A Case-Study in Murphy's Law: the Pink Flag Session

Last Sunday our most recent session was recorded. The band, Pink Flag, performed wonderfully, even without vocal monitors; a minor oversight on our part. The events leading up to the session didn't go so smoothly. The day started off normally enough, I was riding my bike to the coffee shop to enjoy a caffeinated beverage and learn how to use my new digital camera which I had bought the previous day when I heard our esteemed local music czar Stevo shouting "Phil Collins" at the top of his lungs from a pickup truck. I decided I should skip the coffee shop and head straight to the studio to help in the loading and unloading of equipment.

After taking our recording equipment across campus to Caldwell hall we were greeted by locked doors. This was only a minor setback as a quick call to the campus police got is in within a half hour. We offloaded the equipment, and began hooking things up. It became apparent quickly that the Mackie Onyx firewire interface would not work with my linux notebook, yet another minor setback. Luckily we had a macbook at our disposal with which to do the recording.

Upon Connecting the vocal microphones and we noticed an annoying click noise in the headphones. It became apparent that the noise gate feature in the brand new vocal compressor was, ironically, making noise. We'd have to do without the vocal compression.

It was when noticed that our drum mic kit was missing that the shit really hit the fan. After searching the Caldwell lounge, and the Truck we used to transport the equipment, we frantically rushed back to Witherspoon, but alas, our mics were nowhere to be found. This was a major setback. We realized that our only option was to, as quickly as possible, procure replacement microphones. We rushed to my apartment, and got in my weathered, but mostly functional 1994 BMW 525i and began our journey to Sam Ash, leaving behind a cloud of tire smoke. In a mere 14 minutes we made it across Raleigh to the music store where a Samson drum mic kit was waiting for us at the front desk, after a few minutes we made our criminally fast journey back to campus where the band and our recording engineer were patiently waiting; disaster narrowly, albeit expensively averted.

Upon our return, our recording engineer, JC set up our brand new drum mics, and the rest of the session went without a hitch. After the session was over and we were returning to the studio we noticed our old drum mic kit on a chair in the lobby.