I'm a musician...sort've. I don't make any money off of it, but I play in a band and I launched a solo project about a month ago. I have a website with a blog and all that jazz and I would normally post this kind of music-related biznazz there. The thing is, this little rant is going to be about someone local, someone known, and I don't want to burn any bridges before I've built them, you know what I mean? So I'm just gonna go ahead and separate this out so I can get it off my chest but still maintain relations in case I need them again in the future. In the short term I have no intention of working with him again, but you never know what's going to happen.
When I decided to launch this new music project I had this great idea. I was going to release a single month. It would be a good way to keep people engaged, prevent them from burning out on the same old tune and losing interest. I happened to have a bunch of professionally recorded tracks that I'd done a couple of years ago. Wifey got me some studio time with a friend of ours who has a studio in town, and I went in with my guitar and laid down rhythm and vocals, had the dude from my band come in and play bass, and then had some local college kid do drums. I recorded like 6 or 7 songs during this time. They were essentially done and all I needed was some lead guitar work. I had asked a friend of mine to do it and he agreed, but he kept putting me off and finally the whole project just languished. When I re-committed myself to a solo project I thought, Cool, I have a bunch of pro tracks to start off with. I'll just play the leads myself. I planned to do a combination of releasing the professionally recorded ones and home-recorded demos of new songs.
There was a small snag in my plan though. Upon re-listening to the previously recorded tracks, it became clear that the dude with whom I'd initially recorded either had a tin ear (which I feel like he didn't because his other shit sounds pretty good), or just didn't really give a damn. The guitar was so badly out of tune it made me wince to go back and listen. I remember recording an EP with my band, using this guy (let's call him Scarf, because he wore a scarf one time) who has a studio in the same building as our practice space and having him flat out replace my guitar with one of his own to play because it didn't sound very good. That's a producer, and it makes sense. It's what I'd expect. I'm going to release these recordings and tell everyone that you recorded and produced them. It's in your best interest to make them sound good. For whatever reason that didn't happen with my initial recordings. I never told the dude either because I have no backbone. At any rate, I now found myself in a position of having to re-record all of the guitar, and some of the vocals too.
I decided to work with Scarf. He was a known, I liked the work he did on our EP, and he was conveniently located. No-brainer. I sent him the tracks I had and said, "Tell me what I need to do to make these sound good." His assessment? That much of it was unusable. He didn't think the drums were mic'd very well and therefore they lacked good levels, and he agreed that my guitar was out of tune. He said it would cost me more money to have him try and massage all of that into something listenable (and it still wouldn't be great) than it would be for us to start over. He would use what he could, but in the interest of quality replace whatever didn't rate.
We started with a fairly simple, short song. It clocks in at a little over 3 minutes. My vocals were fine on that one, but he replaced the bass, the drums, and the guitar—including mine. He presented me with a mix and I was like, "This is great! It sounds great. But where is my guitar? I can tell it's you playing." I'm not some studio pop princess. I wrote these songs, I play these songs. I insisted that I come in to the studio to record my own rhythm guitar. He played lead, but the rhythm needed to be all me.
Now pay attention here, because here is where I start bitching. The day I went in to record the guitars I paid him. Remember that up until this point our only interaction had been for me to hand him the tracks and tell him what I wanted. He went off on his own at home and did...stuff. Recorded drums and bass and lead guitar. I came in, re-recorded the guitar, and he said "$5**" please. I was flabbergasted. I mean, I played it cool. I was like, "Yeah, lemme Paypal you that tonight." And luckily I had that money, and I went home and paid it, but I was kind've in shock. I had just spent over $500, on ONE SONG. It sounded great, but it was ONE SONG. By comparison I think I paid a total of $800 or so to the first dude for almost an entire EP, minus the mixing and shit. And yeah, look what I got for it. But still, I had some serious sticker shock. I decided right then and there that I needed a change in plan. I would still release those studio tracks, but maybe not as quickly as I'd intended. I would instead spend a few months releasing the demo stuff that I could record at home and save some bucks. And maybe look for a new place to record while I was at it.
The thing is, Scarf is a chatty dude, right? I mean, the whole time you're in the studio with him he's talking your ear off, maybe takes a break to show you a Youtube video or two (last time I was in there he played some Richard Dawkins clips for me), or play some music from someone else he's working with, or whatever. He's always on his phone, just doing a dozen things and not 100% concentrating on your work necessarily. It's the kind of thing that makes you start glancing at your watch, you know? But you don't say anything because he's a nice guy and he does good work. Again, I have no backbone.
The point is, he talks a lot, and part of his talking with me is always about how broke he is, how he can't afford to eat sometimes. Then it goes into how he does a lot of work with indie musicians who can't afford to pay a lot but he does it anyway because he genuinely likes the music, and how he wishes he could be the kind of guy who just takes the big clients who can pay a lot of money and not care that the music is crap. He'll also casually throw in there that he's cutting me a deal because he really likes my songs and he wants to help me out. Maybe he'll also make an off-hand remark about how much time he spent working on the song but how he's only going to charge me for a portion of it.
