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I don't know if anyone is interested in this but this is a little game to make your brain work a little bit and use your own experiences and knowledge or just randomly speak out. There's many similar "games" about different areas and tasks on the net. This is my version which I just came up with, it's a pretty common situation which happens almost every day. Not a very hard one but some mistakes can do a lot of damage in real life.
Here it goes:
You are an up and coming producer. The record label has just assigned you to produce a young indie/alternative rock band. The band members are pretty clever and have managed to get a little bit money from the record label for their debut album. They have a decent size local fan base and have gained a lot of popularity on myspace.
You get to work in a small but decent studio at North Hollywood. The studio rooms have a pretty good sound. You have a decent SSL board and a top notch Pro Tools setup. You have all the necessary outboard gear (compressors, effects, auto tuners etc.). You will be recording mostly in digital and to a hard drive. You have a great variety of microphones. You don't have much backline equipment. You have great sounding vintage Gretch and Ludwig 4 piece kits and a great variety of cymbals. You have one Marshall plexi, JCM800 and a Mesa Rectifier amp. You have an Eden and Ampeg SVT rack bass amps. You have a great Steinway concert piano and a Fender Rhodes electric piano. You have plenty of MIDI keyboards and plug-ins and guitar and bass simulators.
The band has 4 members. A singer, a guitarists, a bassists and a drummer.
They are pretty open minded and bright young fellows. But they can get very moody and may refuse to do anything if you are a threat to their "artistic vision". And they aren't the biggest fans of excessive mainstream stuff either.
They are pretty good songwriters but on a demo of all their available songs you heard, have only 4 songs which would make it to the album.
The band's own equipment is far away in Portland, Oregon.
The singer has a good voice and a tone but can get slightly out of pitch.
The guitarist doesn't like the sound of marshalls and mesa boogie, and can't make them sound right. He is an ok rhythm player but a fan of 60's and 70's lead guitarists and wants to noodle all the time in almost every section in every song. He has great melodic lines and ideas but his soloing is very sloppy, the bends are out of tune, he doesn't have any tone in his fingers etc. Stopping him playing any leads would cause a chaos in the band, he would quit the sessions and the band would refuse to play without him. He prefers to record like it's in a live situation, no rhythm guitar behind the
solos.
The bassist is a very cool dude, is a good songwriter and comes up with pretty cool basslines but has an horrible technique. His timing is off very often. He can struggle to make some of the simpler parts sound ok but when it comes to the difficult parts it's impossible for him to nail them. You can't change much of the basslines either because those basslines carry the tune, a lot of the songs are actually written on the basslines in the band. But he makes a lot of mistakes, a la when the guitar plays a B note he is playing in C.
The drummer is a dork. Your drum tech tuned both kits perfectly and when he made a soundcheck they sounded fantastic. When the drummer sat behind the kit, he sounded horrible, the worst sound ever. But his timing is not off and can play with a metronome.
The band actually sound pretty energetic and and has a good chemistry when they play together and are reasonably balanced. They are in a 19-24 age range and have been playing together for 6 years.
You have 2 weeks for the main part of the production. With that time you must finish all the recording and mixing and have all the necessary songs ready to go.
You can work 12 hours in the studio per day.
When it comes to mixing you have given most of the rights to dictate the direction and a representer of the record label comes to oversee the mixing process.
It's already been payed for the studio time, for a decent engineer and for a studio assistant.
You have 10 thousand dollars left.
You can't afford to refuse to produce this band, you can't make them to play like Return To Forever or Rush because of the time limit.
What would you do. What kind of an approach you would use. How you would record the band. How would you schedule the recording sessions. What kind of expenses you would make. How you would motivate and direct the band. How you would approach each band member. What would be your productional direction and vision. For which target audience it would be made for. What type of sounds it would have. What kind of songs it would have. What kind of dynamics the album would have. Would you use some of the money to buy some extra stuff like food, booze, coke, strippers, hookers, go to a Disneyland etc?
.................................................. .................................................. ..
Everyone can participate, please be as specific as possible. Everyone can question everyone's decisions or give an alternative situation which can happen based on some actions.
