Bad Musicians Need Good Engineers (By Sam Inglis /Published April 2021)

Getting a good sound from world-class musicians is easy. They sound great already, and there's a ton of advice online from celebrity engineers telling you how to record them. But if you run a small studio, or you're just starting out, your bread and butter will be a different kind of session. And all those YouTube recording masterclasses won't be much help when the singer can't sing, the guitarist can't play, the drummer can't keep time and the instruments are held together with gaffer tape.

Even if you're not making Dark Side Of The Moon, though, a good engineer can make bands sound better than they are. In this video, Sound On Sound's Editor In Chief Sam Inglis explains how to turn musical lead into gold...

 

I'd say "All musicians need good engineers"

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2021

I'd say

... more practise.

 

I'd say true musicians don't need engineers, neither good nor bad, to tell them what to do. Musicians and engineers are always enemies to each other. EQ and Compressor can never beat music and musicians.

 

Wow, what a collection of incredible nonsense.

 

How do you mic up a drum kit when you are live recording a 15 piece band...which microphones, placement and vibe are you able to achieve? What are you capturing later as overdubs or isolating? What is your plan to keep things moving with all those people!

 

Music was ruined after engineers got involved with these stupid devices and techniques and many more.

 

Those things aren't meant to "beat" musicians in the first place.

 

These evil tools and their users are anti-music.

 

DAW based musicians usually have to turn themselves into audio engenieers at some point. Or al least past a few years of their lives learning the ropes.

 

That is very much true. If your work revolves completely around virtual instruments, or you play instruments that are relatively easier to record (electric guitars for example) and process, might as well learn a few more things about engineering.

 

Agree

 

Everyone has to start somewhere. If you are learning the ropes on engineering, it's hard to find good talent willing to work with you. The OP is right in their concern. Unfortunately, the job description when starting out is learning to tune singers, learning to comp takes, and getting skilled at quantizing. However, if the starting engineer is not a skilled musician, then this learning curve gets even more difficult.

What can be done about it? If you are serious about wearing the engineer gloves, then

(1) Get the best possible sound treatment for the place you record in. That way, crappy performances will sound their best.

(2) Record with the best amps you get a hold of for guitars and always get DI takes. Use a good old SM57.

(3) If you record drums, have your own set of new heads for the drums and the best cymbals you can get.

(4) Work on getting the artists to feel comfortable and deliver the best performances they can. All can be tuned and quantized, but a good performance can't be faked.

Of course, non-talented, lazy musicians are cheap son-of-a-guns, but if you can get them to rent or buy the best gear for their sessions, you'll have to put in the time, but you might be able to get at least decent performances that can be healed to the best possible. Just don't sell snake old. Always be clear about the outcome. You know engineers can be defined as turd polishers, but you know the adage, shit in, shit out.

One last thing, always keep the raw recording so when you show work for new clients, you can A/B for them how you helped improve the music of your previous project, but do it in private, never in social media. You don't want to embarrass your earlier clients, which will definitely put you out of work in no time.

 

Are you from the 1980s when they had double 4-way P.A systems standing nearly 10ft tall?
If so, you are confusing live sound engineers being precious about their gear with tons of cables and multicore, DI's and more, gaffer tape and super-loud venues where the live-sound engineer almost said "I am God".
The thing is, a substantial number of live P.A engineers are not studio audio engineers at all. If you have seen one in a studio try and patch a Neve Desk to a Studer machine and try to auxiliary patchbay route it to make the desk work the way Rupert intended, you'd never compare the two again.

In a studio the engineer is a musician's best friend and I cannot remember when I did not meet one who did not try and give the musicians everything they asked for. In a studio if there is a God complex problem, it's the producer (if there is one) who tells you what to do.
The engineer is only concerned about giving whomever is employing them what they want. A live engineer rarely follows that concept other than noise control these days.

This has to be a pisstake. Or you are Foster back under another alias...

 

I vote pisstake.

 

I believe good musicians may need a bad engineer? Maybe yes, maybe not. Some people like to call everything trash.

 

I engineer my own recordings, and yes I hate myself.

 

i say.. more autotune !

 

I wanted to impale myself just yesterday for a bad note, so I had the engineer impaled because he did have the right VST3 to fix it.