C27: Confessions of a Studio Owner:  Kitchen Pickers Bigger Knickers

Not long ago, a band entered Compressor Towers with a female lead singer. She arrived fit, healthy and pretty….let me put it like this….you wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers!

One month and an album later, she left pale, lifeless and 20 lbs heavier. She would often knock on the door and ask for Nurofen as she always seemed to have a headache (I have a glass pepper grinder on my desk full of them which I use to grate on my cornflakes.)

To put it bluntly, there’s a lot of sitting around making an album….so she sat and gorged on chocolate for the month whilst watching movies. She entered as a fantasy and left a vision of a belly dancers nightmare!

Talking of weight, the Compressor isn’t as young as he was once and it would be fair to say that my chest had slipped a little. In fact, I would say that I had become very, very large. To give you an idea of how large…..I was lying on my back on my bed….when my wife (who at the time was at a rather unethical angle clock cleaning) stunned me into silence when she declared that she couldn’t see my face. I’ll let you join the dots.

One of the upsides of being a studio manager is that you get time to research things. So I set about researching how and what I should do to lose weight and after about 6 months of research I was stunned what I learned. To put it in simple terms, I lost 50 lbs.

As always the Compressor is here to serve, so if you’re gut has got to the point where you can’t see your willy …then read on.

Here are the Compressors 7 Golden Rules to Fat Burning.

RULE 1: Never allow your daily calorie intake to be less than 80% of total daily energy expenditure (TDEE)

Guess what everyone does to lose weight…..they stop eating!! WRONG. You need to know how many calories you burn every day….this is easy to work out. Did you know that you have a daily calorie rate that you need to operate (called your Basal Metabolic Rate) and this is defined by your lean body mass ie your weight minus your fat. Did you also know that we are completely programmed to hang onto our fat at all costs? If you drop below 80% of your TDEE your body will store the fat and burn the muscle…invoking something called STARVATION MODE. Check your lean body mass once a week on a set of Tanita fat scales (from Boots.) If your LBM is heading South….you have a problem and you’ll bounce back with change!

RULE 2: Never aim to lose more than a pound a week

A gram of fat is 9 cals….making a kilo 9000! The problem is, when you burn fat, your body also burns glycogen…normally on a 50:50 basis. Meaning…you need to burn 18,000 calories to lose a kilo of fat. OMG! No wonder it’s twice as hard to lose weight as it is to put it on. If you follow Rule 1 above, then assume you do a bit of exercise everyday and burn a total of 3000 cals per day. If you eat 2400 you’re on track…..but that’s only a saving of 600 cals a day….or 4200 a week….ie LESS than a pound a week of fat. Take your time….take a year to lose 50 lbs and it will stay off!

RULE 3: Eat 5 to 6 meals a day

Eat small meals every3 hours. It speeds up your metabolism and stops you getting hungry! Simples.

RULE 4: Use exercise to create calorie deficit

If you don’t exercise and your TDEE is 2200 calories a day… you can only reduce your calorie INTAKE by 440 calories a day (20%) to 1760 without breaking the  80% rule. Why not burn an extra 1000 calories doing an hour on a bike? Your TDEE will be 3200….meaning you can eat 2560 calories (ie …800 calories MORE ) and create a higher deficit of 640 calories…and stick to the 80% rule!! Exercise and good eating is a win win!

RULE 5: Ensure your diet comprises 50% complex carbs, 25% protein and 25% fat

Mix it up. Eat Pasta, spuds, brown rice, porridge and wholemeal bread for your carbs

Chicken, egg whites, natural yoghurt and fish for your protein and olive oil for your fat. Complete your day with unlimited veg and salad (but try and eat ROY Green…red, orange, yellow and green veg to get a bit of everything.) Plain chocolate, red wine and a couple of pieces of fruit are your treats.

RULE 6: Drink water

Water helps everything. Drink at least 2 litres a day.

RULE 7: Monitor your progress weekly

Monitor your weight and fat count (and therefore your lean body mass) weekly, same time same place. Remember if you lose LBM, your losing too much weight.

Conclusion:

Your body doesn’t know the difference between a diet and starvation. After millennia of famine and drought our bodies hate to burn fat. Exercise, eat regularly and drink loads of water. Stick to the 80% rule and you’ll find the 6 pack in no time.

TTFN

The Compressor.

We recently recorded a video interview with Toby and that will be here soon.  The Toby Smith photo gallery is here.

Fran Ashcroft: Call me Bill, it sounds more expensive

There is a trend currently to quote rates for studio time excluding engineer. This isn’t anything new – they’ve been doing it in the USA forever – but chaps, it’s simply not British.

Whilst at first glance passing silly billys may think “oooh that’s cheap!”, we’re really not daft enough to work out the real cost. Well, most of us.

