What are the typical working hours for a recording engineer in, say a studio that does mostly music, or a studio that does mostly commercial work?
Comments
It really all depends on the studio and how many other engineers
It really all depends on the studio and how many other engineers are working there.
A lot of engineers like myself are freelance engineers, we don't necessarly work in just one studio..I go where my clients will be served best based on budget and requirements. That being said a freelance engineer can work anywhere from 20-70 or more hours a week.
A "house" engineer in a studio will work from 20-50 hrs a week depending on how busy the studio is and how many other engineers work there, but these day's there's so many owner/operator studios and freelance engineers that it's hard for a person to work in one studio...
The main thing about recording and recording studios is that not
The main thing about recording and recording studios is that nothing is really typical. You spend the hours to do what needs to be done based on the client and your ability to able to serve their needs. What is typical is that the more money you make off the project and/or the more you enjoy working on the project has much more to do with the amount and length of hours you put into a typical day for that specific project. If you own or are a freelance engineer paid by salary or per project, you are very likely to work many more hours per day and per week then an employee who is not salary and subject to labor laws.
My maximum has been during my assisntant days as a straight 23 h
My maximum has been during my assisntant days as a straight 23 hours...
Now operating my own studio I try to get the work when it comes, and some clients of mine only have time to work in week ends or at night, but it's not the rule, as I almost always work during the day; my "scheduled" hours are 9 am to 8 pm, with enough flexibility to go one hour or more if sometimes a session lasts longer (and it happens often); sometimes I have a 12 hours day, sometimes 6.
I wonder how those "round the clock" engineers or producers deal with their private life or family, we all know that this isn't a typical 9 to 5 job, but I think you have to choose whether you have a private life or if this work is your life.
L.G.
I don't do that 24 hour thing anymore...made too many mistakes o
I don't do that 24 hour thing anymore...made too many mistakes on my part in tracking and/or playing.
I take supper breaks away from the studio...if need be, I'll throw everyone out for a couple of hours and take a nap...
Getting old sucks, but its a great teacher as to how to take care of yourself...and if you're not alert to everything going on, mistakes will happen.
The longest run I've had was 36 or so hours with a couple of hou
The longest run I've had was 36 or so hours with a couple of hours for a nap...
I assisted a 12 hour session which was a 13 hour session for me because I was there before and after, then after that I engineered a session untill about 7 or so AM, then napped till 9:00...then got up for that day's 12 hour session which I was assisting.
It was hard but I made it through it. I'll never do it again though...that's just too much and I don't like working when I'm not at my best..
Midlandmorgan wrote: I don't do that 24 hour thing anymore...mad
Midlandmorgan wrote: I don't do that 24 hour thing anymore...made too many mistakes on my part in tracking and/or playing.
Amen to that. Been there, done that, fixing IBM mainframes in years past.
No more of that.
:D
What I do NOT understand, is why the medical community insists on running their residents in this ridiculous no-sleep mode. The last thing I want working on me is a punchy, sleep-deprived MD.
For the record, nearly 100% of the major national disasters such as the NY Power Outage, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, all happened on graveyard shift...
zim wrote: this wasn't for audio, but... i did a school project
zim wrote: this wasn't for audio, but...
i did a school project, writing a compiler, in about 110-115 straight hours. damn thing was, after i finished it, took me some 12 hours to fall asleep.
i think we have a winner ladies and gentlemen....LOL
damn, that's alot. i try to pace myself these days but back when i was starting out, i wouldn't turn down any gig.
As a mixer, the longest I stayed in the studio was 7 days. I did
As a mixer, the longest I stayed in the studio was 7 days. I did not leave for 7 days. I ate at the console, took naps on the couch and showered in a nasty basement of the building. At one point I fell asleep on the console while riding some faders. woke up and the tape machine was still looping the song. the longest without sleep was 50 hours as an assistant. funny assistant story actually. The client was mixing an entire album over 3 days, we just got the first panasonic dat machine and I was playing around with it during the session and decided to record the mixes to dat as well as the half inch so I could compare them later and see how this new format sounded. anyway, we were printing to these oversized 14 inch reels of half inch and all we had were 12" takeup reels. somewhere around the 36 hour mark, i'm spooling mixes onto different reels and the tape is winding and I look down and i'm spooling a 14 inch reel to a 12 inch reel and wasn't paying attention and noticed that the tape had wound about 1 1/2"'s beyond the edge of the 12" reel. I hit stop on the machine, the tape dropped and wrapped around the hub and mangled a few songs then snapped. the client didn't notice that this had happened and were still mixing away. it was so badly mangled that the only thing I could do was take a razor blade and start cutting away tape. Assesed the damage and realized that 3 songs were gone. I convined the engineer that he should get some sleep cause he looked like hell and they agreed to take a break for 4 hours. they left and I remembered that I was recording the mixes to dat and decided to dump the mixes from dat to some new half inch. Never told the client. they came back after 4 hours as I was cleaning up and we finished the album.
