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There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make som

There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. They'd inevitably make some ill-posed request, of the familiar "it needs to pop more!" variety. The wily engineer directs them towards a large and important looking knob, telling them that they are free to dial in as much "pop" as they think the track needs. Of course, they screw up their faces and make minute adjustments, and eventually announce that the sound is now perfect. You all know the punchline. The twist is that every sound engineer also has stories of doing the same thing to themselves by accident.

bernardom 12y ago
One of the famous tricks in ops consulting is to disconnect the knobs. Shift A likes this oven temperature, shift B likes that oven temperature, etc.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  One of the aircraft in the US Presidential fleet, SAM 970, had a fake temperature control knob on the conference room desk. It was installed for then-VP Johnson, who was something of a control freak and who kept coming up to the cockpit to fiddle with the temperature. (The knob actually sent a signal to the pilots, who would adjust the temperature in the general direction that LBJ had tried to adjust it.) Source: learned during my employee training at The Museum of Flight. http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-120sam-970-air-force-one http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-12...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Well, that's not exactly fake, it just has a human in the circuit.
    - larrys 12y ago
      Not to mention that obviously Johnson was aware of how the knob worked. And I find that it's funny that people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking and should or would play games with him. "Oh there he goes again" type of thing. I don't think you get to be in a position of being able to fly a President or Vice President of any country by having an attitude and not being fully respectful of those in power.
      - lotharbot 12y ago
        > "Johnson was aware of how the knob worked" No, he wasn't. It was intentionally put in place to deceive him, and the deception worked. > "people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking" Most VPs could get the temperature adjusted to their liking. Johnson was a special kind of control freak. He liked to make people uncomfortable by making it extra hot, extra cold, walking around naked (it's why he replaced some of the solid bulkheads with transparent plexiglas), raising the hydraulic table and his hydraulic chair so high that people at the table looked like children who could barely reach, and so on. The Air Force crew got sick of his being in the cockpit, and they didn't much care for those antics, so they gave him the fake temperature control. No, he didn't know how it worked, and no, they didn't make it as hot or as cold as he wanted it to be, they just went along enough to keep him from making trouble for them. > "not being fully respectful of those in power" How many Air Force Colonels do you know? They'll give a guy the respect he earns, but they're not known for their willingness to defer to LBJ-style bullshit. [One of our volunteers was the plane's crew chief for most of a decade. We got a lot of interesting inside stories on slow days.]
        digi_owl 12y ago
        Seem to recall similar claims about Churchill being a meddler, that the generals got out of their hair by giving him the SAS to play with.
        larrys 12y ago
        This book backs up what you are saying (in part): https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Lyndon+johnson+temperature+control+air+force+one&source=bl&ots=WjUdxXRzPl&sig=_134_e5Xcd4Cq1ddSLTHFpGednk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iSr2VOiYLNeUsQTKi4CQBw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Lyndon%20johnson%20temperature%20control%20air%20force%20one&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=P... However as another commenter pointed out the "phony" switch worked. Plus according the the above book not only did the crewman adjust the temperature when he saw the light flash, but Johnson felt the temperature was adjusted. The idea here is not whether or not Johnson understood the technology. But I find it hard to believe that a man who is vice President of the United States is so easily duped. He asked for a switch to adjust temperature and he got a switch that could adjust temperature. Despite the fact that "one of our volunteers was the plane's crew chief" do you think that it's at all possible that the story was somewhat embellished for effect? (Not saying it was but we are not talking about sworn court testimony when someone relates something that happened many years prior, right?)
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Does anybody ever figure out the trick and complain about being gaslighted (gaslit?)?
madaxe_again 12y ago
That sounds like web development. If I had a penny for every time we're asked for more zazz, pop, pow, shazam, zing, shizzle, pizazz, "something", cowbell... I'd use them to bury the meddling fuckers who ask for this shit.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  flaming skull gifs.
- jnem 12y ago
  The words I dread the most are, "it needs more wow factor". I always ask, "great, can yoh show me what that looks like?"
