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Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Things I Heard John Macy Say In The Studio

We recorded Beautiful Empty with my good friend John Macy at his fabulously relaxed and beautiful sounding studio, Macy Sound Studios.

John Macy recording John Common and Blinding Flashes of Light

Anyway, I've known John for a long time... and one of the many things I love about him is his uncanny ability to drop the perfectly hilarious phrase at the right moment. Below are a list of things I heard John during the course of tracking and mixing Beautiful Empty. (In typical Macy fashion, he gave other people credit for a lot of these... but to me, they're Macy's sayings.)

As a side note, during the making of Beautiful Empty John and I invented what is quite possibly the most perfect studio drink ever created: The Jameson Slushy. Invented might be the wrong word. Maybe we just chanced upon it... perhaps it was merely a discovery. Maybe it always existed out there, lurking in the mysterious ether, waiting to be found. But we found it.

THE JAMESON SLUSHY
Directions:
Find a tall, relatively clean glass.
Fill it with Sonic Ice. (Yes -- a bag of ice you drove to buy from Sonic. It's a bag of impossibly round little snowy ice balls that melt at the perfect rate. Just trust me.)
Fill glass with Sonic Ice.
Crack open a fresh bottle of Jameson.
Pour until the elixir is 1/8" from glass rim.
Dive in.
Now get back to work.

John Macy's Studio Sayings
- "Well that wasn't far from close."
- "Let's punch in at bar 1."
- "Everything sounded good up until bar one."
- "Other than style and delivery, that was a great take."
- "Is the click speeding up?"
- "Anything other than a major chord is a 'shit chord'." (this is from a country legend, he says)
- "The trick is to go for spontaneity. No matter how long it takes."
- "Music is about selling emotion. And there's no emotion on a grid." -- Michael Wagner, metal producer as channeled by Macy
- "Perfect equates to shit." Cowboy Jack Clement as channeled by Macy
- "The three R's of recording: reflect, repent and reboot."
- "That's right out of the book of wrong." from Michael Rhodes (bass player) or "That sounds like it's been sauteed up in a bunch of wrong sauce."
- "That guy lives in his own world... and it's not crowded. - Michael Rhodes
- "i just found this new signal path for a harsh vocal. it's like pouring cream all over it man."
- "I play bad, but my tone is terrible...."
- "Sounded great right up to where you started playing..."
- "Hey, i'm slow but I do poor work...."
- "You count it in and I'll meet you at the fade."
- "This mix is getting gooshy and cool."

There are many, many, many more. These are just the ones I was able to write down. Please comment and add your own favorite studio sayings!

~John Common

Posted By John Common at: 10:07 am 1 Comment

Melissa Axel

July 25th, 2010 10:56 pm

Ha! These are great. We've been keeping a notebook of studio hilarity too, so fun to go back & try to guess what inspired some of the most absurd quotes!

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Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Things I Heard John Macy Say In The Studio

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