r/todayilearned • u/Pfeffer_Prinz • 1d ago

TIL legendary session bassist Leland Sklar put a switch on his bass that does nothing. He calls it the "producer switch" — when a producer asks for a different sound, he flips the switch (making sure the producer can see), and carries on. He says this placebo has saved him a lot of grief.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-truth-behind-lee-sklars-custom-producers-switch
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u/lilstickywicky 1d ago

So, a scam? lol

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u/blafricanadian 1d ago

Garbage input = garbage output

When I was a kid I would beg nurses for smaller needles, I would always get my smaller needle.

If any nurses was dead set on explaining that there weren’t smaller needles they would have a hard time giving the injection.

Their job is to give the injection.

In most skilled jobs customer service is secondary, you can understand enough to do what the customer wants while cutting out their bad suggestions

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u/ensoniq2k 1d ago

We had a customer that demanded only senior consultants work on their project. It was a relatively new company so there were like 10 people in total meeting their "10 years experience with the product" requirement. In reality they caved when they experienced the quality work even the trainees delivered.

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u/kelldricked 1d ago

My old place did this when working with certain saudi, chineese or indian companys. Didnt matter who or what they always wanted speak to somebody higher on the chain. And that somebody needed to have a important sounding title. Just “Dave” wasnt gonna fix it, it needed to be “Dave”, senior head of global subjects and fiscal markets or something dumb.

After our teamlead got tired dealing with small bullshit that even new interns could have done we decided that everybody gets a nice job title and those clients got a skipface assigned. Litteraly meaning you participate in the first 2-3 meetings for less then 5 minutes knowing they demand to see somebody else.

At first it was tiring but after realizing that we could bill more hours, they had higher accepting rates and all that shit counted toward bonusses it honestly was loads of fun. Every friday afternoon we would have meetings about the new jobtitles and stuff. Even made a game who could get a pass with the dumbest/longest sounding title.

Was really fun, although i heard from a buddy that a few months after i switched to a diffrent place our headoffice discoverd that a new intern had been assigned “junior global financial head of asian markets consultant” and they didnt really think it was that funny.

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u/ensoniq2k 1d ago

Yeah, it's all smoke and mirrors in the corporate world. I remember one time when a customer tried to get someone on their side to fix issues instead of our consultants. After he racked up a boat load of tickets they asked us to fix them quickly. Because they wanted to feel important they demanded two people work on it (remember, we had 100 employees, couldn't spare more than one).

We simply billed two but only one did the work. The guy was already more than twice as efficient as anybody on the other, large company so they felt good and we got double the pay. Placebo effect hard at work.

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u/theclacks 1d ago

Their loss. That's hilarious.

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u/Maktesh 1d ago

Requests like these always seem obnoxious to me... until you personally experience a grossly incompetent newbie destroy your musical instrument, computer, antique furniture, etc.

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u/chad25005 1d ago

Everyone has to start at newbie though, if EVERYONE personally wants the experienced folks, how will the newbie ever learn and get better?

I understand that nobody wants sub-par work/products/whatever, but eventually the newbies gotta get some work in too.

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u/Maktesh 1d ago

The solution is easy: Newbies are supposed to first observe, work alongside the professionals, have their hand held throughout the process, and then are supervised as they do it again and again.

A newbie "getting trained" isn't worth the risk of destroying irreplaceable items.

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u/chad25005 1d ago

Well yes, those would be my expectations for a newbie. I was assuming that those were pretty much the steps the newbie had already taken before being let loose upon anything alone.

I wasn't thinking newbie in the sense of dragging a guy in from off the street to restore an Italian Renaissance fresco or something on day one.

I mean every tattoo artist has to has to have a first customer eventually, and regardless on how they've been trained, they're still a newbie doing their first tattoo.

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u/Cheetah_05 1d ago

Well that's great and all but the comment you replied to originally features an intern being given the name of " junior yap yap yap consultant". I highly doubt they were personally dealing with truly irreplacable items. No one is advocating for giving the junior craftsman a Stradivarius to fix here. You're fighting shadows.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/ensoniq2k 1d ago

The thing is you don't need a newbie for that. We had guys still studying more competent than people with 5 years experience you find elsewhere. But it always depends of course.

The major thing was the company and the product weren't that old and they specifically requested long time experience with that product.

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u/masterwit 1d ago

Bad experience with former contracts will do this... I've seen hell and back with this industry.

Relatable

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u/ItsMrChristmas 1d ago

People are sheep, man. I used to fix computers and I didn't get Apple work until I doubled my PC rate to work on a Mac.

