Latest News:

Speakeasy@TheJailHouse

Sunday 28th Feb 7.30 - 10.30 pm

Sunday 28th March 7.30 - 10.30 pm

Sunday 25th April 7.30 - 10.30 pm







Find us on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hereford-United-Kingdom/Hereford-Music-School-and-Studios/181445934371?v=app_2309869772

                                   





A cautionary Tale - called 'RUBBISH IN...RUBBISH OUT'
OR
'BE PREPARED BEFORE YOU COME IN TO RECORD'

So you're a top local band, you've played every pub from Hereford to Ross, your mum really loves you, you hate Simon Cowell, pop, folk, classical, anything under 120 decibels. And YOU KNOW that when you come into the studio it will be plain sailing, your music will be brilliant, you'll be on Facebook and / or U—tube, every top producer will be e-mailing and WEMBLEY HERE WE COME …..............

That is before you get into the studio. Suddenly the drummer has been whisked away to a soundproof booth, bass and rhythm are “D.I'd” vocals and lead are added later and your wonderful stage effects produce more noise than an old motorbike ….......

The engineer politely suggests that maybe you should be working to a click track. “A what” you chorus. He explains that this is a metronome in your headphones, to help you keep time “as you can't see each other” What he really means is “Your timing is crap, your drummer speeds up, your bass player slows down, and without the stage boxes your guitarist can't play”.

But, you argue, we have 6 tracks to do. The engineer looks like he's going to be sick …......four if you're lucky he says.

And so you start. Don't worry says the engineer, if you muck up you can always “drop in”. He has to explain that this means re-do bits that may need repairing.

You muck up – the drummer complains that he can't keep in time with the click; the bass player that he can't play with the click in his ear and the rhythm guitarist has already broken one of his new strings and gone out of tune.

The drums sound awful; lots of rattles calling for rolls of gaffa (duck) tape, the snare sounds like an old box, and those cymbals like tin plates at a Scout camp.

After two and a half hours you've got the first rhythm track done. Several times the bass player has turned his volume control on the bass up without warning, sending the recorded signal into peaks higher than Everest. The guitar will NOT stay in tune, and the drummer has broken two sticks.

Without lead vocals, they get lost so a vocal is added which makes timekeeping even worse.

After five hours, four very dodgy rhythm tracks have been recorded and it's time for the lead guitarist (the organiser of the band) to step forward. He's been offering his expert advice (gleaned from some coffee table “expert” book or school / tech college course ) all morning.

He starts; not just one but three tracks of distorted lead per song, all in the same register (ehm position on the fingerboard), same distortion, criss-crossing each other to create a one man wall of noise He's practiced these for weeks – that much is clear – but still can't play properly. Muddle, confusion and noise issue forth from the much abused studio monitors. Tracks which were quite reasonable until now due to the painstaking sympathetic work of the engineer have been all but obliterated by the lad with the three guitars …........oh and I forgot there are two rhythm guitar tracks one with distortion and yes you've guessed; the SAME settings as the lead guitarist.

So to recap; we have five guitar tracks, mainly out of tune, toy drums thrashed to within an inch of their lives, and a bass plucked with a plectrum that makes more clicks than the click track.

The polite engineer advises that “recording is to live performance as making movies is to theatre”. This is lost on our young (and sometimes not so young) Egos – blinded by the very thought of “being in the studio”.

“When you mix” says drummer “make sure I'm well up” Ehm.. with 5 guitars??

The lead singer takes the stage. He shouts, he screams, he wails, he calls for his mother as his flying fortress of a wrecked voice careers into the ground – but can he sing? NO HE CANNOT!!

Worse the leader of the pack wants and does add ehm... harmonies. Aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!! It gets worse and worse.

On goes the reverb, Too much, too little; make up your bloody minds. They mix by e-mail without having a clue what sound is coming out of the speakers. OK if they were a deff metal band but they think they are commercial rock which they are not ….....poor engineer sits there till two in the morning trying disparately to squeeze a sound out of said bandsman's inputs.

After two attempts the band finally give up. After the third rejection of the engineer's efforts they are offered a day in the control room with an engineer (the first engineer has had a breakdown) the studio is certain they will relate to – oh yeah – someone their own age.

The message comes back from the band. “Sorry studio we're fed up with you not being able to capture our wondrous original music, the answer is to pull out of the project and start again somewhere else”

We are SO disappointed.

The answer to this is to only let an inexperienced band into the studio so long as they book a producer who they will listen to, rehearse with the producer, accept that recording is a different art form to playing live, and to keep it simple ….......that way the music works, the songs work, and people sit up listen and buy.

Remember the studio is like a computer – rubbish in, rubbish out.

If you can't accept that get a job on a refuse truck.

Disclaimer.

Thunderclap Ltd and Hereford Music Studios cannot be held responsible for misrepresentations, quotations, and opinions from third parties.