There are Mice Making Illegal Rodent Rock in my Studio!

I was sitting on the toilet in my studio last week, doing what people do when they sit on the toilet in a recording studio, reading a music magazine.

And all of a sudden a tiny little mouse scurries under the door, darts across the room and pops under the bathroom sink. Sure enough, when I go check under the sink, there’s a tiny Tom & Jerry mouse hole under there.

The logical part of my brain is thinking, “oh well. Better get a mousetrap and take care of that problem.”

The Pixar loving’ child in me is thinking, “This mouse is making an illegal after-hours record in my studio!”

It’s like Trent Reznor making Pretty Hate Machine during the “downtime” of the studio he worked at as a janitor during the ‘80s. Except, in this case, Trent is the punk rock cousin to Remy from Ratatouille.

Max the Mouse is the front man. He makes melodramatic hardcore synth metal. He plays lead lines by jumping on the keys of the midi controller. He pushes the the faders with its face and ties its tail around the knobs to tweak the outboard gear. Reggie the Rodent is the lead guitar player shredding solos by running down the fretboard.

I can just see the sequel to Ratatouille now.

What frustrates me the most isn’t that they’re squatting in the studio without paying for studio time. No, the most annoying part is that they probably don’t know the first thing about recording!

What’s going to happen is that once they’ve abused their out-of-tune instruments into poorly placed microphones that digitally clip into the DAW, they’ll realize that their music sounds awful.

They’re going to come to me with their tails between their legs and try to get me to mix it for them.

And I’ll have to tell them that there’s nothing I can do to fix such shitty tracks. If you don’t have at least halfway decent tracks, no amount of mixing will magically fix your music. So, unfortunately, you can’t skip the recording part if you want a great mix. Great recordings make the mixing easier.

So far I’ve caught and released three of them with my mouse traps. I don’t know if they were replaceable mice, like the drummer or the bass player, or if one of them was the lead vocalist or what. So I’m not sure about the future of their album.

But I do know that if you’re going to make an album, whether it’s Rodent Rock or Mouse Metal, the best way to make a great mix is to start with great sounding tracks.

If making better sounding tracks is a priority to you, you’ll want to look out for tomorrow’s post.

I’ll be sharing a workshop that’s all about recording great sounding tracks.

You’ll learn to understand signal flow to get cleaner sounds, you’ll get valuable techniques for tracking great guitar sounds, and you’ll also learn how to use your room to your advantage.

Whether you’re recording in a small bedroom or a big project studio, there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of the hidden benefits of using your room acoustics to your advantage to get better sounding tracks.

Best of all, it’s completely free, so all you gotta do is look for the post tomorrow.

See you then,

Björgvin

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