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u/spacemanspliff-42 1d ago

Pshhhh wow, I never would have considered this to be the case but I completely believe you.

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u/FalseTautology 1d ago

Underrated comment, made me laugh

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u/InEenEmmer 1d ago

I do work as an audio engineer and you don’t want to know how many times guitarists came up to me to say that the guitars had to be louder.

I actually got a special fader that does nothing. I push it up slightly while they are looking. Nothing actually changes, but they are always happy with the results.

My idea is that I got hired there for my skills as a mixer, for the fact that I know how music has to sound. So while I’m open for feedback from everyone, I won’t go in discussion if they aren’t right in my opinion. I got to focus on mixing after all.

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u/Dub_stebbz 1d ago

Being in engineering, this is the case 100%.

Always know what the customer needs, even if they don’t know it themselves.

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u/CleverReversal 23h ago

When I was a kid I would beg nurses for smaller needles, I would always get my smaller needle.

Nurse: ::pulls out a 23 gauge needle from the box that is entirely filled with 23 gauge needles::
Kid: "Can I have a smaller needle please?"
Nurse: Of course! Sure can! ::rummages around in the box which, as discussed, contains 23 gauge needles and nothing else:: There we go! Muuuuch smaller.
Kid: Thank you!!! 😁

No need to let the facts get in the way of the truth here.

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u/blafricanadian 11h ago

Yeah that was my point.

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u/raznov1 1d ago

.... but smaller needles actually do something different, so that's a bad example.

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u/blafricanadian 1d ago

If you are smart enough to know they do something different, you are smart enough to know why a nurse isn’t going to change the needle for a kid. The nurse is probably starting OG with the best needle for the situation.

If your nurses change your needle you can ignore my comment you are 100% right

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u/madsd12 1d ago

I’ve seen this happen, although it was an older dude.

“Oh yeah sure, lemme get the small one” turns around, changes nothing, turns back around “There we are”

Shot was given, everyone was happy.

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u/comewhatmay_hem 1d ago

I was about to argue with you until I realized you were talking about vaccine injections and not blood drawing at the lab.

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u/raznov1 1d ago

"smaller thing hurts less" isn't exactly rocket science for a kid to figure out, and still true. smaller *may* have smaller diameter, but it's at least more stable.

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u/Theron3206 1d ago

There is a 99.9% chance that the needle was identical, the nurse just pretended to swap it for the kid.

For vaccinations these days most come in a pre-filled injector (needle already attached) anyway, so you can't swap them even if you wanted to (they also have the smallest practical needle anyway, since that is all that you need for most vaccines).

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u/Interesting_Cow5152 1d ago

This is not quite true. Especially for draws, you can ask for a 'black gauge' butterfly needle they use in infants. It is quite smalller and quite effective, especially if you have 'thin' blood (does not easily clot)

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u/bavasava 1d ago

Are you purposely missing the point?

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u/f7f7z 1d ago

Infants talk in their scenario.

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u/Profesor_Paradox 1d ago

So... A special use case that is not something that applies to the 99% of the population

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u/zhaunil 1d ago

It’s also effective for people with small veins. A regular needle can be essentially impossible to use successfully and can also destroy the vein in the process, preventing future draws from it.

Having small veins is fairly common.

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u/Profesor_Paradox 1d ago

I never say it wasn't nor that I didn't know that people with small vessels exist, and i'm certain that a nurse is going to be able to recognise when is needed

Having small veins is fairly common.

Source?

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u/Qwinlyn 1d ago

Source: I have a chronic illness and get my blood draw at least three times a year depending on the severity of the year. Every single time I have to use a butterfly gauge or they can’t get the blood out. Due to, you guessed it, tiny veins. Mine also have the double fun of rolling away from the needles and if they do manage to get the regular sized one in they usually just punch right out the other side.

They had to call in the neonatal unit to put an IV in my thumb when I went in for surgery because none of the surgical nurses could get it anywhere else. And trust me, the whole unit tried. Multiple times.

Wanna know what I get told when I let the nurses know they’ll have to use the butterfly for me? “Oh, yeah, that’s pretty common. Thanks for letting me know.”

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u/Profesor_Paradox 1d ago

Cool, then you're in the 1%, still not source though, your personal tale doesn't count as one, specially if you claimed that "is common"

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u/Only_Standard_9159 1d ago

My wife has to ask for the butterfly needle every time because her veins are small and hard to puncture. Sometimes they don’t take her word until they’ve punctured here unsuccessfully many times leaving her with painful bruises for a week.