- danielweber 12y ago
  http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell "Could you make the design pop a bit more?"
  - Alex3917 12y ago
    I think the key line here is: > I also don't know how to design websites based on someone else's feelings. That's what design is, so if you're not doing that then you're probably not a designer.
    - nickbauman 12y ago
      Not even wrong. Design is defined by making studied choices within the constraints of the need or purpose. Rarely are these emotional, and when they are it is merely because of a successful connection between the people and the ideas that the purpose of the design created. The emotion is a side effect of good design, not the point. Only Marketing people see design as "emotional" because they see the world through a lens of shaping human behavior through our primate genetic programming.
      - Alex3917 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
inthewoods 12y ago
So right on about doing the same thing by accident. Early in my life, I programmed synths in a studio - and I practiced a variation on this. I would listen to what sound they wanted, then I would play them something that was likely pretty close. They they would complain about it not being quite right, so I would play 3 or 4 different sounds that I knew were completely wrong, then return to the first sound. To which they would invariably say "yeah that one - that's perfect!"
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  >So right on about doing the same thing by accident. There is nothing that can describe the mixture of confusion, shame, and artistic/technical self-doubt that you feel upon realising that the compressor you just spent half an hour lovingly tweaking, to seemingly great effect, is bypassed.
  - inthewoods 12y ago
    Yes! Perfectly captured.
- dilap 12y ago
  I could believe that the original sound actually does seem different after the 3 or 4 other sounds were priming the brain. Our senses don't operate in isolation. Just think of #thedress, or a note played in isolation vs played after a sequence of notes in a key in which the original note does not appear.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    And this kind of stuff is what MP3 etc are built around. But try to get that past the -philes...
seertaak 12y ago
> There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. There are, but equally, there are tales of real genius among record company bosses too. Here's an awesome example, which I read in soundonsound a few years ago. From an interview with Giorgio Moroder on how he created the disco single "Love To Love You Baby", and the instrumental role of record boss Neil Bogart: > This then provided us with a four‑minute, metronomic beat that had a kind of groove going on, and that really was the origin of drum machines, and the thing that enabled us to stretch it to a 16‑minute version, kept in perfect time, when Neil Bogart requested it.” > According to Moroder, it was on a Friday that Bogart called him, at about three o'clock in the morning LA time, ecstatic over the number and insisting that it should be extended to cover the entire side of an album. Bellotte fills in the details... > "Bogart was having an orgy at his house, there was a lot of coke going on and, to use his own language, they were all 'f*cking to this track' and the crowd there had him replay the song over and over again. Suddenly, a 'Eureka' thought hit Bogart; he recalled 'In‑A‑Gadda‑Da‑Vida' by Iron Butterfly, which had taken up a whole side. In a flash he came up with the idea of doing the same with 'Love To Love You Baby' and he needed it within a week. So we just proceeded to get down to it on that weekend, and since things always went very fast back then, within the week he had what he wanted.” .... > The last song on the album, recorded in two to three hours and designed to transport listeners into the future, 'I Feel Love' would quickly become a gay anthem, not least because of Neil Bogart's astute marketing, while topping the UK singles chart and climbing to number six on the Billboard Hot 100. However, it was considered to be nothing more than a filler when the record was finished. >"We never thought of it as a stand-out track, we just thought it part of a good album,” Bellotte comments. "However, when we sent the album off to LA, Neil Bogart called back straight away and said, 'The single is 'I Feel Love', it needs three edits and these are the edits.' Doing these immediately improved the fluidity of the track no end. He was that kind of a record man. And, of course, those edits no longer exist, because they would have been sliced from the quarter‑inch master and simply thrown on the floor. That's how it was then. If you ever did any editing, the floor was cluttered with all the stuff you didn't use. We never saved anything, it was just discarded. However, because of his uncanny feel for the music, Bogart knew exactly where the track should be edited and, of course, the improvement was fantastic.” Crazy story, isn't it?
jimbokun 12y ago
Which I'm sure is the inspiration for the "More cowbell!" skit. http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145 http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145

bernardom 12y ago

One of the famous tricks in ops consulting is to disconnect the knobs. Shift A likes this oven temperature, shift B likes that oven temperature, etc.

