This blew up on Facebook, so I figured you’d get a kick out of it.
Freelance musicians know this kind of call: a client needs something immediately, the conditions are far from ideal, and somehow you still have to deliver. This story is not a recommendation to record in an airport. It is a story about staying calm, knowing your tools, and solving the problem in front of you.
The back story:
So yesterday I’m working at a coffee shop in Lincoln, Nebraska, waiting for my ride to the airport after teaching three full days of workshops.
As my ride pulls up, I get a text from a music producer in NYC asking, “can you record something and get it back to me in two hours?”
(One of my rules is to always say “yes”, and worry about the details later..)
My recording gear is in my backpack whenever I travel, expressly for when I get these calls…
So I ask my ride, who’s on a timeline, where could I record in Omaha?
She says maybe a local violin shop could rent me a space for 30 minutes.
They’re closed.
Then she says, there’s probably a quiet space somewhere in the Omaha airport.
I think, yeah, it’s a small airport; I’ll be able to find a quiet enough space to make it work.
I text the producer back and tell him, I can start recording in one hour (the time it should take to get to the airport).
“No problem”, he says, just get it to him within two hours.
With all the recent flooding in the midwest, it takes us 90 minutes to get to the airport, leaving me 30 minutes to set up, record, and deliver the finished work.
I look for a quiet space in the airport- but there’s music playing from speakers in the ceiling everywhere.
I’m accustomed to “close micing”, i.e., putting the microphone 1-2 feet from the F hole of the violin. The recording level can be minimized and is less likely to pick up extraneous sounds.
In the back of my mind I’m thinking, maybe if the mic is placed within inches of the F hole it’s possible to make a clean recording despite the music coming from the ceiling a few feet overhead, but it seems really unlikely.
The parking garage across the street could maybe work, or even out in a field, but there wasn’t time to get there…
I check the family bathroom and there’s music piped in there too.
My tracks are now due in 20 minutes.
So I stop, right in the middle of the airport, to unpack my computer, headphones, mic, cables, and violin….
It takes five minutes to set up:
– Login to the airport Wifi
-Download files from producer
-Connect interface to computer, create a new session in protools
-Plug in mic and headphones, get the violin out, check recording levels, listen to the reference track
It takes three minutes to listen and memorize my parts of the 30-second piece.
There’s nothing tall enough to tie a mic onto. Sitting surrounded by stuff strewn about- open suitcase, backpack, double violin case, it looks like my messy hotel room in the middle of an airport, and people are giving me weird looks…
I wrap the mic cable around my head and bite on it at just the point where enough tension will make the mic point to my F hole, about 3 inches away- barely able to play the violin without knocking the mic sideways, off my head, or into the instrument.
The music coming from the ceiling seems almost deafening at this point…
I record four takes total, including overdubs, in about five minutes, and then it’s time for the moment of truth:
Solo the track and listen back-
The recording features crystal clear violin with no detectable extraneous sounds.
Consolidate files, Drag into file sharing program. Click send, just under the deadline. Text producer.
The producer texts me back five minutes later. He’s happy with the work, and I made my flight home.
The freelancer takeaway
This is definitely not a recommendation to turn airport terminals into recording studios. It is a story about freelance work: carry the tools you need, understand your craft, stay calm, solve the problem in front of you, and deliver when you say you will.
Sometimes professionalism looks less like having perfect conditions and more like making imperfect conditions work.
Have you ever had to solve an impossible-looking problem on a gig?
