How do you guys go about telling a band...

[Loren Littlejohn]

That parts of thier song have shit arrangments. I'm working with this band now, the songs are killer for the most part but there are sections where the guitars are just not gelling at all. I'm having a hard time feeling it out honestly, with alot of noober bands I would just tell them "yeah that doesn't work musically, see how it sounds like muddy wierdness?".

Also: How the hell do you guys convince the band to only use 1 guitarist per song for tighter performance? I have to this day never been able to do it, egos are to big or something.

 

[Ermz]

I normally ask the band what's more important to them, their egos or their music. That usually sets you up quite well to say 'you can lock in with your own performance tighter than anybody else ever can, so it's beneficial to your music to have one guitarist doing the rhythms'.

With the arrangements you have to just be honest, whether you do it slyly or bluntly. Even just saying 'have you guys noticed that this part of the song doesn't gel as well as the others?' or 'do you ever feel this part lets the song down?'. If you approach the topic openly rather than authoratively you might find the band more open to change and listening to your input. After all, when you're hired as producer it's on your shoulders to make the band sound as good as they possibly can.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Good call.

 

[jangoux]

Tough one.

Well, i usually use the excuse "this arrangement wont work in mix time..." and argue that it will either make the mix less heavy or muddy, or too cluttered, or something like that, which is kinda half true. Also, i have different approaches if the band contracts me to be a producer or just press rec, and then mix their music. If they say they want me to produce i usually ask if they're 100% open to outside opinions.

As for convincing the band to use only one guitarist, i first try to know the band a little bit to see if they're open to opinions or not. If i feel they will welcome my opinions, and I see both guitarists aren't working together very well, I do one of two things :

1) I ask the guitarist to record the parts so it is 'tighter' (the argumnt which normally more mature bands accept well).

2) I let both guitarists record the parts, and if it's one rythmn guitar and one lead, i ask the rythmn guitar to double his parts and i tuck in the lead, making it quieter in the mix.(the argument i use with crappy bands that can't even recognize they're not playing well).

It already happened to me that one of the guitarists had a terrible tone even tho' he was using the same gear as the other - his hands were just awful sounding. So after a few days, i called the singer, which is also a great guitarist, to come and re-do the other guy's parts because they were not working within the song. He accepted that and it is 100% better. However, i left some of the tracks he recorded on some songs, and now it's been a hell to mix. He worst part is that the bad guitarist is the lead player

 

[AudioGeekZine]

As a producer its your fucking job to make them the best album at this point in their career. That means pre-production demos and rewriting and rehearsal until its ready for recording. I have a feeling you're not officially (in writing) the producer for these noob bands. Thats too bad, arrangement is way more important than what mic you use, preamp, or fucking DAW.

If they are just paying you to record their shitty songs then try to make the best of it.

 

[if6was9]

yeah I'd make sure first that your being hired as a kind of producer too and not just as engineer. The way I view it is if your the engineer then you mightn't like what they're doing but its not your job to love it- its to make it as good sounding tonally/mix wise with what they've written.

I did a 3 song demo with an acoustic guy who uses a loop pedal a short while ago and when it came to mix time I realised that so much was going on at times it was a little to much- I left the loop play the entire time anyway because well, thats how he'd written it. It wasn't really my call to make to take out some of the bits altogether in busier- it'd be the same as removing a guitar players riffs from a song cause you thought the other players riff and the drums were enough to make it sound good. He was really happy with it at the end of it.

That being said, you can always give an opinion no matter what your hired as. Maybe approach it like this- Say something like- "hey you know that bit there(play section) I don't think it fits well with the others? Is that how ye want it?" If they say yeah thats how the want it then fine leave it, if they say they hear something weird with it too then ye can work on it. Just maybe don't be too pushy with it.

Regarding the one player doing all the rhythms- I wouldn't have the balls to do that yet

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

It already happened to me that one of the guitarists had a terrible tone even tho' he was using the same gear as the other - his hands were just awful sounding.

Yeah thats the current issue.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

As a producer its your fucking job to make them the best album at this point in their career. That means pre-production demos and rewriting and rehearsal until its ready for recording. I have a feeling you're not officially (in writing) the producer for these noob bands. Thats too bad, arrangement is way more important than what mic you use, preamp, or fucking DAW.