This slippery pricing slope begins by quoting an attractive daily rate, excluding engineer, then quickly snowballs into: -

Studio excluding engineer, VAT, accomodation, control room, overdubs, tape recorders, tape, patch bay, microphones, microphone stands, shock mounts, tinkerbell, electricity. Additional hire charges apply for use of our collection of vintage instruments, outboard effects, computer, useless intern, magic beans, bucket and spade and fairy dust.

Parking £500 per day, toilets 20p FREE TEA AND COFFEE excluding cups

Why not get British Telecom to draw up your studio billing, that’ll confuse them. I’m on the “Recording Unlimited Plan” which is great but I can only work after 6pm and weekends.

Fran Ashcroft’s website

Part 26 of  Confessions of a Studio Owner: Buy British…. Where Quality Comes First

Ah……the strike at BA…..what to do? Currently paid twice as much as their Virgin counterparts, the cabin crew are asked to get real and take some pain…and they strike…in the middle of a recession….with volcanoes….during the World Cup….nice one! A whole generation will never fly BA again and will now fly Ryan Air even if they only have outdoor toilets. Why are union executives always scousers…with tans? When I hear them on TV, I think of British Leyland (there you go….another British!) going on strike because a dinner lady was sacked after stealing a bacon butty.

Compressor advice to British Airways staff: you need to get back to work so you can pay your rent. Once back, look for another job. Trust me, if you don’t you will either a) lose your job anyway as BA will have gone bust b) gone bust yourself as the bank will repossess your home. Principle and pride killed a lot of people…do the right thing and be a scab because you’re days are numbered….seriously….the Compressor knows what he’s talking about.

Which brings me onto other British suppliers…namely British Gas and British Telecom (we’ll leave BP for another day.) I have the misfortune of having both providers at my other studio in the UK:

British Gas bought an electricity company a year or so ago that had gone bust (called Bizz Energy.) Unfortunately, Bizz Energy was the supplier of power to Compressor Towers. They were cheap….but there was a reason. They didn’t seem to have any staff. I asked a hundred times for a reading but all they did was keep sending out estimates….then they went bust. British Gas took them over, did a reading and then sent me a bill for £14,000! Well, I don’t know what you would have done, but I shat myself. I genuinely thought it was time to ‘turn the lights out’ as I couldn’t see a way out. I’m not usually one to moan, but I feel there has been a slight injustice here. OK, I negotiated a re-payment plan, and I’m now down to £4,000 and I’ve been paying £1500 per month (which of course includes my current usage as well!) Additionally, I am still bound by a contract that has me locked in until the end of this year. Meanwhile, if I was a new client to British Gas….I can get a rate 25% lower than the one I’m currently paying….that can’t be right. Like BA….I can’t wait to leave British Gas and I will happily try Scottish Power or another firm that offers a lower rate. I will NEVER go back to British Gas as I believe they have rogered me….please do not go there.

British Telecom supply our lines and broadband. Compressor Towers suffers from low speeds when the kids get home from school and log onto the interweb and do the myface thing (or more likely xhamster.com.) This affects bands (who are using their lap tops), producers (who are trying to transfer files) and me….because I can’t watch empflix.com at my desk if the broadband is clogged. BT had called up asking if they could come and show us their new servers which I thought could be a good idea for my studio. The subject of my slow broadband came up…and BT recommended I had my own BTnet line, a private network that would enable lightning speed porn….I mean bandwidth! One condition…..it HAD to be wifi compatible to which they agreed. If I signed up the same day they would waive the £8,000 connection fee! I was sold….and looked forward to speedy times ahead…or not. The line was installed two months later, the router turned up by DHL….then we waited for the engineer…and waited…and waited. Eventually, he arrived….took one look and asked me which computer would I be plugging into the router….as BTnet didn’t do wifi?

And so the shit fight began. BT denied that they had done anything wrong, but luckily I had all my emails as proof that BT were idiots. SEVEN months later….I still have the router….I get bills for £4,000 which I ignore….and I get called once a week without fail asking me if I’m happy with my BTnet service. I’m not racist, but these guys are calling me from Manila…and they don’t speak English properly. This week they called me….asked me about my unpaid bill…then transferred me to Mumbai…where they proceeded to ask me what I wanted? I cannot tell you how dumb this company is….they have f@£$%d up every step of the way…and as one employee told me ‘we’re so big now, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing!’

The irony is a) BT called me to sell me a server and ended up selling me a piece of shit router that never worked b) British Gas were my supplier through Bizz going bust. I can’t wait to leave both of them as they are ‘kin useless!

I hope my experience can be used by you to your advantage

TTFN

The Compressor

Fran Ashcroft: Credit Where It’s Due

Warning: the following article contains blatant, gratuitous name dropping. Readers of a nervous disposition, look away now.

