Another Lesson Learned... BEWARE of plugging into the board!

MattinSTL

MattinSTL

Sound Modulator
Did a gig last night... wedding shoot for a friend... they had a band there that I wasn't familiar with, "The Bob Cuban Band"... which as it turns out they were excellent. They had a song a long time ago called The Cheater. They sold something like 3M+ records.

Anyway... I had brought my own mics and was ready to set up for sound at the gig. As the band was setting up I noticed a nice, fat board off to the side I was on... so naturally I asked if I could tap the board to get all the toasts and speeches... they said "no problem" and let me hook in... as they were doing their sound checks I set my levels... during the sound check Bob specifically checked the mic with nothing else going... just the usual "check check check... ch ch CHECK"... and I'm watching my levels on the HD-P2... about 12 db down... everything was all good. When the band set up the instruments I watched the meters again... still all good.

Since I was shooting this event I couldn't watch the HD-P2 and shoot at the same time... but I was supposed to cover it as if there were multiple cameras... I figured no problem since I had my steady, perfect soundtrack. This way we can edit with audience reaction, etc. etc. and the sound will carry all the images.

EDIT on TUESDAY: Well... for my own sanity I have to tell myself that this was somehow an accident. I'm the type of person that wants to believe in the good of people and I have to go with this assumption. I enjoyed the music so much that I don't want to have any negative press out for this band... as I already said, they were superb. At this point I'm just going to have to chalk it up to Murphy's LAW.

Lesson Learned... plugging into a band's sound board is probably only a good idea when you are there to record FOR THAT BAND.

2nd Lesson Learned... that's why as a soundguy I keep my phones on the entire time. I got everything set right and it all sounded great at the beginning... but somebody had a change of heart and didn't mention it to me.

Even though this is basically a favor gig... I'm going to feel like a retard when I talk to this friend next week. I'm sure he'll really appreciate my excuses.

LESSON LEARNED.
 
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Damn, man you got BONED!

Sorry to hear that.

In that kind of situation, it almost would have been better to mic on of the PA speakers surreptitiously and then go into the HD-P2.

Just damn.
 
How frustrating, Matt. That is nasty. Hopefully someone had a camera with on-board microphone recording continuously somewhere in the room. Even if so, an editing nightmare.
 
I feel your pain...I've been burned by a so called "sound guy" who really didn't **** about running a board much less something as "complex" as sending me a feed.

When I got married last year, we eloped to Canada, got a beautiful $1200.00 per night penthouse in a boutique hotel. Found a couple nice ladies to witness and got a marriage commissioner. I had no one to tape so my big plan was to set up the shot, roll tape, and step into the shot and get married. Great plan except for the "roll tape" part. I forgot to hit record...however, I did have wireless to an mp3 recorder...so I got at least audio...good thing my wife is understanding


Jeffro
 
Matt, I'm guessing your friend is going to be more pissed at the band than you...

If I paid a band for my wedding and they purposely screwed over my videographer, thereby screwing me, I'd have a nice talk in a locked room with the guy running the board...

WTF was he worried about? Loss of CD sales?

'The Bob Cuban Band- Live at the Silverberg's Wedding'

This could be end up hurting them in the long run....bad publicity.
 
If I were you I think I'd be shooting an email over to the band asking them how they plan to cover the cost of the videographer? Sure we all know it was just a favor but the video still has a value to it. oh and in case you didnt already have email addresses for the band... http://www.bobcuba.com/contact.htm
 
Dude that's funny... these guys are OLD... like 60's or more... but seriously, they rocked. I haven't been able to find an email... just so you guys know... I had backup, but the point was that my good sound didn't happen... I sort of take pride in getting good sound you know, so that's what pisses me off the most.

If somebody finds out how to contact them, please PM me and do not post it here... I really would like an explanation. If somebody can somehow explain to me that this was an accident I'd be a lot happier about it. The fact that I checked sound twice, when THEY checked sound... is odd... what changed? I controlled the levels... after they went to blowing settings... then suddenly no vocals? What's up with that?

I hope it was an accident... because honestly I loved these guys. They were the highlight of my time... and I felt like somebody broke my heart when I got home and nothing usable... I'll post a clip that will make you laugh your ass off... the synthesiser is incredible... the recording WOULD have been amazing. My brother said that I should just tell my friend that Peter Frampton did all the toasts and speeches.
 
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Well, My rule is.... never leave a recorder unattended. That goes for camera too.
 
