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  #16  
Old 03-28-2012, 04:42 PM
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Bob Womack Bob Womack is offline
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Hi! I'm a recording engineer by trade. I've got a great action snapshot of me in the middle of one of those sessions where a client demanded that we go straight through in one take. It is right HERE.

Bob
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  #17  
Old 03-28-2012, 04:50 PM
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Originally Posted by moon View Post
The amount of work you have to do rises exponentially the smaller the pieces you break the music down into .
You do have to ask yourself at some point: would it be better to spend the next 3 hours editing this into something usable, or spend the 3 hours practicing the tune so I can play it in one take without editing?

It takes some trial and error to know where the break-even point is, but I usually want to get a recording to where I'd be OK releasing it as-is, then use the editing process to just take to the last degree of polish. But having a "perfect" first half on one take, and a perfect last half on another makes for a pretty much no-brainer, just glue them together. Of course you have to be careful. Is your tempo identical? Are you playing with the same dynamics? Did the guitar drift in pitch? Did you move, even slightly, causing an image shift in the recording?. If the two good takes are too far apart, you might even hear differences in string age.

And if you're recording in a commercial studio and the clock's ticking, that adds a whole other wrinkle.
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Old 03-28-2012, 04:53 PM
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Originally Posted by Bob Womack View Post
Hi! I'm a recording engineer by trade. I've got a great action snapshot of me in the middle of one of those sessions where a client demanded that we go straight through in one take. It is right HERE.

Bob
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  #19  
Old 03-28-2012, 05:20 PM
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Originally Posted by moon View Post
The amount of work you have to do rises exponentially the smaller the pieces you break the music down into - and it's very easy to lose the "feel" so that the one part blends smoothly with the next one.
i was just joking about piecing it together one note at a time. i agree about the feel. i generally have a hard time imagining even taking two back to back recording and splicing a section of one into the other. and yet on a good take i can get through with only a mistake or two, so the thought is rather appealing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Womack View Post
Hi! I'm a recording engineer by trade. I've got a great action snapshot of me in the middle of one of those sessions where a client demanded that we go straight through in one take. It is right HERE.

Bob
looks like you'll need to flesh out that recording a little. you know, i feel a little bit the same way, as i'm no spring chicken and the amount of work to get my technique up to par is in the years if not decades.
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  #20  
Old 03-28-2012, 05:26 PM
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I am recording a new song and did 8 or so acoustic guitar takes all the way through didn't stop to listen, just did one after another....

I felt I had a perfect take but wasn't sure which # it was.....I went back and played em all and sure enough I had caught lightening in a bottle.....

This starts out acoustic, then I bring in drums, keys, bass, strings etc.(BTW, I edit the daylights out of these in Sequencer mode on my Triton Extreme) I had one problem........at the end of the tune I break back down to acoustic and on the last ringing note, and guess what .......................You hear the darn click track

As one person said on Acoustic there is nowhere to hide, and to seamlessly piece something together is kinda daunting unless your guitar is ringing out overtones exactly the same way.........

After a few failed attempts to redo the outro I was concerned, you could audibly hear a punch.....But ahhhhh, I set auto punch for the last note only......I played along with the track and got the same overtones and man I got my perfect take.......

In reality multitrack recording is a composite Best Of

The beauty of it is, it is you playing the very best you can......Your overall recording should be The Take Of A Lifetime
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  #21  
Old 03-28-2012, 05:27 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Young View Post
You do have to ask yourself at some point: would it be better to spend the next 3 hours editing this into something usable, or spend the 3 hours practicing the tune so I can play it in one take without editing?

It takes some trial and error to know where the break-even point is, but I usually want to get a recording to where I'd be OK releasing it as-is, then use the editing process to just take to the last degree of polish. But having a "perfect" first half on one take, and a perfect last half on another makes for a pretty much no-brainer, just glue them together. Of course you have to be careful. Is your tempo identical? Are you playing with the same dynamics? Did the guitar drift in pitch? Did you move, even slightly, causing an image shift in the recording?. If the two good takes are too far apart, you might even hear differences in string age.

And if you're recording in a commercial studio and the clock's ticking, that adds a whole other wrinkle.
as you often do, you're hitting the nail right on the head. for me, i'd guess i'm looking at getting a reasonable version together from a couple of takes in a week or so, versus a month or two (or maybe more) to get a reasonable take all the way through.

but all those other factors you mention come into play. and really i am not in a rush, other than there are lots of tunes i'd like to work on.

i'm sure you remember tongue and groove, and i played that an awful lot of times (every day for months) before i could play it through without any major problems. but by the end, i could get a reasonable take most days. but the really engrained muscle memory was a neat thing, and i'd have times where mentally i would blank out and just sort of watch my fingers play. typically i'm thinking about the notes and fingerings as a piece rolls by.
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  #22  
Old 03-28-2012, 05:36 PM
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Originally Posted by funeralsinger View Post
This practice is certainly an accepted one in the recording biz, and no one would ever fault you for doing it. That said, I lean more to your side of the fence and prefer truly live takes. Not only do I like to do them myself, but I think there's something truly special about a complete performance; a few consecutive moments in time when a performance happened. I love listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald and the boys doin their thing live off the floor into one or two mics...it's just real, little foibles and all.
...
it's a little diiferent with the greats. louis and ella are so talented and experienced that their foibles are entertaining and precious. for the mediocre amateur with timing issues, unwanted ringing strings, and wonky notes, not so much.

