Share your audio horror stories! What's the worst thing that happened to you that may have hindered or completely stopped production of music?

For me, it would have to be when I threw up on my laptop during a particularly nasty bout of illness. I'm actually using the laptop I threw up on to type this message, albeit I'm using it with an external monitor and an external keyboard attached. Kinda like a U.V. keeping it alive....

Second worst horror story would have to be when I lost a weeks worth of work because my desktop computer started acting up. Since I have FL 8 demo, I can't save my projects. So if I can't keep the computer running during the compositional projects, I'm screwed. And guess what happened? JUST THAT!

So share your own horror stories, please!

I haven't had anything THAT bad happen to me, really.
There was the one time when I was putting the finishing touches on my vocal tracks (about 7 different tracks) and my program froze... and I hadn't saved since I started.
/facepalm

Twilight, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say this.
I was working on a drum sample for one of my songs, and the drum sample, I use 2 VSTs, but for one of them I used them on the 7 or 8 subtracks.
Well this started causing a CPU overload, so I was forced to close and start again.
I had everything ready, and I did save with the VSTs and all, but I was trying to make a tweak with the kick.
So I opened the program again after it crashed, and I click on the fx chain after I thought it was loaded, and CPU overload happened again.
With the help of Twilight there, I managed NOT to lose any sanity at all.
It was crazy and very tensing, which is my horror story.
Just so you know, I did manage to get it working.

At 3/1/09 01:17 AM, TwilightNecrosis wrote: I haven't had anything THAT bad happen to me, really.
There was the one time when I was putting the finishing touches on my vocal tracks (about 7 different tracks) and my program froze... and I hadn't saved since I started.
/facepalm

That's happened to me several times.

I'm on a laptop with only 2 gigs of RAM, so I really have to watch CPU.

This has caused an obsessive habit where I save the project as a new file (to keep older versions in tact) every couple of minutes (or whenever I remember to) leading to projects with numbers attached to them that get up into the 60's.

One time it froze, and not only did I lose the data that I had added from the previous save, but the file was also corrupted and FL would no longer open it. :[

Composing an absoloute master piece (ha, by masterpiece i mean something that sounds good to you =P) Nearly just about to bounce it down and finish the master.

Oh I'll just go make a cup of tea quickly.

Come back upstairs, Little cousin has closed down Sony Acid WITHOUT saving, and is playing bloody neopets.

Great :P

Worst thing that happened to me was when I forgot to back up my hard drive for a couple of weeks (I have Time Machine, but I sometimes go for long times without getting round to actually connecting my Time Machine hard drive since I have a laptop that I take around with me) and I downloaded a system update, but the installer crashed half way through installing the update which left me with no other choice than to revert to the last back up ... although I was able to rebuild everything I'd done from memory :P

Must've been when I thought i was messing around with my desktop icons... I tried to change the mac hd icon... BIIIIG mistake... It messed my computer up, and i thought i'd deleted my harddrive or something, cuz everything on my computer seemed to be gone. My notes for school, my music, and everything else...
It wasn't that bad though, since i managed to find all the files again:P
It scared the shit outa me though:)

My worst was when I had to reformat my computer, and the files were backed up onto a external hard drive.. except when I went to put everything back in place, the files weren't there. So I ended up losing all my projects and some VST's that a friend let me use of his. I was feeling pretty down when I found out nothing was there, and lost all the projects that I would of finished.

At 3/1/09 06:58 AM, Hellstick wrote: Must've been when I thought i was messing around with my desktop icons... I tried to change the mac hd icon... BIIIIG mistake... It messed my computer up, and i thought i'd deleted my harddrive or something, cuz everything on my computer seemed to be gone. My notes for school, my music, and everything else...
It wasn't that bad though, since i managed to find all the files again:P
It scared the shit outa me though:)

Just for future reference, you can change an icon of anything (including the HD) on a mac by copying what you want as the icon to the clipboard, right click an icon and select "get info", click the icon in the get info window (so that the icon is highlight), and press command + v to paste it. If you follow these steps but press command + c instead of command + v, you can copy a file's/folder's icon :P

My computer has a nasty habit of wanting to shut down overnight without me telling it to. It likes to do Windows Updates at 3AM, so it restarts a lot. So, i had a song. A nice song... i left it up, and i remember saving it. However, my computer restarted and i lost the whole file. It was only 1:30, but it had a lot of work put into it. That stopped me for about a week -_-

Well my whole music production was on halt in February because during a good all-nighter producing session my computer literally fried to the point the cooling vans melted. Needless to say I lost the file I was working on. >:(

Wow you guys must have miserable lives. My worst "horror" story is when I lost an hour's worth of work because Audacity just randomly crashed. Just disappeared, like poof I'm gone no goodbyes no do you want to save.

I just stare at my screen and go, "What?"

Then I did it all over again in twenty minutes and saved so all is well. =)

At 3/1/09 03:27 AM, nal1200 wrote:

At 3/1/09 01:17 AM, TwilightNecrosis wrote: I haven't had anything THAT bad happen to me, really.
There was the one time when I was putting the finishing touches on my vocal tracks (about 7 different tracks) and my program froze... and I hadn't saved since I started.
/facepalm

That's happened to me several times.

