Don’t take that tone with me

I had the pleasure of speaking at Bloomsburg University last week. The students were fantastic and I had a great time there. I’ll post some more info about it soon, but here’s a link to the article:

Dreams In Progress: Indie Producer Shares His Story

I had the pleasure of speaking at Plainview, HS Wednesday. Mr. Nelson, the technology teacher, invited me up. When I arrived, I found out that Will Terrell was also speaking. He’s an incredible cartoonist and just an all-around really nice person. It made the day so much more fun and I learned a ton by listening to him. If you haven’t seen his work, you should. Check it out here:

willterrell.com
superzeroes.net

Oh, and I used to teach his sister Heather guitar… It’s a small world.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the idigifest at South Plains College. I was on an amazing panel that truly was wide ranging. We had a video game developer, a web developer, an indie film maker, an educational video business owner, a cartoonist, a television station manager, and myself representing music production. I got so much out of the other speakers, I actually took notes while I was on stage with them. The station manager actually turned out to be a former student of mine, Brent McClure. Brent was a good guitarist in his youth and studied with me at Brandon Guitar Studio. Now he’s the General Manager of News Channel 10 in Amarillo, Texas.

He said something that really stopped me in my tracks. He was relating a story about how they had a huge ice storm hit Amarillo, Texas. So they sent their weather team out into the thick of it with their new quarter-of-a-million dollar mobile satellite truck to capture the essence of the storm. Unfortunately, the ice came down so fast that it completely froze their state-of-the-art broadcast truck.

So instead of throwing in the towel, the crew went into problem solving mode. Luckily, someone on his staff had the foresight to pack a laptop and a webcam. So here they are in the middle of the ice storm broadcasting with a webcam. A gigantic media company would have had zero live coverage of the storm if it hadn’t been for the simple problem solving and forethought of one individual. It might not have been hi-def video, but it was news and they got the job done.

How does this apply to the studio? If you own one, you know things are constantly breaking down and you have to fix them on the fly. If you own a studio where more than one engineer works, things get misplaced easily. Case-in-point:

I had a session that needed that big Fender vibrato surf-thang. I own a ’66 super, so that’s an easy tone to achieve. Except the pedal for the vibrato was missing. If you own an old Fender, you know that you can’t turn vibrato on without the switch. So I searched. No dice.

So I had to solve a problem. How do you turn the vibrato on? It’s a simple RCA jack. Connecting the tip and ring turns it on. So I pulled out the tool kit to see how I could rig it. I had some desoldering braid in there. So I wrapped it around the tip until it filled the gap and touched the ring.

Volia! We had vibrato! If you’re out there and want a studio job, learn how to solve problems. It seriously impressed an owner (not to mention the client) when you can solve problems creatively and quickly.

I recently purchased a stereo matched pair of AKC C414 XLSs. I absolutely love these mics… especially for overheads. I’ve used so many different pairs and these just take the cake. But I have one serious complaint: their H-85 spider shockmounts are poorly designed. As a matter of fact, I believe they are designed to fail.

I have no complaints at all about how the mount holds the mic. I actually think it’s quite brilliant. It’s very easy for you to adjust angles, etc. But they break way too easily at the neck between the clip and the mount itself. One recently fell over at my studio and snapped in half. Then, not more than two weeks later, I was working at Studio 1916 down in Austin and, low and behold, I see an AKG C414 shockmount on their shelf broken in exactly the same way.

Dusty Wakeman over at Mojave Mics says most manufacturers spend very little money on their shockmounts. In the range of about 50¢ (see this video from audiomidi.com at about 7:30). That’s pretty frikin’ cheap. I have no idea how much AKG spends on these, but they sure sell for a small fortune. $120 bones or so. And the warranty doesn’t cover “accidents.” That sucks. Bad business, AKG.

Luckily, the guys over at Sweetwater are fantastic and gave me a hook-up on a replacement. AKG, I love your mics. They make me happy every time I use them. Please. I implore you to make your shockmount more durable.