hand write them or still use them), session notes, etc. Label your outboard gear so you know which track or channel is plugged into which compressor, eq, etc. Label anything that needs to be made clear and obvious.

Block capital letters are big and easy to read. When you first start writing them you might find they're a bit inconsistent, but within a session or two you'll develop muscle memory and your handwriting will get very uniform and even. If you have assistants in your studio, insist they write everything in block capitals. Your sessions will go faster when you're not trying to figure out someone's shitty handwriting. Your sessions will look tighter and more professional. Clients will be less inclined to dick around with your gear when it is clearly labeled.

As long as your letters are clear and simply, you don’t have to be religious about everything being capitalized. I write with a mix of caps and lowercase, but all my letters are simple, clearly written. If you can write everything with capital letter that's awesome, as long as you strive for neat and consistent.

Having everything labeled becomes really important if you're running your studio as a business, and especially if you're charging a block fee or a flat rate for your time, in which case you make more money if your sessions run fast and smoothly.

Ever sat at a session adjusting an eq and not hearing any effect, only to realize you’re adjusting the wrong damn eq which is patched into a totally different channel, and you’ve totally screwed up all the work you did an hour ago? I have."

A session with a bunch of musicians, perhaps a producer and an assistant, can be a really distracting thing. Especially when it is long, the night is late and everyone is tired from listening to music for hours on end. If everything is neatly labeled in easy to read handwriting, you eliminate those little, "Wait, what is this again?" pauses that happen when you have to switch your brain over from one activity to another. You also drastically cut down on mistakes that cost time, such as adjusting the wrong gain or threshold on a piece of outboard.

These days we have DAWs and it would be dumb to put artists tape on your monitor. However, labeling things, such as which vocal is plugged into which preamp, which track is running through which compressor, is still a really good idea. It makes for less mistakes and a faster session.

And if all your documentation is on the computer, then strive to be clear in what you name things on digital scribble strips, how you processed a particular track, chord changes, lyrics, whatever.

Another good habit to get into is having a Sharpie and tape with you all the time during a session. When I was freelancing in NYC I was always in a t-shirt, so I would clip a Sharpie to the collar (I stole this idea from super engineer Tchad Blake).  I'd leave rolls of artist tape around the studio, the control room, etc., so I could label something or write a note in any location in the studio. I made my assistants always carry a Sharpie. These days I still walk around with a pen clipped to my collar. Who wants to waste time looking for a damn pen?

A War Story or Two

You write like a fucking moron, dude."

I learned the lesson about writing clearly the hard way. I have awful handwriting because I have really loose joints in my thumbs. As a young engineer, back in the days of tape, my track sheets were basically unreadable. I would get bored and doodle all over the artists tape on the console scribble strip. My sessions went well, recordings sounded good, but overall, things looked like ass.

I had an overdub session one day at a studio that I was freelancing at for the first time. I was setting up the console, the 2" tape was on the deck, and there was a track sheet laying out. Another freelancer working in the complex walked in for some reason, looked at the track sheet, laughed, looked at me and said, "You write like a fucking moron, dude," and walked out.

In that moment I realized my engineering ability wasn’t being judged by the sonics of my recordings; it was was being judged by my handwriting. A total stranger thought I was a moron, because of my handwriting. Some other engineer might open up a tape box to remix something I had worked on, look at the track sheet, and assume everything on it was engineered like crap by a moron. And my name was on it.

No way was shitty handwriting going to shoot my career in the foot. I rewrote the track sheet and tore up the old one. I relabeled the console in big neat letters. Block capitals.

And after that... I found my sessions went faster. I made less mistakes. Labeling because especially important on long, 10+ hour sessions. I would tape out and label EVERYTHING and more than once this kept me from erasing a track by accident. Clean handwriting and labeling made a huge difference.

A few years later I was serving as the house engineer at a studio for a guest engineer, who was a Grammy winner earlier in his career. An assistant was putting on the master tape the guy had brought - 24 track analog 2” Ampex 456.  The test tones on the tape, essential to good tape deck operation in those days, were recorded in a half-assed manner. The assistant was struggling to get the deck properly calibrated. I looked at the track sheet. Really hard to read. Like a chicken trying to wipe dog crap off its feet. I said aloud, to no one in particular, "This is shitty engineering." I turned around and there was Mr Grammy, leaning over the SSL, adjusting something. He gave me a look. Whatever. I pulled out my Sharpie and made a nice, new, neat track sheet, and printed my name under his.

I have to write another column about maintaining situational awareness in the studio.

Anyway, for now, write in block capitals, label everything, and clip a Sharpie to your collar.

Luke 7/1/2020

Shoot us a message if there’s anything you want to read in a blog post.

We have a cool surprise for you all in a few days!

 

Luke DeLalio 2/12/2020

In the early 1990's I was freelance producing rock records. There were still big studios and big consoles. Digital recording was taking off but there was still plenty of nice fat analog tape. New, great sounding equipment was being released all the time, and you could still find vintage stuff gear with a bit of poking around. It was a great time to be an engineer.

