Comping
 

Billie Eilish is mentioned here occasionally when someone tries to point out that you don't need thousands of dollars worth of gear to create a hit record (while totally ignoring the tens of thousands worth of gear that her music was run though in post-processing at the mixing and mastering stages). But here's another thing she does... comping.

For those who can play or sing a piece flawlessly in a single take, I applaud you.
I'm not one of you.
I'm unlikely to ever be one of you.
Full of faults am I and on every song I've ever recorded my parts have been stitched together from tracks and re-tracks of the same thing as I play or sing it over and over and over until I feel like there's enough there to Frankenstein it together.

If you struggle to get through a piece flawlessly, don't beat yourself up over it. Comping is more commonplace than you think. It is not a difficult skill to master and you'll almost always end up with a better track in the end for the effort.

Also, I've never needed 87 takes of anything so don't let that number scare you.

PS... some daws have built-in ways to streamline comping. I know Pro Tools does and your daw might also. But even if it doesn't, comping isn't difficult to do.

Thanks for the encouragement Jim, there's hope for we mere mortals!

I figure most everyone comps multiple takes. And most everyone uses some form of pitch and or timing correction. And those are the pros.

In this one Rick Beato talks about autotune and how our ears have become accustomed to perfectly tuned and timed vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNXg5dIVC1M

Haha, you mean I've been Frankensteining all these years?

Oh, that's what they call it. Yes, absolutely, play 3 or 4 or howevermany times through the same part, on separate tracks, I assure you there will be certain sections that are better than others. Especially when you're, you know, improvising. :D Most DAWs make copying and pasting pretty easy. And you're open to multitracking other instruments in after that....

Reaper caters for us mere mortals excellently, very little copy/pasting required.

OMG, I just watched Jim's video... I'm thinking that's an extremely extreme example of comping every second practically. I imagine we can likely hold it together for a while longer than that before we want to swap this other section into play.... ;)

Cutting and muting then?

Maybe Brent Hahn will chime in, but it's my understanding that for some dialog editing, it's done practically down to the syllable.

And while digital makes it so much easier, and possible to comp together 87 takes, this kind of stuff has been done for years going back to tape days, where the cutting and pasting was quite literal (razor blades and tape).

For me, it's not that I *couldn't* do it all in one pass and get a perfectly reasonable take, but if I record it four times, I'm bound to like different sections of each take a little better than others.

As much as pop vocals are comped, the most aggressive comping I ever do is always on classical recordings. Note by note in some of those pieces. I'm just glad it's not tape anymore. Compared to that, comping a pop/rock vocal is child's play ;-)

Dialogue for video gets more into ADR (if there's budget)...which is similar, but also different because there is a tendency to try to get as complete a take as possible for acting continuity. If there isn't budget for ADR, you typically get a couple of mic choices to choose from for each take and that's it. Usually a boom & a LAV, and most editors choose the boom unless there's a problem where they need to use the LAV.

Top classical guitar engineer Norbert Kraft estimates that a typical 65-minute album he does has between 300 and 700 edits... And then there's Mutt Lange, I understand those regions were basically black :)

"Perfect is the enemy of good" or so it goes.

That was a fascinating show. If I recall, they use Logic, which has a nice "fast swipe" comping feature. Not sure it compares to other DAWs, but it works well in Logic.

I made this video years ago with Logic 9, showing how it works for solo guitar. The overall UI is a bit different now in Logic Pro X, but the comping feature hasn't changed.

Comping is my life. Recently I am investing more time practice the measures I want to record. That has helped me get closer to playing that segment clean, where one of the many takes is good on its own. But even that isn’t necessary: the DAW process makes comping easy. Studio One is particularly good for this.

I try to play appropriately for comping, by playing a clean end to a chord, right before the next note will come in. Crossfades are not the answer for everything!

There are extremes. I’ve dreamed of recording American Tune. It has a smooth chord change almost every quarter note in places. After hearing the Billie Eilish confession I’m considering doing this chord by chord. On the other extreme, I’m so inured to comping that I was quite pleasantly surprised when I got my entire lead vocal for a six-minute, nine-verse song in not just a single take, but the first take! That will never happen again, but I love that track.

I learned a new meaning for "comping" from this thread. I've always used it as short for "accompaniment" as used in this Wikipedia definition.

I guess in this discussion its short for composite? Like stringing together one seamless sounding song from a series of different takes?

Yes, it's short for composite.