Remember this dialogue because it comes up again later.
I pay him and embark upon my journey to start recording at home. The problem with this plan? Recording is a lot harder than it looks. I struggled with every aspect of it: getting my guitar hooked up with my DAW so that I could hear it; figuring out how to get my midi drumpad to work; the inherent latency involved with digital recording; getting my guitar to not sound like computerized shit; patching over parts that came out bad. Essentially all the stuff that professionals like Scarf do in the studio with a couple of quick flicks of the wrist was taking me forever to do. I had been working on one song for weeks, and getting nowhere fast. The next month was approaching and I was afraid that I would be forced to break my vow of one-song-each-month. It meant nothing to anyone but me, but that was enough. Under the strain of my ambition and my ineptitude with recording, I made the decision to return to Scarf.
I had a plan for how it would be different though. This time I at least had an idea of the upper limit, and I chose a song that I thought he'd have to do the least amount of additional work on. He again replaced the drums (I think they must be unsalvageable on all the tracks), but I straight up played rhythm this time and he stuck with lead, and only a small solo at that. He also kept the original bass. I had to re-record the vocals because they sucked, and that was that. On October 3rd we spent a full 8-hour day doing this work and he asked for $360 and I thought, Phew. I can deal with that. It comes out to ~$45/hour, which is reasonable to me (although if that's a break I wonder what he charges others). He promised me a mixdown by that Thursday. I paid him his money that evening. Thursday came and went, no mix. I finally texted him on the 14th and he was like, "Should have something to you by Thursday." Thursday he texted me to say he was 80% there but he might need another day or two to "push it over tha top". At this point I'm getting a little anxious, because there really wasn't a lot that needed to be done to it, and I was starting to think that maybe he was going to overproduce it.
I finally texted again this Tuesday to be like, "Sooooo....track?" He responded that he should have it done that day, and that he had "been working on it a TON". That made bells go off in my head. I did get the track that day and while it sounded great, it did not sound like it warranted the amount of time it took to get it. That annoyed me a great deal. I held it in though and sent him an email with some changes I wanted made, minor things that did not require more studio time or anything like that. For example, the ending went on too long. It just played the chorus over and over again and made the song like 5 minutes long. He's one of those peeps who prefers to text or talk on the phone though so after that email he asked if I wanted to chat about the changes. I said sure, and gave him a call. On that call I explained the changes I wanted again, he said he'd work on it and try and get it to me by Monday, and...at that time I could give him the other $360.
This time, I couldn't play it cool. I kind've choked a little I think. I was like, "Wait, I'm sorry: $360? You mean another $360 on top of the $360 I already paid you?"
Remember when I said to keep that dialogue in mind? Good. Insert it here. Also put in a few lines like "I thought I mentioned that to you? Didn't we talk about this? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm bad at communicating. Sometimes I wish I could hire someone to take care of the money logistics for me." I'm starting to suspect that some of this is an act. No, you did not mention additional monies to me. There was no discussion about additional monies. You're essentially telling me that you spent an additional 8 hours recording the lead guitar part and mixing/mastering the track? More than that, actually, since you keep telling me that you're not even charging me for all of the time you spent.
Here's the thing. I don't begrudge anyone trying to make a living. I understand that what he does is a skilled position. I know firsthand now that not everyone can be a sound engineer, and that more goes into producing a good track than I know. I believe that people should be paid for their work. That's why I hired someone to do my logos, and someone else to make my lyric video (that's a whole 'nother story). But you know what both of those people did before we started work? They gave me information. They told me how much their work would cost me.
Scarf, on both occasions, has taken my track, disappeared somewhere with it and popped up later, track completed, and said "Okay, give me $x". At no point did he tell me what his actual rate was, or give me an estimate on how many hours he thought he'd be spending on it, and what those hours would be spent doing. At no point did I have the option of saying, "Hey, you know what? Don't worry about this part. Just let it be." to save myself a few bucks. Can you imagine? It's like if you took your car into a mechanic because you thought you heard a knocking in your engine and they take it from you for a week. When you ask for updates they tell you, "Oh, we've been doing a ton of work on it." When you finally get your car back it's going to cost you $1200 and they've added a spoiler, some whitewalls, repainted it, washed and vacuumed your car (including shampooing the seats), replaced your stereo system, and fitted you with nitrous tanks. Yeah, your car looks, feels, smells, and runs awesomely, but it would have been better if they'd contacted you before doing all that shit to it because maybe, just maybe, you could have done without the spoiler. And the whitewalls. See what I'm saying?
So I have now spent ~$1300 on two songs with Scarf. That will happen no more. I feel more than a little taken advantage of. Yeah, the songs sound great. I'm willing to take my chances that I can go elsewhere and get the "base package" and the results will sound perfectly fine as well. I won't know until I try. For now I'm going to be doing strictly home-brew demo shit because I'm broke.
/rant
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