I'm on a laptop with only 2 gigs of RAM, so I really have to watch CPU.

Ha, that's nothin! I'm composing with a desktop with

-700 megs of RAM
-only 12 Gigs of harddrive space

I can barely even run any effect plugins without making my comp go slower than dirt. (not an exaggeration)

At 3/1/09 08:09 AM, HaniiPuppy wrote: Just for future reference, you can change an icon of anything (including the HD) on a mac by copying what you want as the icon to the clipboard, right click an icon and select "get info", click the icon in the get info window (so that the icon is highlight), and press command + v to paste it. If you follow these steps but press command + c instead of command + v, you can copy a file's/folder's icon :P

That's what I did;)
I still have no idea why my computer did as it did, but the important thing is that it works proberly again. Thanks alot though:P

Ah hello, I have a list!

I was working on a song in ventrilo and spikrod stuck a drumstick up his ass on stickam.... yeah know I know why he feels DNB but I can't ever work on a REAL techno Track any more.

Every time I'm working on a Hip Hop song WF1 has to send me voice clips that distracts me "oh look a shinny thing!" I am ultimately discouraged...

Dj Bjra told me about some girl that stuff pockets of rotting meat and maggots in her pussy to get off... I no longer can work on a Classical Dance track, and yes I watch the videos...

This one time I was masturbating, and got soft... poked back into FL8, I took the Dance part out of a song to make it a classical songs then realized it sucked dick and made some Ambient. InGenius showed me a trance Track, I then saw an albino squirrel nipping at a pinecone that I put peanut butter on, and then I got pants, went outside to chase it with my net. Got tired and grab a salad because the old man neighbor laughed at my fat ass scuttling around trying to get a damn rodent so I can breed the fuckers. To rob people's houses and kill cheating girls friends who told me that I was a nice guy but wanted a really man who knows what he wants and goes after his dreams with her instead of neglecting her to go after his dreams, because that what that bitch wanted right? FOR YOU TO ACCHECVE YOU'RE FUCKING DREAMS! WHY THE FUCK SOULD YOU GET A FREE RIDE ON MY DREAMS? WHY WHORE, was that your dream? To find someone so you can mooch off their dreams? I bet that's what it was, that lying cheating whore! I hate you Shelly! I fucking hate you! I wish someone would puss you in a dumpster of biohazards Acid aids needles! And if you lived I have a fucked up homeless guy with a hammer knock you out and rape you, YOU FUCKING WHORE! So even if you lived you have to live with the events of acid aids and homeless guy rape and I hope to god you carry his spawn because then it can finish the job, I'm sure you won't have a will to live when you whore! I hate you Shelly.

These are all true stories and I'm sure I can find 3 people to back up each story. And this is why I stopped making music and I spend all my computer time playing pirates of the burning sea in my under where talking to the same people that stopped me from music about music.

I spent a month on a song. I was just adding stuff in and throwing it on random channels. So I needed to clean it up a bit before I finished it off, so I rearanged the channels in order and got rid of the all the effects figuring I had another messy copy saved so i could go back and look... I was wrong. The song came out sounding terrible :( Nub mistake.

At 3/1/09 01:58 PM, Druids-Warcry wrote: Ah hello, I have a list!

I was working on a song in ventrilo and spikrod stuck a drumstick up his ass on stickam.... yeah know I know why he feels DNB but I can't ever work on a REAL techno Track any more.

Um, that's disturbing. But I have to verify this story now. There's no way around it. It's just too funny to leave alone.

Dj Bjra told me about some girl that stuff pockets of rotting meat and maggots in her pussy to get off... I no longer can work on a Classical Dance track, and yes I watch the videos...

Gross. This deserves no comment because it's just gross.

Shelly

Was she hot?

These are all true stories and I'm sure I can find 3 people to back up each story. And this is why I stopped making music and I spend all my computer time playing pirates of the burning sea in my under where talking to the same people that stopped me from music about music.

Well damn, those are some fucked up stories, although most of them are pure motivation killers as opposed to hardware hindrances. Yea, watching a dude stick a drumstick up his ass would kill my motivation too, don't worry.

Mine started out with me watching Norton scan for virses. What I thought was Norton overlooking a bunch of virses on my computer was actually Norton looking for those virses. I told someone on msn and they said "Quick, reformat" so I did. No time to back-up meant losing all my VSTs, FL, most of my projects and my sample packs. I found that same afternoon what Norton was actually doing.

At 3/1/09 02:46 PM, blackattackbitch wrote:

At 3/1/09 01:58 PM, Druids-Warcry wrote:

Um, that's disturbing. But I have to verify this story now. There's no way around it. It's just too funny to leave alone.

the guy above me, warspawn, dj nate, wf1 xkore naysly, dj immune

Gross. This deserves no comment because it's just gross.

Shelly

Was she hot?

no...

Well, I had two hard drive failures back in 2004-05. All the tracks that weren't recorded to tape or portable recorder were lost. So, I lost almost 20 tracks. The second drive was my backup harddrive. Fucking figures, don't it?

