Managing Expectations

Last week I was hired by a band to record a demo for them. I spoke with them so that I knew what their goals were, and I communicated what my fees would be for the service of recording them. Their initial goals were that they wanted to record 5 songs to aid in the search of a singer for their group. I inquired about the bands sound, how many people were playing, and what instrumentation was involved. After receiving the answers to these questions, I decided what the best way to capture the music would be.

I arrived at the bands practice space with recording gear in hand, and the recording session went fine. They did lean a little on the long side and it took them about 5 hours to record five songs. In between songs, I let them listen to what had been captured and the overall response was quite positive. The recording session was complete at 1am and I headed home to get some sleep while they went out on the town to celebrate.

The next day I started to receive pressuring phone calls asking when a mix would be available. I looked at my schedule and decided that I would have time to have a rough mix by the following Tuesday evening. I made sure to tell them that the process would be that I supply them with a mix, and they should then give me notes on what their thoughts were about the songs.

I rushed through the first set of mixes and I borrowed heavily from track to track. Usually, I treat each song as its own, but in this case there was no time to approach the project in that manner. Overall, I spent 5 hours coming up with the first draft of mixes which means that I like the band was averaging one song per hour.

I was able to deliver on my original deadline and handed off three disks for the band to listen to on Tuesday evening. I told them that they were a little bass heavy and their original response was that they understood that they were just a rough draft. At this point I thought that they were happy with the way that it sounded. I was only able to get the response from the band member who I gave the mixes to. I sat down and listened to each song with him and I was able to get his initial reaction as to how everything sounded from his stereo. He walked me out to my car and heard more of the songs from my car stereo where he replied that it sounded great in the car.

I started to worry a little when he mentioned that he knew that the guitar player wanted to re-record some of his guitar parts. In an effort to not get worried, I told him that the band should listen together and make decisions on what specific things were good and what needed to be changed.

My phone rang 3 or 4 hours later and it was my friend giving me the bad news. The guitar player wanted me to record all of his guitar tracks again. When I asked the reason the response was that he didn't sound the way he is used to sounding. I assumed this was a volume or mix issue. I knew that I had compressed the guitars more than I wanted to, and they weren't the focus of the mixes. The musician uses a large number of effects when he plays, and his set up included a full pedal board and a multiprocessor. Without having a master volume or a compressor to control all of these effects, there was a significant level change when distortions were cycled through or when simply changing between different effects. I hadn't had the chance to use automation in the mix, and therefore I leveled out the guitars with compression.

The drummer had supplied the following feedback for the session..."I want to tweak the drum sound some." As you can no doubt tell, these guys are quite articulate. When I asked more questions about that situation I got no response.

I do realize that the topic of this post is managing expectations. I also realize that at this point you are probably wondering where I am going with this. Here it is. How would you have handled the situation differently? I know that one thing I would have done is make sure that I have the contact info. for all members so that I could talk to them directly instead of through one individual. What else would you change?