Dear Advice

DEAR SOUND TECHNICIAN: I am a happily married man in my early 40’s. My wife and I have always had fun together no matter what we did, but lately it has been getting harder to satisfy her in the bedroom.  She says it’s not me, and although I am losing a bit of my hair, I am still a 36 waist and I still work out at the gym three days a week, so I would agree that it may not be the way I look, but I feel it is my job to satisfy her.  When I expressed this to her, she got mad and said it wasn’t important.  Help me please!  — DESPERATE IN ALAMEDA

DEAR DESPERATE,

Dude, if you want to make a great recording, I mean like the best recording ever, you gotta do something different, right?  I mean you can’t do the same stuff you’ve always done and expect a different sound.  That’s like crazy! You don’t sound like you’re recording anything at all.  Did you even push the button?  I bet you didn’t push the button.  If you didn’t hear anything on the monitor, you forgot to push the button.  Oh, and you can’t just tap it, you gotta push and hold it for a couple seconds.  But that’s like that last thing you wanna do.  Back up a bit.  First, you gotta look at your feed.  That’s the stuff that goes into the mixer, get it?  How’s your sustain?  Have you tried active pickups, you know with batteries?  Check your plug, and also check the jack to make sure you’re going to make good contact.  Also, how’s your attack?  If you’re losing the attack, your noise gate is not sensitive enough.  That’s where you gotta work on the mixer side of things.  Once you know your feed is hot enough, you can fiddle with the knobs to get the right sound.  Do you know what kind of sound you are looking for?  Are you looking for a puffy weighty sound?  I think that’s probably the best sound for the bedroom.  Yeah, no, you don’t want a dry sound; that would be no fun at all.  To get that puffy sound you gotta play with the top end a bit.  Don’t overdo it, it gets all tinny.  After that, work you way to the midsection; keep it warm, but not too hot.  A lot of people go straight for the bottom end, and that is a big no-no.  You go straight for the bottom end, and you’re gonna get a nasty sound, and probably slapped for your effort.  You need your feed to be balanced, and to do that you gotta start at the top end and work your way down.

When you get it all set up, you are in for one incredible sound man.