Yeah well... when you're doing somebody a favor and you have to run a camera ENG style... and a separate audio recorder... all by yourself... that doesn't work well. As I said... I covered my ass on it... I've got audio... just not the audio I was excited about. I didn't need to have the HD-P2 there, and I trusted that it was working as backup since I set it up properly at the beginning of the night... had I not been telling myself that I would have locked down on the speeches.

Basically you just summed up my whole point of another lesson learned. As a soundguy I would never do a take w/o the headphones on... and I broke my own rule... it's just that I was excited to bring this guy a new level to his work... so I got comfortable when I shouldn't have been. Trust me, I'm plenty pissed at myself in this matter. I had an ORTF set RIGHT THERE with me... but the board feed was so clean that I was thrilled about the audio I heard on the sound check.

Whatever... the point is that you should either monitor the recording the entire time... or isolate your potential for problems away from somebody else's human error... had I set up the ORTF array with the pad as I had planned, this wouldn't have happened. I trusted somebody else... that was the mistake... and yeah, that was mine.
 
My sympathies Matt. Thought I had heard it all but being intentially torpedoed like that takes the cake.

Cheers
 
That sucks Matt. But thanks for sharing. We all tend to be very trusting, Im not saying we shouldnt be. But its a nice wake up - no vested interest then... so cheers for sharing
 
The only thing that could have happened is somebody hit the PFL on the board... or SOLO on the synth track... since I was getting the headphone feed off the board.

The question is... was this an accident or intentional? I can't believe the luck, but I have to tell myself it was an accident. As I'm throwing this together I could have really wowed this dude (and this couple)... that's the only thing I'm really sad about. This is a loss, but not a tragedy.

I'll post some samples here in a minute and you'll get my drift.
 
Well , people that never do anything never make mistakes... It happens.
I've always found that non-pros always fiddle with the board. Maybe shouldn't have used headphone out...... maybe a aux or submix if it had it. Even still, I've seen greedy little hands turning the knobs during a show, ringing to feedback.... makes it hard to get a consistent feed.
 
My point is that these guys have been a "real band" for about 30+ years... so I'm pretty sure they should know what they are doing. They said that the ONLY feed they would give me was the headphone out... I said, "heck yeah! thanks!"

Then I asked if they minded me doing a sound check as they were getting things started... this clip is a little low... which reflects my >12db safety... AND after they got things going I came back to fix it again... and I checked it again and again after that to monitor levels... but I didn't check it with headphones again! Yes, my bad.

Listen to this and you tell me if you would have expected any problems ;-)

This is a slice of my initial sound check and recording.

We have a saying in shooting eng doc stuff... "If you didn't get it then it never happened"... and what that means is if you miss a reality moment you can seriously drive yourself nuts worrying about it... I've still GOT audio... but it's just a bummer. I love surpassing expectations... and I HATE giving excuses.

Give that a listen and you'll see why I was so bummed... when I say "what changed? what happened?"... it's actually simple. If you know mixers then you know PFL and SOLO... that's what happened.
 
Hence my point... that's the music right after the sound check. If you listen to that you think I know what I'm doing... then 10 minutes later it's blowing and clipping big time... so I fix it... by then the speeches start... I check it again, but this time just by looking at the levels... I think I have it fixed yet again, but I get home and all I have is synth.

Bummer. It would have been fun to hand over this video with that fidelity throughout... including the speeches by the soft-voiced old men... know what I mean? Being into sound I really would have enjoyed giving these people something they aren't used to... and never expected. Instead they get built-in cam mic audio... which is, in this case, acceptable... but yeah, listening to that, it could have been something really exceptional for these people.

That's why I said I had no fear of leaving the recorder unattended... that clip sounds pretty good to me also... too bad it didn't stay like that through the time I couldn't watch it. (MY settings weren't the problem... dat is the dee point my friend.)
 
Weird....

....when you look these guys up on the internet, you get three young guys from Scotland.
 
It's "The Bob Cuban Band"... not Bob Cuba.

This band did a song that you can hear played on every oldies station in the country every single day... it's called "The Cheater".

Ironically... they did almost all genres of music through the night, and it all sounded incredible... I mean INCREDIBLE. If you listened to that little clip then imagine that exact same level of skill but with Billy Joel... or CNC Music Factory... or BTO... or anything anybody asked for... it was amazing.

Even though I'm totally bummed on how the recording went for me... I can't really say anything bad about the band. It was amazing how well they played anything that anybody requested... even down to imitating the voices of the real singers.

Trust me, had this gone the way I wanted it to I'd have been posting their music in this forum along with some frame grabs... just to show how amazing it was that what you heard was coming from what you see.
 
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