It all started with this book about Damon Albarn of Blur/Gorillaz. The biography didn’t paint an accurate picture of Damon’s pre-Blur days, when he was managed by Graeme Holdaway and Marijke Bergkamp at The Beat Factory, my de facto London office for much of the 1980′s. The book glossed over the events as of no real consequence, and implied Damon was some kind of studio intern. Well, he never made me a cup of tea in the two years they looked after him. But he did record an album, and Graeme and Marijke got a solo deal on the table with London Records which he blew, big style. Then I was asked to see if and how the pieces could be picked up thereafter.

Damon, says I, dump the keyboards,listen to the first Plastic Ono Band album and put a simple 3 piece band together. We used to have cosy little chats about once a fortnight and he’d pick my brains about things. But that’s not quite the point. I found myself reading this book and getting really annoyed that neither my colleagues or myself were properly represented, and I’ve been thinking about credits ever since. They are ideal candidates for Spin: -

Yes, I have worked at Abbey Road and Trident, with Damon Albarn, some Dandy Warhols, big labels, small labels both in this country and around the world, some bands you know, and a lot of bands you’ve never heard of. I’ve taken a taxi to Euston Station with Billy J.Kramer, spent an afternoon in the La’s garden shed, stepped over an unconscious Pete Townshend, shared a lift with Lynsey De Paul, had a pastie fight with Eurythmics Dave Stewart, a drink with Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, read several books about Bob Dylan, bought one or two albums by Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, one of my best friends was in The Wombles for a while, and my Auntie Jack lived next door but one to Pete Shotton, childhood friend of John Lennon of The Beatles. Who also worked at Abbey Road and Trident studios.

I’m not making any of that up.

Credits are not always what they appear to be. They can be bent and shaped to fit the message, and don’t always reflect the truth. They don’t say whether you or the artist actually did a good job, and you can’t base that on record sales either. They are often used like fame by association, and bring to mind those embarassing photos of mafioso record execs with gold chains and their arms round the hot artists of the day in the trade magazines. And when you do work with a landmark artists, you can be trapped by your own success. Jack Endino is a skilled producer who did Nirvana’s first album, and has had nothing other than grunge bands knocking on his door for the last twenty years, which is not unlike having to go on stage and sing your one hit every night for the rest of your life.

We all have to use our credits as some measure of our skill, status, and experience. It would be very bad for business not to. But it really doesn’t matter what we did or who we worked with when.

I’m only as good as my last record. Are you?

Fran Ashcroft’s website

Even while on holiday we go visiting producers and studios – So while up in Lancashire we visited up and coming producer/engineer Andy Ross at his Astar Studios in Heywood, near Liverpool.

As is now becoming the trend, Astar Studios are based in a converted industrial unit and have tried to focus on bringing the best possible value , even innovating with a two year 0% interest free load deal for unsigned bands.  That’s pretty unusual!

We have now edited the feature so CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

We are delighted to have edited and uploaded the video feature shot this week while in Wales with up and coming producer and engineer Steffan Thomas.  His studio, Octagon Studios, is a great studio for anyone trying to keep to a tight budget but also get a quality production.

Steffan is way too young for our liking, in the few short years that he’s been recording he has been over to LA and has built a very nice studio with the best of digital in a very nice environment and only a short walk from the seaside!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

Trident Studios came up in conversation with a recording friend of mine. “You worked at there? That’s my favourite studio of all time!”.

I was fortunate enough to do a few sessions at Trident,  it was a truly great facility. Not so much because of the gear – though the desk was marvellous – it was the live room of Studio One that really impressed me. It felt positive as soon as you walked in, even though the box-like design was a little odd. As soon as you set up and started to play, it felt “right” immediately…comfortable and natural, so everyone’s playing locked in very fast and easily. And the piano was legendary – Hey Jude and all that, which all added to the vibe.

Sonically, the studio had a unique and lovely midrange; a little bit grainy, in just the right way. Less weighty than Abbey Road perhaps, but none the poorer for it. And of course, it was haunted – or so went the story. Trident was supposedly built on the site of an old plague pit. I never encountered anything more supernatural than Nick Lowe coming back from the pub after lunch, but it was a good yarn spun by the engineers to freak out stoned musos…of which there was no shortage.

“The artists that came here appreciated the relaxed, laid-back attitude that the staff had”. They certainly did – at one time, the first order of the day was ordering the drugs, efficiently delivered by taxi and charged to the studio….

With that kind of stuff going on, it was only a matter of time before the studio ran into problems, and consequently Trident changed hands several times over the years. Sadly, it’s currently geared to A/V, not bands.