There is another bad incident that happened two days ago. Just before we got a bad storm, I got the bright idea to go out and record more rain and thunder(like I need more). So, after recording about twenty minutes in the rain, I got the idea of a drum track to go with it. So, I uploaded the rain track into Acid Pro 7, and then programed a drum track into my Roland keyboard. I then hit record in Acid Pro and play on my keyboard, halfway through the drums recording, the power goes out for all of five seconds. I lost everything, except what was on my portable recorder. I felt like I was going to faint. Shit happens I guess.

At 3/1/09 02:46 PM, blackattackbitch wrote:

I was working on a song in ventrilo and spikrod stuck a drumstick up his ass on stickam.... yeah know I know why he feels DNB but I can't ever work on a REAL techno Track any more.

Oh yeah, this happend.. it was horrid.

I'm very lucky.

Worse that happened to me is that I had taken this loop here and had just finished up making it into a song, and I decided I would save and bounce it tomorrow. I open it up the next day and there's no bass or kick O_o I got freaked out for a second, then I noticed that the bass had somehow been replaced with a pad preset, and the kick sample had been replaced with a high hat. I have NO idea how that could possibly happen. I got the bass back but I couldn't remember what kick sample I used, I could probably find it if I looked a bit harder but I got lazy and I was not happy with the song anyway at all, so it doesn't matter. But what really scares me is the possibility of this happening again with a song I care about.

Yeah occasionally Logic glitches the fuck out. Worst is when I'm trying to load a sample into ultrabeat and I have the volume turned way up, I select a sample and instead of playing the sample, I hear a VERY LOUD POP in my ear, and my ear is bleeding for the rest of the day. Also Logic likes to fuck up my automations when I move them >:C

Also, all my '06-'07 Garageband files are corrupted lol ^____________^

At 3/1/09 05:37 PM, gregaaron89 wrote: Yeah occasionally Logic glitches the fuck out. Worst is when I'm trying to load a sample into ultrabeat and I have the volume turned way up, I select a sample and instead of playing the sample, I hear a VERY LOUD POP in my ear, and my ear is bleeding for the rest of the day. Also Logic likes to fuck up my automations when I move them >:C

Also, all my '06-'07 Garageband files are corrupted lol ^____________^

I think there's something wrong with me ... horrible things happen to other people and they complain about it, but these things never seem to happen to me. There are even times when people have annoying problems, shout me through to have a look at it, and the problems automagically fix themselves upon my entry into the room o.o

Perhaps my background in ICT gives me an aura that counters my artistic anti-technology aura :P

Really shitty musicians are easily the worst problem I've ever had. You can sort out inexplicable latency.

You can re-solder loose guitar inputs.

When you bang your head against the wall for 4 hours because you can't work out what could possibly be causing your interface to not respond, you can open the computer to discover your firewire card has mysteriously undone its screws and has apparently been trying to breed with the hard-drive, then you can re-attach it.

You can press 'stop' only to have the band start playing the last chorus after 10 seconds of silence.

You cannot polish a turd.

Shelly wasn't hot? Then YEAH! FUCK SHELLY!

At 3/1/09 09:55 PM, Kanped wrote: You cannot polish a turd.

Funny as hell post, but kinda sad because these are real people, as opposed to just a computer acting up. Maybe you should have been a little easier on them.

Well, let's say that the only files that I actually have are the ones from '08.

At 3/1/09 09:55 PM, Kanped wrote:

You cannot polish a turd.

sure you can- just get lots of fiber, fruit, and fluids in your diet and you're good to go!

one time, whilst moving lots of equipment I put a power supply input jack in mouth, thinking it wasn't still connected. I got electrocuted, and died. The end.

At 3/1/09 10:56 PM, blackattackbitch wrote: Shelly wasn't hot? Then YEAH! FUCK SHELLY!

At 3/1/09 09:55 PM, Kanped wrote: You cannot polish a turd.

Funny as hell post, but kinda sad because these are real people, as opposed to just a computer acting up. Maybe you should have been a little easier on them.

I take the view that its much better to let them know. They might get all bitcjy about it, however it should give no engineer any pleasure to have people pay money for a shitty end product, whatever the reason for it. Recording sessions can and usually will take days; they're paying by the hour and they're not ready to be in a studio. Tell them so. Might encourage them to practice harder and spend less time shopping for sunglasses, too.

At 3/1/09 02:46 PM, blackattackbitch wrote: Um, that's disturbing. But I have to verify this story now. There's no way around it. It's just too funny to leave alone.

It's true.. Spikrodd sexually assulted a drumstick.

it's always Crazy NewGround fuck heads looking for a quick shock to glory... I love this site and I hate it all the same so if any thing I'm just like every other pompous dick jerk on this site that cry's because no one hears them

I know it's not a problem but it kind of it, but the biggest Audio Horror story is NG is self. Personally I think we just need to get rid of all the other portals besides the techno one. I'm sure like 99% of this site would be much happier! So if you're not getting heard on NG you probably aren't making techno, licking dick to higher ups or your music just sucks.