You sir are correct on all points. I generally don't like to affect arrangments unless the band wants such things (I have had to play the role of bass player a few times ).

It's to bad bands for the most part don't see the value of working with a producer.

 

[JBroll]

That's possibly because so many 'producers' they see are total twats... OH NOAS BOB ROCK RUEND METALLIBA!

Jeff

 

[Amberience]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

 

[JBroll]

With a band that plays well, that's not as much of an issue. With most bands, however, the playing can detract from the song, which the producer/engineer holds to be the objective behind the whole thing. If bands can be so pissy about their egos (note that pluralization does not require an apostrophe) that they kill the song in the process of showing off how mediocre they are, things don't turn out well.

Bands don't go to good producers to get a 'true reflection', they want to sound as good as they possibly can on a record that's costing them thousands of dollars. If they wanted a true reflection they'd get live tapes.

The producer and engineer will still not be 'heard'. Many bands already do this because they know the results will be better. You can get away with a lot less in the studio than live, and when a band recognizes this they go out of their way to make the end result better.

At the end of the day the song and album are the most important thing, and the producers and engineers usually have a better idea of how to get the song and album across best. Sometimes that means having one guitarist do all the parts so that it's tighter and the 'off' performances brought about by two mediocre guitarists DON'T DETRACT FROM THE SONG. If it's more important to you that your mistakes be heard than the song be put across well, you can't say balls about egos.

Jeff

 

[GuitarHack]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

So should there be no EQ, compression, etc... either, just a raw recording?

 

[James Murphy]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

producers are hired to make the band sound their best.. and to make a marketable product.... sorry, sometimes bands have one shit guitarist and one good one, and if you let the shit one play on rhythms as well you are not only compromising the band and their music, you are compromising your employability. i'm all for individual opinions... but yours is unrealistic at best. sorry, i will not compromise the integrity of a project i'm working on simply because a band has one guy who's better at recording good rhythm tracks than the other. music thrives in a democratic nation, but it is not itself a democracy.... it is art, and as such must be crafted.. not simply shat out. well, some modern painters might argue that point, but no reasonable band member would ever argue that just because they are nice enough to keep their buddy in the band that can't really play up to snuff, that he should be recorded. it's their choice if they want to compromise their live show... that's not my end of things.

i've even recorded bands where the person who wrote all the music is not the best, tightest player... and never once with these kinds of guys have i ever ran into ego about it.. they are happy to let the tighter player perform the guitars. there's also situations where the guy who doesn't get to play rhythms gets butt hurt..... that's life.

JUST this past weekend i had to tell a drummer, after wasting a whole day in the studio and having to pay for two days, that we (myself and the rest of the band) had decided to discontinue the session and that he was going to be replaced by a studio drummer for the album... he was bummed, but said he'd stay in the band and work on his playing. next day he quit. his loss. he could have viewed it as a hard lesson learned and as a wake-up call to the work he needed to do to bring his playing up to snuff.. and then he would have still been in the band. Rather, he decided to cut out. that bummed me out as i like the guy personally... but it was the right choice to replace him for this recording.

this kind of thing happens.. it's the nature of the business, and the nature of creating and crafting art to high standard, rather than just hitting record. hard choices sometimes have to be made, and they are and have been now and for years past. many, many albums you have and enjoy are created with this same ethic, and they wouldn't be as good and you wouldn't like them as much if they hadn't been. i've been on the receiving end of some of those kinds of choices... rough to go through, but in the end it usually works out for the best and gets the project to where it needs to be... and as long as the path to that point is paved without ill will, then all will be happy eventually.

furthermore, blah blah blah <insert more authoritative ranting here>

 

[Notuern]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

I kinda agree, because its not what the band really sounds like.
But hey, if we are going in this direction, then the use of clicktracks, doing more then one take, doubletracking etc. is also "cheating" the buyer, isnt it?

If you want the live thing you get the live records or go to the show.

PS.
I would actually feel more "cheated" if I bought a record that sounded like junk.