PS. no need to get into details about microphone angles, eq and compression settings and other stuff like that, that's an engineer's job.
Let's play!
Here it goes:
You are an up and coming producer. The record label has just assigned you to produce a young indie/alternative rock band. The band members are pretty clever and have managed to get a little bit money from the record label for their debut album. They have a decent size local fan base and have gained a lot of popularity on myspace.
You get to work in a small but decent studio at North Hollywood. The studio rooms have a pretty good sound. You have a decent SSL board and a top notch Pro Tools setup. You have all the necessary outboard gear (compressors, effects, auto tuners etc.). You will be recording mostly in digital and to a hard drive. You have a great variety of microphones. You don't have much backline equipment. You have great sounding vintage Gretch and Ludwig 4 piece kits and a great variety of cymbals. You have one Marshall plexi, JCM800 and a Mesa Rectifier amp. You have an Eden and Ampeg SVT rack bass amps. You have a great Steinway concert piano and a Fender Rhodes electric piano. You have plenty of MIDI keyboards and plug-ins and guitar and bass simulators.
The band has 4 members. A singer, a guitarists, a bassists and a drummer.
They are pretty open minded and bright young fellows. But they can get very moody and may refuse to do anything if you are a threat to their "artistic vision". And they aren't the biggest fans of excessive mainstream stuff either.
They are pretty good songwriters but on a demo of all their available songs you heard, have only 4 songs which would make it to the album.
The band's own equipment is far away in Portland, Oregon.
The singer has a good voice and a tone but can get slightly out of pitch.
The guitarist doesn't like the sound of marshalls and mesa boogie, and can't make them sound right. He is an ok rhythm player but a fan of 60's and 70's lead guitarists and wants to noodle all the time in almost every section in every song. He has great melodic lines and ideas but his soloing is very sloppy, the bends are out of tune, he doesn't have any tone in his fingers etc. Stopping him playing any leads would cause a chaos in the band, he would quit the sessions and the band would refuse to play without him. He prefers to record like it's in a live situation, no rhythm guitar behind the
solos.
The bassist is a very cool dude, is a good songwriter and comes up with pretty cool basslines but has an horrible technique. His timing is off very often. He can struggle to make some of the simpler parts sound ok but when it comes to the difficult parts it's impossible for him to nail them. You can't change much of the basslines either because those basslines carry the tune, a lot of the songs are actually written on the basslines in the band. But he makes a lot of mistakes, a la when the guitar plays a B note he is playing in C.
The drummer is a dork. Your drum tech tuned both kits perfectly and when he made a soundcheck they sounded fantastic. When the drummer sat behind the kit, he sounded horrible, the worst sound ever. But his timing is not off and can play with a metronome.
The band actually sound pretty energetic and and has a good chemistry when they play together and are reasonably balanced. They are in a 19-24 age range and have been playing together for 6 years.
You have 2 weeks for the main part of the production. With that time you must finish all the recording and mixing and have all the necessary songs ready to go.
You can work 12 hours in the studio per day.
When it comes to mixing you have given most of the rights to dictate the direction and a representer of the record label comes to oversee the mixing process.
It's already been payed for the studio time, for a decent engineer and for a studio assistant.
You have 10 thousand dollars left.
You can't afford to refuse to produce this band, you can't make them to play like Return To Forever or Rush because of the time limit.
What would you do. What kind of an approach you would use. How you would record the band. How would you schedule the recording sessions. What kind of expenses you would make. How you would motivate and direct the band. How you would approach each band member. What would be your productional direction and vision. For which target audience it would be made for. What type of sounds it would have. What kind of songs it would have. What kind of dynamics the album would have. Would you use some of the money to buy some extra stuff like food, booze, coke, strippers, hookers, go to a Disneyland etc?
.................................................. .................................................. ..
Everyone can participate, please be as specific as possible. Everyone can question everyone's decisions or give an alternative situation which can happen based on some actions.
PS. no need to get into details about microphone angles, eq and compression settings and other stuff like that, that's an engineer's job.
Let's play!
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