And the big thing was drum sounds. Everyone was mic'ing the room and gating everything, and triggering samples and doing drum replacement... it was really cool. The Red Hot Chile Peppers released "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" and GASP! They were feeding drum samples into the room and then recording the room sound! Mind blown! And then Steve Albini was making records and Nirvana's "In Utero" sounded like a wonderful live mess. Drum sounds were the holy grail in the early 90's.

I was doing a lot of work out of a studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, called Water Music. It had two rooms: The A room was nicknamed "Heaven." It was HUGE, with a Neve 8088 console in it. The other room was affectionately called "Hell." It was much smaller, and at that time had a ramshackled bunch of mismatched equipment, not even a proper console. Heck, Hell didn't even have a control room - everything was stuffed into one space. You'd set the band up, take a guess with the mics and settings, record a bit and then play it back to see what you got. It took a bit but you could get great sounds. I loved working in Hell. And Hell was a lot cheaper than Heaven. Typically, smaller budget/Indie projects worked in Hell, and the big money sessions worked in Heaven.

One day I came in with a band - I think it was a punk album I was working on - and everyone at at Water Music was excited because in Heaven, cutting an album with some band, was Eddie Kramer.

If you don't know who Eddie Kramer is... he recorded Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin - enough said, right? In the late 60's, using maybe four microphones, a pair of compressors and whatever EQ was on the console at that time - we are not talking about sweepable parametric eq's or anything like that - think high and low shelving and that's it - Eddie Kramer managed to invent rock drum sounds. And rock guitar sounds.

SO... the God of Rock Drum Sounds was in Heaven cutting an album... and he locked the doors and wouldn't let anyone in. The word got around that he didn't want anyone to see his drum mic set-up. It was super secret. Even the main studio assistant, Jim, wasn't allowed into the main live room where the drums were.

I would see Eddie in the morning walking in a courtyard between the studios - he wasn't talkative but he would always flash a friendly smile. He made the assistants sweep the courtyard constantly. The whole thing was a big, weird mystery.

What the hell was he up to in there????

It really didn't take much to stay late one night and wait until the lights were out in the residence part of the studio complex. Water Music was residential, with rooms and suites and a kitchen for artists working in the studios. I once recorded an all girl band in Hell and we all slept together in one huge bed stuffed in a single room. It was platonic.

SO... Jim and I waited until Eddie's lights were out, and we got the master keys for the studio and burgled our way into Heaven to see the top secret Eddie Kramer drum set-up...

It seemed pretty typical. 421's on the toms, top and bottom, a SM-57 on the snare top, I think a Neumann KM-84 on the bottom. A Neumann U-47 FET - often called a FET47, stuffed into the kick, and then there was an AKG D-12 outside of it. The overheads were U-87's or U-67's. He had KM-84s out in the room maybe twenty-five feet away from the kit, but he had them tucked behind gobos - big absorptive panels. This was a cool trick - the gobos kept the mics from from getting any direct sound from the drums. This was an idea I took.

But so far, the big secret set-up was nothing special. But there was one really weird thing...

Five feet out from the drum set, about chest high, centered on the kick and pointing towards the snare, was a Shure VP-88 stereo microphone. I remember it being a VP-88, but I could be mistaken. It was definitely a stereo condenser mic.

Throwing a stereo mic in front of a drum kit was nothing new. I had inherited a little money and blew most of it on a vintage AKG C-24 and used it all the time as a stereo drum mic. But what Eddie Kramer was doing with the VP-88 was something different.

A VP-88 is an MS stereo microphone rather than an XY. MS (Mid Side) stereo mic'ing is really awesome and someday I'll write a whole thing about it, but basically, the VP-88 uses two capsules, one set to cardioid that picks up the center (the middle), and the other set to figure 8 and picking up the left and right (the sides). The two signals are combined in a particular way, lots of phase cancellation ensues, and the net result is really nice stereo with a strong, clear center. It's a very useful technique and I think better sounding than XY.

So, Eddie Kramer had an MS stereo mic in front of the drum set.

That still isn't weird.

What was really weird, was that he had the left and right side of the stereo mic oriented vertically - down towards the floor and up towards the ceiling - rather than to the right and left of the drum set. Picture rotating a stereo mic 90 degrees, so that the left side picks up the ceiling and the right side picks up the floor.

It made no sense. Jim and I had no idea what the hell was up with the VP-88 pointed at the floor and the ceiling. How would you pan that signal in the mix?? I experimented with it on a few subsequent sessions, turning my C-24 up and down rather than left and right, and it always sounded like ass. There were all sorts of weird cancellations caused by things bouncing off the floor and the ceiling. In a small room it was dreadful. Really, it seemed to me to be an awful idea.

In hindsight, maybe it was a red herring. Maybe the VP-88 was plugged in but not even routed anywhere. Maybe Eddie Kramer came up with that doofy mic set-up just to fuck with anyone that snuck in to steal his secrets. And that there was really no secret other than use good mics, use a good drum set, and most of all, record a great drummer. Like Mitch Mitchell or John Bonham.

Or maybe the secret was to have access to a huge room with great acoustics, and a giant console fourteen feet long, and a two-inch 24 track Studer tape deck.

Maybe the secret... is to claim there is a secret! After all, it worked for Eddie Kramer.