 

[Aaron Smith]

I definitely side with the school of thought that it's up to me as an engineer to do whatever is necessary to make the band's recording sound good. If this means punching in all over the freaking place and using Time-Compression/Expansion on pieces of DI guitar tracks, especially to save time, I'm all for it. When it comes to serious bands who are operating on even a somewhat serious level, it's definitely a part of the engineer's job description. However, I can't help but kind of feel like there's a certain line that shouldn't be crossed by an engineer...meaning, when it comes to making a really, really terrible band sound awesome and completely credible.
There's one project I did a while back, that to this day I still have mixed feelings about fixing up as much as I did. I recorded one song (thankfully only one!) for a brand new little local death-core band, who were entirely out-writing their own musical abilities, and it was an absolute chore to work on every last aspect of the project. It took over one day to record the drums for the song...probably ten hours altogether, and even at that, the takes I finally settled on were pretty freaking bad. The drummer was trying to play blast beats and fast double-kicks the whole song, and although he was capable of getting his snare hits going really fast and getting his feet to go pretty fast, his timing and ability to play to a click track were entirely non-existant. Even the most basic drum beat imaginable, he was utterly unable to play to a click! Not to mention, he didn't even have the physical stamina to play "X" amount of measures of some of the beats he was trying to play, so I ended up pasting single measures of his drumming into multiple measures. The only way I was able to get him to stay pretty close to the click with his cymbal hits, was to put their guitar player in the same room listening to the click, and have him headbang while he played the scratch tracks- the drummer was able to kind of stay on beat when watching the headbanging, but not by listening to the click on his own!
During mixing, I programmed all his tom fills with what he had intended to play (or something that sounded like what his attempts were), and I programmed his feet to play everything he had intended to play, which made him sound like a master of the kick drum. When it came to guitars, neither guitarist could cleanly play really any of the parts they had written (parts varied from fairly okay on the slow breakdowns, to poor to extremely sloppy chicken-scratch fest), and I seriously contemplated re-playing all of their parts myself (which I've done in the past, shhhh), but ultimately decided against it, because the drum doctoring alone made the band sound credible. If I had gone in there and given them some nice airtight guitar tracks, they would have had such a ridiculous recording and such inflated egos...and I think I really would have regret it.
Anyway, I'm not out to hate on this band, but the recording experience was the worst I've had, and I didn't really get a good feeling from making a band of their caliber sound like a band of a much higher caliber. Unless the price is right, I decided that I would rather spend my time working with bands who are more experienced on their instruments...

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

No dude you don't get it. It's fast guitar parts that sound like mush when 2 guitarists are playing them.

Besides for the record this band seems pretty serious about putting out a good few songs this time around. That said I am meeting with the band this week to discus concerns.

As far as the arrangement issues go it's really a THAT JUST DOESN'T FUCKING WORK situation (bad/odd chords over other stuff that clashes real fucking hard).

 

[Metaltastic]

(note that pluralization does not require an apostrophe)...

...If it's more important to you that your mistakes be heard than the song be put across well, you can't say balls about egos.

Jeff

For the first part...

THANK YOU. One of my biggest pet peeves.

For the second...

BA-ZING!!

 

[PostMortem1666]

I really don't agree about getting one guitarist to play the parts. What is the point? It's not a true reflection of the band, and so you're effectively lying to the people who are going to be listening/buying the album!

When I hear an album, I want to hear the BAND, not the producer or engineer. Talking about ego's .....

so you are saying that us engineers have egos by trying to give the band the best sound possible for them? come on man......and +1 to Jbroll and james murphy.

 

[greyskull]

its really all about finding the right way to say it.
If the band employed you based on your previous work, then hopefully they'll trust your judgement, and if they're worth their salt they'll be open to ideas.

 

[006]

To those people that are against the best player doing all of the parts on the recording because "it's not really the band"....








SHOVE IT, AND YOUR SHITTY TAKES, UP YOUR ASS.



People with that mentality are fucking idiots for wanting there to be shitty guitar/drum/bass/vocal tracks on your recording. Get over yourself, it's pathetic. You know what people think when they hear that? They don't go "oh my god, they are so real, it's crazy awesome" - NO. They go "what the fuck is this shit!? Sounds like a fucking garage band that just learned how to play." And you know what else they think? They don't think "hmm, I want this dude to record my band," they think "I hope they didn't pay for this recording." So, in the best interest of everyone, meaning the engineer, the band and the listener, tough choices have to be made sometimes, but if it is for the better, then anyone having an ego problem about it should be shot on site anyway, because they are probably the shittiest musician in the band to begin with.

~006