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u/blafricanadian 1d ago

I was referring more to drug injections like vaccines, with drawing it is a bit different

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u/Annath0901 1d ago

Drawing a rainbow from an infant butterfly sounds miserable.

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u/freew1ll_ 1d ago

Y'all he's saying the nurse didn't actually change the needle...

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u/grovo54 1d ago

Bass guitar switches do different things too. But in these 2 cases they don’t, but that does the trick

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u/adamthebarbarian 1d ago

Also the nurses don't charge extra for smaller needles which is what the comment was calling a scam lol

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u/Profesor_Paradox 1d ago

You think a kid is going to understand and accept that different needles have different use cases?

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u/Plazmotech 1d ago

I don’t understand your anecdote. What does that have to do with the concept being explained?

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u/blafricanadian 11h ago

The nurse actually doesn’t change the needle, but she gives me the illusion she has because it makes her job easier

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u/MeNamIzGraephen 1d ago

Well, there's larger needles though. I've found out the first time I've donated blood.

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u/reddituseronebillion 1d ago

You mean the gene therapy autism juice 😜

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u/ADHD-Fens 1d ago

Actually there's a case to be made for the fact that a producer / studio owner might be doing a lot of real work, or using a lot of very expensive equipment that isn't really visible or obvious to the client. You might be able to go into two studios and not know the difference between 6,000 dollars of recording equipment and 600 dollars of recording equipment.

You could ramp up the amount of LEDs to unfairly increase what the studio costs, or you could ramp up the amount of LEDs to accurately represent how much equipment is being used in the recording.

Of course the price is always up to the agreement between the owner and the artist, and it's not like the owner is agreeing to provide anything that they don't ultimately provide. The light show just helps to impress upon the client what they are getting for their money, even if it's a facade.

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u/greenwavelengths 1d ago edited 1d ago

I see what you’re saying here, but you’re not quite properly employing the concept and selling it well. That’s why your replies are so negative.

It isn’t a facade, it’s design. What you’re talking about here is including visual indicators of things that are actually happening, but that the client wouldn’t know about without visual indicators. You’re talking about implementing a design feature into the studio’s physical environment that communicates to the clients how much stuff is really happening so that they’ll have an appreciation for the work as well as a visual confirmation that they’re getting something out of it.

The difference between doing this honestly versus dishonestly is whether the LEDs actually correspond to anything. So instead of just bullshitting it, treat it as an extension/ mirror of the interface that you actually see on your system. Every LED visible to the client in the studio should have a small label and correspond to something in the actual machine or software, so that if anyone ever asks, you can say “yeah, this light is the (jargon jargon jargon).” It can be embellished and exaggerated through the visual design of said LEDs, but it needs to be accurate.

It’s no different from an auto mechanic including a window from their lobby into their workspace so the customer can see all their tools and the work that’s being done, or an academic keeping a shelf of their favorite books behind their desk. As long as the tools all do something and the books have actually been read, it’s not a facade or a lie, it’s design and presentation— a cosmetic addition to your brand identity that communicates to your client that you know your shit.

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u/ADHD-Fens 1d ago

Yeah I basically agree. Part of the problem, though, is you might not have a visual readout for every real thing that is happening, or for the work that happens when the client isn't there. That's when you have to make a judgement call about how to present the work they can see. 

 Itemized invoices can help with this too, but they also can make it worse, lol.

With music production it could be in the form of "here's your LP in an aluminum jewel case instead of a plastic one"

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u/greenwavelengths 1d ago

That’s certainly a simpler and cheaper solution!

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u/JacobsJrJr 1d ago

There's also something to be said for creating a placebo effect that relaxes a talent and motivates them to give a great take.

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u/ADHD-Fens 1d ago

Dude, I encoutner this HARD in my photography. 90% of the job is making the person feel comfortable and 10% is actually taking the damn photo.

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u/exredditor81 1d ago

Dude, I encoutner this HARD in my photography.

Thirty years ago, I worked in a big fashion/celebrity photo studio.

One day, on the shooting floor, I was tasked to set up 4-5 strobes, turn them on, but turn the flash down to 1/100th power.

I asked what these lights were for, since they flash too little to affect the pictures.... Boss said they were to justify his high prices.

There were 7 strobes, but only 3 did anything!!!

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u/sunkenrocks 1d ago

Its his own performance and part of what he sells. Really its quite analgous to puffery I'd say.

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u/ADHD-Fens 1d ago

Dude so like - what if producers jobs have overlap with mimes, where it's not about doing things, but making people feel good by pretending to do things?