i do use the idea of getting a good take as motivation to really work through the tough sections, as well as gaining some sort of quality/focus/concentration endurance, which seems to be a skill in itself.
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  #23  
Old 03-28-2012, 07:07 PM
815C 815C is offline
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Here's a video my little brother shot of Jerry Jeff Walker in the studio down in Austin, TX. The whole band being recorded at once. I'm sure they did some "fixes" and overdubes (i.e. you can see one guy on different instruments), but tunes like this seem to have so much more life on them than the iPhone-perfect-glossy stuff that tends to come out of Nashville (where I live).

Jerry Jeff Walker - Down In Belize

Cool tune...

Last edited by 815C; 03-28-2012 at 07:18 PM.
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  #24  
Old 03-29-2012, 05:46 AM
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Originally Posted by 815C View Post
Here's a video my little brother shot of Jerry Jeff Walker in the studio down in Austin, TX. The whole band being recorded at once. I'm sure they did some "fixes" and overdubes (i.e. you can see one guy on different instruments), but tunes like this seem to have so much more life on them than the iPhone-perfect-glossy stuff that tends to come out of Nashville (where I live).

Jerry Jeff Walker - Down In Belize

Cool tune...
that was great. nice singing, laid back arrangement, interesting lyrics. although i didn't really get the island references, as belize isn't an island. maybe it's just a generic term. but anyway, very enjoyable.
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  #25  
Old 03-29-2012, 07:31 AM
Fichtezc Fichtezc is offline
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thanks for all the responses. i'm a thinking...thinking i need to practice more, either way.

i wonder if anyone has recorded a song one note at a time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuU00Q3RhDg
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  #26  
Old 03-29-2012, 07:45 AM
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once more with feeling!
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  #27  
Old 03-31-2012, 10:32 PM
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I'm a relative novice at all of this, but...

My biggest challenges in editing my recordings (aside from the fact that I don't know the software well enough) have been that the bits I want to splice in to fix mistakes often differ slightly in tempo or volume from the places they are being spliced into, or they have a different tonal color. None of these things would be such problems of course if I simply played more consistently (and maybe if I recorded with a click, in the case of the tempo issues), of course.

Given the above issues, the approach I often try to use is to repeat sections where I made mistakes right away (going back at least a measure or two so that the lead in to the repeated part will have the same tonal color as when that part is played normally). I just play the repeat immediately following the measure with the mistake (or at the end of the musical phrase) as though it was the next musical phrase in the piece. This helps me to have consistent tempo, volume, and tone, and it makes the editing simpler since I just have to cut out a portion rather than copying and pasting from elsewhere.

I suspect editing mistakes would not be so painful if I got more adept with the software and/or if I used better software (I have been using Garage Band, but when I get a chance to learn how to use it I'll be switching to Logic Express, which I have installed on my computer but I have not learned yet). This sort of editing is really annoyingly fiddly work. Whenever possible I try to avoid having to do editing, but alas, I am not at the level with most of my pieces that I can manage to reliably play totally clean takes with all the nuances the way I want them.

Last edited by wcap; 03-31-2012 at 10:59 PM.
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  #28  
Old 03-31-2012, 10:37 PM
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Oops.. my post got doubled somehow.
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  #29  
Old 04-01-2012, 06:01 AM
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Oops.. my post got doubled somehow.
consider it a second take but in the end the first one was the one to keep.

thanks for your reply. it certainly can be tedious, fiddly work.

for myself, where i can get through this piece with only a couple of major mistakes, i was thinking of using 2 or 3 consecutive takes. this would help keep the volume and tone fairly consistent. i would also use a metronome for tempo. then i would piece together 2 or 3 sections, so the edited would be few and manageable.

but i still like the goal of a single take as motivation to practice.
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  #30  
Old 04-01-2012, 06:48 AM
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All good points. For what it is worth, I became a technically better and more confident player after finally deciding that edits/overdubs were not allowed on my solo instrumentals. It also quickly made me a better live musician by emphasizing the importance of getting in the zone and really getting in touch with the piece of music. Sure, I've had full recording takes that then get screwed up on the very last note, but that is part of the natural process of recording. I just smile and start up again...not like I'm wasting any tape and my home studio time is free! When I was goofing around with edits, the whole song became secondary to the "parts" of the song that were played well. I ended up not really liking the process.

The great uke player Jake Shimabukuro put out an album several years back where he played every song start to finish with no studio gimmickry. It is great to hear his technique....warts and all. In the end, figure out what is best for you and don't let it become a moral decision because both approaches are fine.
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