They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Fran Ashcroft’s website ]]> http://recordproduction.com/blog/2010/07/fran-ashcroft-that-trident-vibe/feed/ 0 http://recordproduction.com/blog/2010/07/ed-tutton-producer-video-feature/ http://recordproduction.com/blog/2010/07/ed-tutton-producer-video-feature/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:23:59 +0000 recordpr http://recordproduction.com/blog/?p=1687

We caught up with producer, engineer and musician Ed Tutton at Germano Studios, NYC and recorded this video covering Ed’s techniques and production style.  The video is in Quick Time format and you will need a fast connection to view.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

Recently, I had a visit to the studio from an old mucker. I was looking forward to a moan about declining studio rates and how everything was so unfair…BUT…..instead of a nice cup of Ovulate and a catch up,  I was forced to endure a sermon from my ‘friend’ lecturing me about his recent achievements for charitable causes, and wanted me to cough up some cash. He had completed the London Marathon and raised a £1000 for some charity that helped one legged transsexuals (or similar) which of course was admirable, and I was very impressed….although by the 45^th minute, my nostrils were starting to flare as I tried to hide my yawn. But f*@k me, after an hour of being told that I (THE COMPRESSOR) should do more for good causes my patience snapped. In MY office, an inner sanctum that people beg to enter to hear my words of wisdom, I was being reprimanded…ME! I wanted to talk about A&R bastards…or…..how I was inventing a virus to stop producers working in the box!

‘I don’t like to talk about it….but I give something back every day’ I said.  ‘Let’s look at the definition of charity. Charitable giving is the act of giving money, goods or time to the unfortunate, either directly or by means of a charitable trust or other worthy cause. Most forms of charity are concerned with providing food, water, clothing, and shelter, and tending the ill, but other actions may be performed as charity.

OK, let’s go through this point by point shall we? I provide goods (my studio and my guitars), shelter (my accommodation at my studio) food (my catering) and my time (free by the way as I earn bugger all from Compressor Towers) to the unfortunate and poor (you should see some of the bands that come through my door.) I charge a rate that doesn’t make any money and they leave my studio with something they keep for ever (their music.) Basically, I give…they receive….If that isn’t charitable behaviour….what is? So put that in your running shoes and piss off!’

My counter speech had done it’s job and had shut the idiot up….or not. He was pressing for more:

‘I shaved my head (for £3000), lost 40 lbs in 3 months (for £15,000) and did a very silly, very long race which also raised some dough for a cancer charity…but, I could still do more…I should do more….I WILL do more.

‘As the chosen one, a leader of men, the people’s poet….I’ve been thinking what the Compressor should do to give something back to society. Why not offer up my unique insights into life, work, marriage, studios etc for free? Surely that is a worthy effort? I will become a type of life coach to studio owners…..giving them a beacon of hope in this storm of uncertainty…..none of us make any money…if I can keep a smile on their faces…that will be charitable effort. My advice will cover so many areas….

‘Compressor Tip 1: Have you flown 1^st Class in BA? Did you get given a pair of the pyjamas they supply you with to sleep in? Wafer thin, they guarantee you a very comfortable night’s sleep. They also ensure that when you wake up to the sound of breakfast being served, if you happen to be lying on your back (as I was) with a huge hard on, the whole plane will be able to see your home made tent! The hostess (and I kid you not) didn’t know where to look. Compressor Advice…..beware thin PJ’s on a plane…..

‘Compressor Tip 2: Have you been into a public toilet, walked into a trap, and been greeted by a sight that could only be equalled in hell? Human waste everywhere but the pan? Did you walk out of the trap and wash your hands as some pathetic effort to clean yourself? You see someone walk in…enter the trap…and walk out (like I did) in disgust….

‘I did that!’ I exclaim…which results in a torrent of abuse from said attendee. Compressor Advice…..think before you speak!

‘Compressor Tip 3: Have you ever put a porn video on late at night when her-in has gone to bed…..spanked the monkey….gone to bed….only to receive a call the next day at work from the wife because your 3 year old daughter is sat in front of the TV….watching Tranny Grannies Squirting Olympics III instead of Barney the Dinosaur? Well I did, and it wasn’t funny…..she threw my video away! Compressor Advice….if you’re going to jod your rod….clear up afterwards!

‘Compressor Tip 4: Have you carried out Example 3 above, then having cleared away gone to bed only to be greeted by a waiting her-in…who’s right up for it? Do you a) say you have a headache? b) give it a go anyway knowing that it’s not going to be pretty? c) man up and tell her the truth risking being called a total pervert? Compressor Advice…give it a go…but keep the lights off so you can picture the porn start you just watched.

‘Yes, I can see the future clearly. The Compressor is going to be a Life Coach for the next year….’

My friend sat there shaking his head in total disbelief and without saying a word, stood up and left the building….there is so much I can teach him….for example he should change his plumber as I know (whilst he’s been out running) his wife has been getting her waterworks checked weekly by Brad the Rad!!!!! Charity begins at home.

TTFN

The Compressor