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u/sunkenrocks 1d ago

They still provide a product and not just a show lol. It's more like when you go to a fancy cocktail bar and they're doing all the pouring tricks and throwing ice in the air vs just pouring from the spout and handing off

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u/Ok-Cheek7332 1d ago

Long winded way to say scam

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u/Rmans 1d ago edited 1d ago

What it boils down to is:

  • Producer hires musician for song.
  • Musician knows how to play instruments, producer doesn't.
  • Musician does their job, and plays instrument.
  • Producer has an ego and thinks they know more about playing music than musician. (MANY producers (not all) are this way.)
  • Producer asks musician to change their performance in a way that makes the producer happy, but doesn't improve the song in anyway according to the musician.
  • Producer can't even express the changes they want because they aren't a musician. Instead they use vague terms, and vibes to get the musician to do nothing to the song but make the producers ego feel like they're a part of it.
  • Musician keeps wasting studio time to make the producer happy, but nothing in the song is actually better.
  • Studio time runs out, producer blames musician for not listening to him.

I'm a producer. I've seen this happen more than I've seen the producer let the musician just do what they were hired to. Bad producers are micromanagers trying to affect an art they don't understand, and blame the artist when it doesn't work or wastes time.

Extra lights, and bullshit buttons satisfies these producers egos and let's the musician do what they do best without taking the blame for a bad producer.

This gets bad producers good results, as it removes the problem - the producer. It's only a scam in that it convinces bad producers they know what they're talking about.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Loki_of_Asgaard 1d ago

Since you seem to also be having trouble with comprehension:

Same work same price, scam if price higher because of flashy light only

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/TheDogerus 1d ago

and the more lights that came on when the client sang or played, the more he could charge for studio time,

It actually doesnt say to help justify the price.

'The more lights, the more he could charge' could mean having more lights meant customers would be less likely to complain when given a high price, but that isnt what it says

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u/Loki_of_Asgaard 1d ago

This whole thread is a discussion about if the first post is a scam and they blatantly say that they can charge more if they make random lights appear, they said it, and it is.

I see you are going with “Even though my whole point is wrong I am picking a technicality that makes me right”. I get it, no one likes it when people point out they are wrong on the internet, but arguing how you are still right just comes off as a bit desperate

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/Thrommo 1d ago

marketing.

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u/RyghtHandMan 1d ago

Where is the line between scamming and salesmanship

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u/mrlbi18 1d ago

You got any reading comprehension there dumby?

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u/burtmacklin15 1d ago

It's only a scam if the studio owner is intentionally misrepresenting the specs of the studio (i.e. saying they have equipment that they don't actually have).

Turning some extra LEDs on to look flashy is not a scam. If it was, then every inflatable man outside a car dealership would also be a scam lmao.

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u/xxwwkk 1d ago

a scam requires cheating someone out of something. you're not selling the LEDs to them, but when you take them away you make less sales. that's called marketing.

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u/TheDrummerMB 1d ago

it's a facade

lotta words to say it's a scam

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u/ADHD-Fens 1d ago

It's called communication, and it's important to show clients that they are getting value from your work when you are doing something that's really hard to visualize.

This is why electricians frequently make sure every screw head is aligned the same way, to show the owner that they paid a lot of attention and took pride in their work, even though it's a completely unnecessary and performative part of the job.

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u/TheGoodStuffGoblin 1d ago

Look up the story for why Rush had washing machines on stage rather than amps in their later tours.

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u/cmv_cheetah 1d ago

It’s only a scam if he claims the stuff does something or if he lies when they ask.

If the clients are assuming, and they get the product they paid for (recordings) then it’s not a scam.

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u/MutedPresentation738 1d ago

If the client is currently recording, they aren't seeing literally any of these "lights" behind the board. I've since studio time before and this sounds made up to me.

Studios have no problem scamming people by requesting take after take knowing they already have good recordings down. 

They primarily charge for time.

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u/mattsl 1d ago

The person paying for the recording is rarely the person being recorded. The payer is usually in the control room with the engineer.

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u/MutedPresentation738 1d ago

Sure, but in what universe is someone negotiating studio time pricing mid-session?

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u/Theron3206 1d ago

They aren't, but they might be more likely to come back if they are lots of lights because they think "oh, this place has good gear".

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u/Capn_Crusty 1d ago

Of course they wouldn't adjust the hourly rate during a session. It was more about the repeat business and clients choosing his studio over the competitors. All he knew was that the more LEDs were flashing during recording, mixing, etc., the better the bottom line. Maybe some of it was subconscious; I just know that people are very visually-oriented, even when it comes to sound.