lotharbot 12y ago
One of the aircraft in the US Presidential fleet, SAM 970, had a fake temperature control knob on the conference room desk. It was installed for then-VP Johnson, who was something of a control freak and who kept coming up to the cockpit to fiddle with the temperature. (The knob actually sent a signal to the pilots, who would adjust the temperature in the general direction that LBJ had tried to adjust it.) Source: learned during my employee training at The Museum of Flight. http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-120sam-970-air-force-one http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-vc-137b-707-12...
- icebraining 12y ago
  Well, that's not exactly fake, it just has a human in the circuit.
  - larrys 12y ago
    Not to mention that obviously Johnson was aware of how the knob worked. And I find that it's funny that people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking and should or would play games with him. "Oh there he goes again" type of thing. I don't think you get to be in a position of being able to fly a President or Vice President of any country by having an attitude and not being fully respectful of those in power.
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      > "Johnson was aware of how the knob worked" No, he wasn't. It was intentionally put in place to deceive him, and the deception worked. > "people think that a Vice President can't get temperature adjusted to his liking" Most VPs could get the temperature adjusted to their liking. Johnson was a special kind of control freak. He liked to make people uncomfortable by making it extra hot, extra cold, walking around naked (it's why he replaced some of the solid bulkheads with transparent plexiglas), raising the hydraulic table and his hydraulic chair so high that people at the table looked like children who could barely reach, and so on. The Air Force crew got sick of his being in the cockpit, and they didn't much care for those antics, so they gave him the fake temperature control. No, he didn't know how it worked, and no, they didn't make it as hot or as cold as he wanted it to be, they just went along enough to keep him from making trouble for them. > "not being fully respectful of those in power" How many Air Force Colonels do you know? They'll give a guy the respect he earns, but they're not known for their willingness to defer to LBJ-style bullshit. [One of our volunteers was the plane's crew chief for most of a decade. We got a lot of interesting inside stories on slow days.]
      - digi_owl 12y ago
        Seem to recall similar claims about Churchill being a meddler, that the generals got out of their hair by giving him the SAS to play with.
      - larrys 12y ago
        This book backs up what you are saying (in part): https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Lyndon+johnson+temperature+control+air+force+one&source=bl&ots=WjUdxXRzPl&sig=_134_e5Xcd4Cq1ddSLTHFpGednk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iSr2VOiYLNeUsQTKi4CQBw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Lyndon%20johnson%20temperature%20control%20air%20force%20one&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=qtCRa7bCz3oC&pg=PA13&lpg=P... However as another commenter pointed out the "phony" switch worked. Plus according the the above book not only did the crewman adjust the temperature when he saw the light flash, but Johnson felt the temperature was adjusted. The idea here is not whether or not Johnson understood the technology. But I find it hard to believe that a man who is vice President of the United States is so easily duped. He asked for a switch to adjust temperature and he got a switch that could adjust temperature. Despite the fact that "one of our volunteers was the plane's crew chief" do you think that it's at all possible that the story was somewhat embellished for effect? (Not saying it was but we are not talking about sworn court testimony when someone relates something that happened many years prior, right?)
nitrogen 12y ago
Does anybody ever figure out the trick and complain about being gaslighted (gaslit?)?

madaxe_again 12y ago

That sounds like web development. If I had a penny for every time we're asked for more zazz, pop, pow, shazam, zing, shizzle, pizazz, "something", cowbell... I'd use them to bury the meddling fuckers who ask for this shit.

