I’ve got endless amounts of stories like this considering I worked with 186 artists last year alone, you know I’m destined to be punished by some of them haha but this one stuck with me, scarred me, traumatized me everytime I look at guitar cables 😢 jk lemme know if you wanna hear more horrific tales like this one

The real problem was his amp didn’t go to 11

>worst band I’ve ever recorded
>it’s all because of the guitarist

Checks out

this isn’t the worst band you’ve recorded, it’s the worst guitarist you’ve recorded

I recorded a band once where one of the guitarists ran 2... fucking TWO Boss metal zone pedals together, and he swore to god that wetting the cab screen actually helped the sound. This dude literally got a bottle of water, would pour some water on his hand and rub it into the twead.

Funny enough though, when I told him his 2 metalzones sounded like static dog shit and wetting the twead did literally nothing, he actually listened. I introduced him to amp Sims (it was podfarm then) and he fell in love. This dudes still playing and he has some of the thickest most saturated yet clear and straight up beefy tones ive ever heard.

He still gets red as a fuckin tomato in the face if I say "wet the twead!" Around him. 😂

flipping the cables and being SOLD that it made a difference is pure comedy

I once had a band in, and the singer COULD NOT sing on key.
And he INSISTED that I could NOT tune the vocals.
We record, and of course, he sounds like crap.
So he blames me and my equipment.
I said, "Let me do some work on it, and see what you think"
I spent 2 days tuning the vocals until they were in key, AND sounded natural.
The band loved it, and went on to win some local accolades.
Then I heard later that he talked big trash about me. Not knowing that the ONLY reason they did well was because I put all of that work into MAKING him sound good.

if that's the worst band, you've had a blessed career

4:25 to be fair that SM57 could probably survive a nuclear blast.

As a guitarist I will say we are the worst . Most of us have been fooled by marketing. Tubes , magic tone wood , pickups made from magic magnets and copper wire , we gotta get our signature tone . Even though the majority of us are chasing the tone of our hero’s .

I can’t lie, I’m using that “I flipped my cable around” thing to mess with my friends next time we hang and play guitar

Dude said "hold my beer, im gonna go stare at the amp to intimidate it into a better tone"

I'll never get this mindset as a musician getting a producer that cares about what the artist is doing for a great price. I'm a solo artist and I ALWAYS tell my producer as we're currently a year in on my 2nd album to tell ME what sounds right, tell ME when something isn't good enough. I would never be stubborn in the studio. I ask my producer when it comes to my playing, my vocals, or the sound to tell me if something could be better. You have to be humble in the studio and give gratitude to your producer for caring about your project. The producer on my first album was awesome but he was too nice. An artist should WANT to be challenged by their producer. It shows that they care. Awesome video.

I recorded some proper annoying bastards during my time, but none ever came close to rappers. They would show up with ten or more people who did nothing but be arseholes, and just try and intimidate me. "I'm gonna freestyle on this one" is a nightmare inducing sentence.

Sounds like this guy thought he was Michael J Fox in the opening scene of Back to the Future

The magic combo of "insistent" and "clueless". Classic.

I’m almost 60 now, and I’ve been playing with the same eight-piece band (three horns and all) since high school. We did pretty well across Canada in the ’80s and ’90s, (Juno nomination which is a Canadian Grammy) and we still sell out shows in our hometown. Looking back at myself as a young musician, I’m honestly embarrassed by some of the things I put my bandmates—who are still my close friends—through.

It took getting older to understand that I wasn’t the focus of the band; my job was to complement the whole group. I went through every possible combination of guitars, racks, pedals, amps, and cabinets—chasing… what exactly? Eventually around 27 I realized that my ’87 Strat & my MB Rocket 44 was all I ever needed. With enough experience under my belt, I could change a string onstage in about 20- 30 seconds in the middle of a song, so I didn’t need a cool looking backup guitar sitting there ready to go.

And I wasn’t the only guilty one. Our keyboard player was always trying to be the loudest guy in the room and tended to overplay. It’s amazing how much better we are today, and how perfect the tempos feel now that the youthful adrenaline has faded.

It’s true what they say: youth is wasted on the young.

P.s. Because of my age I decided to finally let go of the Rocket 44 and buy a Quilter MicroPro Mach 2 which weighs UNDER 20lbs!! but is loud and clean AF. I used it at The Phoenix concert theater which holds 2000 people without my own monitor no problem. The stuff they have today is truly amazing.

Finally, last year I woke up one day and couldn't raise my arms or hold things as everything was stiff and inflamed. Medication has helped but I am not the player I was. Just remember to enjoy your playing years to the max because it can all change on a dime and it feels like I was 20 yesterday.

I once had a solo artist come in to record his first song with me. He showed up with his friend both super high. Annoying but fine, he just bought a seven string guitar second hand and had never played one before, it wasn't set up at all and sounded terrible. Tried to fix it the best I could and set up the project. He didn't actually have a song written and just played 5 minutes of random riffs. My roommate came in and told me his friend had apparently been walking around the house going in to other people's rooms, and then went and pissed outside in the middle of the street. That's the only people I've ever had to kick out of my house.

My worst story was similar, but imagine the guitarist dealing with their amp is also leaving sunflower seed shells on your carpet. I got a great laugh from this and totally relate.

A couple years back I got sent the WORST sounding EP I've ever heard to mix. Bleed of the kick on the snare track was so bad they were essentially the same level. Overheads were recorded mono, was told to "just make it stereo in post". There was one guitar track (once again, "make it stereo in post") and it had actual mistakes left in, not in a cool punk way, in a "I forgot this is where I come in" way. The guitar also had a heavy noise gate on that sometimes cut off random parts in the middle of a song.
In a quiet section of one song, the drummer apparently got bored of not doing anything for a while and started just playing random loud shit. There was bleed of it on the vocal tracks from the vocalist's headphones. They also actually left in the keyboardist scrolling through patches between sections, as he apparently recorded it all in one take.

I told them this sounds like ass and needs to be rerecorded, because there is only so much that can be fixed in post. They refused and told me to mix it anyway. As a reference of how they want it to sound, they sent me Bring Me The Horizon.