top 5 ways to annoy an audio guy

one summer, in the opening band on the 'hard at play' tour, i watched huey lewis and the news get up on stage and do "power of love," every night, every encore, each time like they meant it, like they loved it, like they hadn't done it 850,000 times before. it was really quite a performance, and taught me a valuable lesson:

if you ain't having fun,
then you ain't doing it right!

that's why you 'play' music, but you 'work' a job. so if you're an audio guy, and you get paid to make noise, you better figure out a way to have fun doing it -- otherwise, you're gonna suck. it's part of being a creative professional, and there is a direct proportion between the amount of fun you're having, and how good your stuff sounds. this may be difficult for management to understand (particularly when they're having no fun at all), but there it is ...

2. when he asks "when do you need it?" answer "yesterday!"

that this happens on a daily basis may be the most annoying part of it. even when a project is well-planned from the start, with time and resources allocated for audio development, you still gotta deal with schedule shift, sign offs, travel, contracts, nervous breakdowns, noise abatement, and natural catastrophes. by the time you get the official "go!" it usually has to be done "right now!"

ironically, this is the worst way to be creative: ok, wait, be patient, just sit there, don't panic, everything's fine, do some prep work, wait some more, tap your foot, Wait For It, wait - for - it ... OK NOW!! GO!! hurry up! write the best song ever! quick quick!! the programmers are waiting!!!

seems silly when you put it that way, and obviously, nobody writes music (or does anything creative) like that. creativity is more like sex, and baseball: you just gotta relax, and concentrate ... but you also need time for, and an environment conducive to, playfulness. you need a place where creative things can happen, particularly when you're not looking for them.

sometimes, writing an unwritten song is like looking at the andromeda galaxy: it's blurry, indistinct, you can't see/hear it if you look right at it. you have to glance away to get glimpse of it, out of the corner of your eye/ear. note: this activity can be confusing to management, tapping their watches, because it looks like you're doing anything BUT work!

of course, producing audio is also like fishing: there's a certain degree of luck and patience involved, and some days, you can stand in the river (or sit in your studio) til sundown, and still come up with bupkes for dinner. impossible deadlines never help the situation much.

3. when he plays you the sketch, say "sounds great, ship it!"

i hate sketches in general. nobody considers the pencil drawing to be the finished asset, but most people can't hear that an audio sketch is not the real thing unless you say "this is the sketch, this is not the real thing." even then, they can only hear the difference if you play them side by side (or as audio guys say, if you A-B them).

then it's "oh, of course, the fully orchestrated version you spent three months producing is much better than the quick take you banged out on the piano last night" ... but here's the problem: the use of sketches as placeholders during product development.

if you play ANY sound again and again in a certain context, your ear will become trained to expect it, to anticipate it, to react badly if you don't hear it, or when, god forbid, you should hear something else. Once the client or producer gets accustomed to the sketch, anything else he hears can sound "wrong ... i liked it better the other way!"

there's the reverse angle too: you play them the sketch, and they say "oh my god what is that horrible noise!?" you try to explain that the final version won't sound like that, but the truth is:
a) they can't hear what's in your head, and
b) you don't really know how the final version will sound until it actually exists!
you just have to trust that they think that you know what you're doing.

one time, during a project bid, i brought in a piano sketch of what was to be a big broadway show tune, complete with flashing lights and dancing girls, and the QA guy (who obviously wanted the gig for himself) said "that sounds just like what i was gonna do!" i think he was trying to pay me a compliment, but i had to resist an urge to whup him upside the head ...

4. when you hear the final product, say "it needs more dobly"

look, fella, i've been using my ears to pay the rent for 30 years now, and despite age, entropy, and playing the blues, they still seem to function pretty well. in fact, they are the essential tool i use to do my job. sound design is the art of listening, and if my sense of hearing was a muscle, i'd be arnold freakin' schwarzenegger, ok?

of course, when an audio guy is actually using his finely toned and highly trained ears, it's sometimes difficult to distinguish the activity from napping. he just sits there, eyes closed, not moving ... but inside his head, amazing feats of cognitive prowess! frequency analyzation, pattern recognition, beat mapping, and more (the snoring is just a by-product).

although ear training is necessary, listening is a talent, like cooking, acting, and basketball -- some people are really good at it; others, nnnot so much. nobody expects me to be able to dunk, and i don't expect you to pick out the 2nd trombone part of an ellington arrangement. but few things annoy an audio guy more than listening to some wannabe pretend to have solid gold ears (when they're obviously made of tin).

5. misspell his name in the credits

here's the thing: while life as a road dog piano player was tough, i never once felt like i got screwed out of a credit. onstage, there was always a "and on keyboards, that guy!" at the end of the night. in the studio, seemed like folks were always careful to get the name right, since often, credit was all you was gonna get.

my favorite credit is for a CD i ain't even on! when i first joined joe louis walker and the bosstalkers, i toured behind 'live at slim's' because he'd fired the guy on the album (joe had a reputation for being hard on piano players). at shows, fans would ask me to sign the CD, which i would, thinking "i'm not on this album." then, he released 'live at slim's, volume 2', which contained a 'special thanks' to yours truly for touring behind the first one. i used to sign it "i'm not on this one either!" (and then, right before he went into the studio again - he fired me! like i said :)

BUT in the brave new world of multimedia, i can't tell you the number of times my credits have been completely whacked. products have shipped containing all my sounds and/or music, my name nowhere to be found. conversely, i've been credited for games i never even heard of, let alone worked on. one guy first dissed, then took credit for my work in the same article, and another guy asked the publisher to remove my name from a credit list, so that his name could go on instead.

my favorite screwup: years ago, i wrote and produced (what i thought was) a smokin' blues tune for a Simpsons product, a MIDI-rendered "cutting session" between lisa simpson and bleedin' gums murphy. i sweated hard on that one, wanted it to sound as authentic as possible, used custom sax samples specifically designed for the purpose, even had one with a funky loop that, when played out of range, sorta growled. as a final finesse, i worked the first bar of the simpsons theme halfway into the solo, a "quote" as it were, like throwing "donna lee" into a jazz improvisation. i thought it a clever conceit until the product was released, and the credit read "Moanin' Lisa by Danny Elfman" (d'oh!)

of course, none of it matters, i still gots paid, but annoying? oh yeah ...

   - pdx

disclaimer:
gentle reader, please remember, these words written by the bard
that aptly limn my little blog: "dying is easy, but comedy is hard"