Find Your Producer's Switch

28 Nov 2024 #misc

That’s Leland Sklar’s strategy, a well-known bass guitar player and session musician. He’s appeared on over 2,000 albums, based on his Wikipedia profile.

While recording in a studio, if a director asked him to change the sound, he simply turned on or off a fake switch and continued playing.

This is what he said during an interview for Guitar World:

“If I’m on a session and the producer asks me to get a different sound, I make sure he sees me flip this switch and then I just change my hand position a bit. There are no wires or anything that go to this switch. It’s a placebo, but it’s saved me a lot of grief in the studio.”

That’s genius!

What would be a director’s switch for coders? A typo in a variable name, missing brackets on 1-line conditionals, misaligned elements on a screen, writing SELECT * instead of SELECT with a list of columns.

What would you add?