share your music studio/ recording stories here.. any odd ones?

[tigereye]

I recorded with some friends today.. they needed someone to play drums on a tune for their website. I hadn't done any recording for a while, last time was about 2 years ago when I played bass on another tune with the same people. I have recorded before ( my band made a few self-made and marketed CS's), but this is the first time I have recorded since I started taking drum lessons. I was a self-taught old school punk drummer for many years. Why I didn't take lessons before, I don't know.

The process was very easy for a change ( only 2 takes for my part), and it got me thinking about weird recording experiences, from friend's home basement studios to a pretty well -known guy we recorded with before the band went splitsville.

Feel free to share odd recording studio stories, of you like.

[bbernardini]

1. George Clinton: Crackhead, and the multi-tracks of "Message In A Bottle"

When my band was recording our second album, the engineer told us a story about recording (in the same studio) a rap album on which George Clinton made a guest appearance. Apparently, he hit a crack pipe between every single take.

During the same sessions, the engineer pulled out a copy of the multi-track masters of "Message In A Bottle". Yes, THAT "Message In A Bottle". We soloed Stewart Copeland's drum tracks, listened to Sting's scratch vocals, and heard all kinds of guitar parts that never made it into the final mix.

[tigereye]

2. Clinton on crack?!

so that's what powered the spaceship....


that's a good story.

[tarkus]

3. I recorded an album

I played bass, and everyone in the band played far too loudly, which made everything terrible. For some reason one of our guitarists was unable to record his part alone, so we all had to record at once instead of everyone recording their own part separately. It was an interesting experience. We got an album out of it.

[tigereye]

4. imagine!

everyone playing too loud! ;)

It's funny, cuz the folks who played with me today turned up the guitars after the levels were set.. which is a no-no. We all recorded together since this was a basement set-up, but I have also recorded in "fancier" places where there was a separate room for each person. The sound of everyone in one room can be quite nice, maybe more intimate. I liked the very natural drum sound my friend got without baffles, etc.

[tarkus]

5. Yeah, I don't know how wise it was for me to start playing guitar

...since I really hate loud music. I have never played with a drummer whose volume didn't irritate me, and I can't stand going to concerts because they are too loud. It's tough man.

[Squeech]

6. Of course

we played too loud too. This was Cul de Sac, when we made Crashes to Light, Minutes to its Fall, which is the best thing I've ever done.

You know how it typically goes, you sequester your drummer in an isolation booth so you can close-mic the drums without getting (too much) bleed from the other instruments? We decided to do exactly the reverse: we all played in the same room together, so we could make eye contact and exchange cues-- and the way we kept the instruments isolated was by isolating all the amps! So we all had wires running out to the various booths and hallways, and we listened to ourselves on headphones.

We recorded at Sound Station Seven in Providence, RI. The building used to be a fire station (hence the name) from back in the days before electricity and internal combustion engines, so what is now the main recording room used to be a stable. There's also a tower attached to it, about four stories high, and the firemen used to take turns standing watch in that tower looking for smoke. How the engineers use the tower now is, it's open to the recording room, and they hang microphones in it at various heights to get room depth. I loved the whole experience, and if anybody ever gives me a budget to record again, I'd be delighted to work there again.

[tigereye]

7. interesting

I seem to remember that one time we recorded the amps were either in a different room or maybe the instruments were direct to the board... I think the isolation does make you lose that sense of interaction that makes playing so much fun and also the body language and cues, like you said. I like the image, though, of the fireman's test tower for recording.

What kind of band was/is yours?

What fascinates me is that the bigger board you have (or the newer/ fancier digital board?) doesn't necessarily mean that it always sounds better... I was thinking that the sound from my buddy's analog homeboard was much warmer than the processed reverbed sound we got when my band of old recorded in a bigger studio with "all the toys." But then I grew up listening to vinyl as opposed to CDs which are a lot "cooler" in tone and seem to lack some of the nice sound range vinyl can get....

[Squeech]

9. Exactly

Every time I've been in a real studio, band interaction was more important than isolation. But I've mainly been in screwball bands with major improvisatory components.

(Conversely, there was the band that recorded a major 15-minute piece with every instrument in a different room of the engineer's house: guitar in one room, two saxes in two other rooms, marimba in a fourth (that was the main percussion instrument)-- and then a bunch of other tapes and samples we had to fly in. It took six hands just to mix.)

Cul de Sac was lumped in with what the critics called "post-rock," by which we think they mean a mainly instrumental repertoire largely devoted to texture-- bands like Tortoise, Trans-Am, I forget who all else. We didn't really sound like any of those guys. Before that we got compared to Can, and we didn't sound like them either, but we were much prouder of that comparison; we did have a lot of Krautrock in us. Mainly I think we sounded like an especially prissy surf music designed to appeal to Brian Eno fans. I'm sinfully proud of my work on Crashes to Light, Minutes to its Fall, and I think everybody should buy it, even though I'm no longer associated with the band and would never see any of the profits.

[Zuni]

8. My old band was cutting an album in a studio

in crownsville, Maryland. About 1:00 on Day 1 our drummer said to one of the guitar players "lets go to the store". They left and came back 30 minutes later with a 30 pack of beer and a bunch of weird porn. Each mag was a fetish mag---foot fetish, over 50, big girls and one of just pregnant women.
Even the eingineer was slamming beers and looking at pregnant girl porn with us.

:hi:

[tigereye]

10. uh

no porn in any studio I was ever in, Zuni. We were too busy actually playing since recording was costing us an arm and leg!


bwa ha ha ha. We were more of a sodas and cookies and Rally fries kind of band.


Pregnant women porn, who knew? :shrug:

[Zuni]

11. we were recording and we only had two days

but we would have a lot of time between each track. We cut almost everything live in the studio, and then we would listen to the take, the eingineer would tweak it, and we would set up for the next recording. On some songs, one of the guitarists would want to re do his guitar part or the singer would re do his vocal.

Basically, as bassist, I played for a few minutes and then I had 45 minutes to an hour before I had to play again.

The studio was expensive---it was like 1200$ for two days or something

[tigereye]

12. I sat around reading Proust

gotcha... no, not really.

But I think people were talking about their dissertations... some of the band were working on PhD's.