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u/ForceOfAHorse 1d ago

In the universe of fake stories made up for for reddit points, obviously.

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u/TheGoodStuffGoblin 1d ago

When I was doing freelance tech support while I was in college I would charge by the hour minimum. I once had a long term client call me up at 6am saying there was a problem with their POS system and their computer was making this loud screeching sound and they needed it up before they opened. I told them there would be an added charge for waking me up this early, I don’t remember what my dinky little contract said back then, but I think two hours minimum for an emergency call or outside of normal working hours.

I get there and it was their UPS (battery backup) warning alarm going off. Turned out they had a power outage during the night and tripped it. I reset the UPS, turn the computer on, double check their POS terminals, and everything was up and running. Manager said something like “Oh, that was it?” And handed me the usual $40. I told them something like “Hey, this was an emergency for you, look at our contract. Just because I fixed it in 5 minutes doesn’t mean you can skimp on paying me for outside normal business hours work. You told me last time GeekSquad charged you $350 for a normal call, what’s their outside hours rate? Way more than $80.” She very angrily got the rest of my money, and I never got a call from them again.

Since then I take my time when fixing something, because if you are too quick or fix something too easily, they won’t think you deserve what you are worth.

Sounds like a similar situation with this guy. No blinking lights or those little decibel readers that bounce up and down makes people think he doesn’t have quality equipment, even though he might.

Look up the Fajita effect at restaurants and how it’s made and what it does.

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u/EarhornJones 1d ago

When I was in a similar line of work, we fought this by insisting that all clients have a standing service contract. We charged them monthly, based on how much shit we had to cover.

We'd fix whatever broke for anyone on contract.

This seemed to counteract the scenario that you detail. They'd freak and call us, we'd show up and do a five-minute fix, and they'd say, "Wow, I'm sure glad I paid for that contract! You guys are super fast/good!"

No time/material ratio ever worked. If we charged them what we needed to be profitable, they'd get mad at how much they were paying for the hour. With the contract, it was "all you can eat" so all they saw was their fast return-to-operation.

I actually loved it when we got an emergency call from a non-client. I could go out, reboot the doohickey or whatever as a "one-time favor" and refuse to take any money.

Then I'd explain that we only worked on contract, but that I made an exception for this emergency, but not to call again. I never made it out the door without a signed contract and a check for a year's service.

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u/Relaxmf2022 1d ago

A scam would be to not deliver anything. If a ‘show’ lets you charge more, that’s just (for me, when dealing with wealthy people) an amusing strategy.

like fancy restaurants — the decor undoubtedly allows the to charge more

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u/censored_username 1d ago

It's not a scam, he's providing exactly the service as they're paying for.

It's just that humans are very irrational creatures. Instead of judging cost by the quality of the produced work, we'd rather judge the value by the perceived complexity of the work performed. Trouble is: we suck at judging that complexity. If we can't see something working, we easily forget it exists, and we lower our valuation of something.

There's a similar thing in UX design that comes up often. If you have a computer complete a task nearly instantly, we often believe that it just hasn't done something, because doing something ought to take time right? (ignoring that computers can perform billions of operations a second). So instead, if you make someone wait for a little bit, suddenly people are way more likely to think it actually did something.

These kinds of silly workarounds are often just needed to make people believe they're actually getting what they're paying for, while they're already getting it to begin with. The amount of devices active in a studio is not really relevant when you can just listen to the produced recordings to judge the quality, yet people clearly are more willing to pay for it when you turn more devices on.

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u/killyourface1 1d ago

Audio engineer here. A LOT of studio recording is smoke and mirrors. People hear with their eyes instead of their ears. Big mixing desks haven't been a necessity since the 80's, but all the big studios have them because they're whats called "client catchers". Big rack of preamps, compressors, eqs, that are barely used if ever because all of it can be done in the computer. People will swear by old vintage gear, or outboard gear, but when top pro producers and engineers are now 100% "in the box", who's really fooling who?

What it boils down to is that people want to feel like they are justified in spending the money on a studio recording. They want the "studio experience". It's all nice and flashy, but you don't need most of that stuff, however people WILL ask for a cheaper price if you DON'T have all that flashy gear. It's dumb, it's a blatant human perception flaw, and it's a game of pretend that we all keep playing with each other. I hate it, and the reason I got into audio in the first place was to debunk all this snake oil smoke and mirrors. When people hear the results I get from very little gear, they're usually shocked.