turtletone wrote: As a mixer, the longest I stayed in the studio
turtletone wrote: As a mixer, the longest I stayed in the studio was 7 days. I did not leave for 7 days. I ate at the console, took naps on the couch and showered in a nasty basement of the building. At one point I fell asleep on the console while riding some faders. woke up and the tape machine was still looping the song. the longest without sleep was 50 hours as an assistant. funny assistant story actually. The client was mixing an entire album over 3 days, we just got the first panasonic dat machine and I was playing around with it during the session and decided to record the mixes to dat as well as the half inch so I could compare them later and see how this new format sounded. anyway, we were printing to these oversized 14 inch reels of half inch and all we had were 12" takeup reels. somewhere around the 36 hour mark, i'm spooling mixes onto different reels and the tape is winding and I look down and i'm spooling a 14 inch reel to a 12 inch reel and wasn't paying attention and noticed that the tape had wound about 1 1/2"'s beyond the edge of the 12" reel. I hit stop on the machine, the tape dropped and wrapped around the hub and mangled a few songs then snapped. the client didn't notice that this had happened and were still mixing away. it was so badly mangled that the only thing I could do was take a razor blade and start cutting away tape. Assesed the damage and realized that 3 songs were gone. I convined the engineer that he should get some sleep cause he looked like hell and they agreed to take a break for 4 hours. they left and I remembered that I was recording the mixes to dat and decided to dump the mixes from dat to some new half inch. Never told the client. they came back after 4 hours as I was cleaning up and we finished the album.
now that was a close call.....
i remember mixing this country artist back in the eighties. we had a scully multitrack. as i was rewinding the tape the brakes decided to kick in and the tape snapped. the client actually started to cry. i felt so bad but it was no one's fault. luckily it snapped in the chorus of the song. we rolled in another 24 track bounced another chorus over and spliced it in. it all worked out fine in the end but what a nightmare....... the old days of really cut and pasting, god i miss them.
frank
My worst damage due to a serie of very long days (or should I sa
My worst damage due to a serie of very long days (or should I say nights?) was when after an 14 or 15 hours session with a young rock band I noticed that a noise was on the tape just before the song started but just on the Keys channels, so I asked the first engineer if I could erase it (I was assisting and tape-op ing for him who BTW was american) so as he said "OK, go ahead" I rewound the tape on the Mitsubishi X850 (can you belive we had one of those dinosaurs in the studio in late 1999 :shock: ?) and got to the start of the song, but since we were recording the whole band at once (32 full tracks) I hit record and you cannot imagine what my feelings were when I remebered I didn't set on record safe all of the other tracks, so when all of the 32 red lights went on on my remote and I discovered I had erased the first 2 seconds of drums, bass, and gtrs I thought I just flushed my whole career...Luckily enough the X850 was so old and was about to be retired (I wonder why that engineer chose to record on that with all of the other machines we had in the studio) and during the listening of the recorded take we discovered it was plagued with digital drops (that was in fact the last gig for that machine) so the band got in again and recorded another take, which was even better than the previous; in the end everything went well and I'm still alive :lol: , but those 32 red light still come up in my nightmares every once in a while :shock: .
L.G.
Michael Fossenkemper, post: 94152 wrote: As a mixer, the longest
Michael Fossenkemper, post: 94152 wrote: As a mixer, the longest I stayed in the studio was 7 days. I did not leave for 7 days. I ate at the console, took naps on the couch and showered in a nasty basement of the building. At one point I fell asleep on the console while riding some faders. woke up and the tape machine was still looping the song. the longest without sleep was 50 hours as an assistant. funny assistant story actually. The client was mixing an entire album over 3 days, we just got the first panasonic dat machine and I was playing around with it during the session and decided to record the mixes to dat as well as the half inch so I could compare them later and see how this new format sounded. anyway, we were printing to these oversized 14 inch reels of half inch and all we had were 12" takeup reels. somewhere around the 36 hour mark, i'm spooling mixes onto different reels and the tape is winding and I look down and i'm spooling a 14 inch reel to a 12 inch reel and wasn't paying attention and noticed that the tape had wound about 1 1/2"'s beyond the edge of the 12" reel. I hit stop on the machine, the tape dropped and wrapped around the hub and mangled a few songs then snapped. the client didn't notice that this had happened and were still mixing away. it was so badly mangled that the only thing I could do was take a razor blade and start cutting away tape. Assesed the damage and realized that 3 songs were gone. I convined the engineer that he should get some sleep cause he looked like hell and they agreed to take a break for 4 hours. they left and I remembered that I was recording the mixes to dat and decided to dump the mixes from dat to some new half inch. Never told the client. they came back after 4 hours as I was cleaning up and we finished the album.
And for some archive history of the week,
Good story Michael!
I don't know about others but it is dependent on what times the
I don't know about others but it is dependent on what times the client(s) want to work. Seems at times like our mastering facility is 24/7. Most days for me start at 5:30 am and end about 10 pm at night but that is because I have my mastering studio as part of my house and it is hard to get away from work. Yesterday I did a mastering session that started at 12 noon and ended at 6 pm. The day before I did an NPR show in the afternoon and a was repairing some equipment in the morning and the evening. Today I have a mastering session starting at 1:00 pm and this morning I have to go pick up a replacement printer for our office at a site 20 miles from our studio. The time to work varies a lot. Some studios run around the clock some work a "normal 9 to 6 pm schedule. It depends on the owner, the clientel and the work demands. You have to, as my father use to say, "make hay while the sun shines" or "if there is work coming in the door then get it done because you never know when it will stop"
The longest day I have had was 13 hours strait without a break. The all night session are the hardest and one client came in at 10 and we had breakfast at McDs the next morning after working the whole night.
There are really no set hours.
Our posted hours are 9-6 M - F with evening and weekends by appointment.
Hope this helps....