throwawayaway 12y ago
flaming skull gifs.
jnem 12y ago
The words I dread the most are, "it needs more wow factor". I always ask, "great, can yoh show me what that looks like?"
danielweber 12y ago
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell "Could you make the design pop a bit more?"
- Alex3917 12y ago
  I think the key line here is: > I also don't know how to design websites based on someone else's feelings. That's what design is, so if you're not doing that then you're probably not a designer.
  - nickbauman 12y ago
    Not even wrong. Design is defined by making studied choices within the constraints of the need or purpose. Rarely are these emotional, and when they are it is merely because of a successful connection between the people and the ideas that the purpose of the design created. The emotion is a side effect of good design, not the point. Only Marketing people see design as "emotional" because they see the world through a lens of shaping human behavior through our primate genetic programming.
    - Alex3917 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

inthewoods 12y ago

So right on about doing the same thing by accident. Early in my life, I programmed synths in a studio - and I practiced a variation on this. I would listen to what sound they wanted, then I would play them something that was likely pretty close. They they would complain about it not being quite right, so I would play 3 or 4 different sounds that I knew were completely wrong, then return to the first sound. To which they would invariably say "yeah that one - that's perfect!"

JonnieCache 12y ago
>So right on about doing the same thing by accident. There is nothing that can describe the mixture of confusion, shame, and artistic/technical self-doubt that you feel upon realising that the compressor you just spent half an hour lovingly tweaking, to seemingly great effect, is bypassed.
- inthewoods 12y ago
  Yes! Perfectly captured.
dilap 12y ago
I could believe that the original sound actually does seem different after the 3 or 4 other sounds were priming the brain. Our senses don't operate in isolation. Just think of #thedress, or a note played in isolation vs played after a sequence of notes in a key in which the original note does not appear.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  And this kind of stuff is what MP3 etc are built around. But try to get that past the -philes...

seertaak 12y ago

> There are countless fables about record company executives dropping by the mastering studio to hear the new hit in its finished form. There are, but equally, there are tales of real genius among record company bosses too. Here's an awesome example, which I read in soundonsound a few years ago. From an interview with Giorgio Moroder on how he created the disco single "Love To Love You Baby", and the instrumental role of record boss Neil Bogart: > This then provided us with a four‑minute, metronomic beat that had a kind of groove going on, and that really was the origin of drum machines, and the thing that enabled us to stretch it to a 16‑minute version, kept in perfect time, when Neil Bogart requested it.” > According to Moroder, it was on a Friday that Bogart called him, at about three o'clock in the morning LA time, ecstatic over the number and insisting that it should be extended to cover the entire side of an album. Bellotte fills in the details... > "Bogart was having an orgy at his house, there was a lot of coke going on and, to use his own language, they were all 'f*cking to this track' and the crowd there had him replay the song over and over again. Suddenly, a 'Eureka' thought hit Bogart; he recalled 'In‑A‑Gadda‑Da‑Vida' by Iron Butterfly, which had taken up a whole side. In a flash he came up with the idea of doing the same with 'Love To Love You Baby' and he needed it within a week. So we just proceeded to get down to it on that weekend, and since things always went very fast back then, within the week he had what he wanted.” .... > The last song on the album, recorded in two to three hours and designed to transport listeners into the future, 'I Feel Love' would quickly become a gay anthem, not least because of Neil Bogart's astute marketing, while topping the UK singles chart and climbing to number six on the Billboard Hot 100. However, it was considered to be nothing more than a filler when the record was finished. >"We never thought of it as a stand-out track, we just thought it part of a good album,” Bellotte comments. "However, when we sent the album off to LA, Neil Bogart called back straight away and said, 'The single is 'I Feel Love', it needs three edits and these are the edits.' Doing these immediately improved the fluidity of the track no end. He was that kind of a record man. And, of course, those edits no longer exist, because they would have been sliced from the quarter‑inch master and simply thrown on the floor. That's how it was then. If you ever did any editing, the floor was cluttered with all the stuff you didn't use. We never saved anything, it was just discarded. However, because of his uncanny feel for the music, Bogart knew exactly where the track should be edited and, of course, the improvement was fantastic.” Crazy story, isn't it?

jimbokun 12y ago

Which I'm sure is the inspiration for the "More cowbell!" skit. http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145 http://www.hulu.com/watch/536145