Do you ever record a long song in sections?

[SprintBob]

I’m working on putting together a recording of William Coulter’s arrangement of Si Bheag Si Mhor and at his performance speed it’s almost 4 minutes long while at my comfortable playing tempo it’s a bit under 4-1/2 minutes long.

Mentally, I find it can be difficult to stay focused and relaxed to play musically and error free for that long. The song is broken up into eight sections that are fairly distinct and my new strategy is to try to record two at a time and than “splice” them together in Reaper.

While I love the challenge of 1 take, this seems way more relaxing and less stressful to get a nice complete recording for sharing with others. Requires more attention to be sure mic placement, levels, and sitting position are all as close to exactly the same also for each recording session.

[runamuck]

What you're describing happens all the time.

Recording is such a microscope, showing all mistakes and blemishes, that it oftentimes becomes necessary to do what you're planning.

[RodB]

Whilst using more than one take from the same session to splice together the best recording is not uncommon, I think you will find it difficult to do this with separate sessions, as try as we might there will be some variation between them.

If you have it learned well enough to be worth recording, why not do as you suggest, but just with a short break between partial takes?

[keith.rogers]

Don't stress over it. An audio recording is subject to a lot more "noticeable moments" (for lack of better words) than a live performance or even something that is with a YouTube video. It's not cheating (IMHO) to work to get an audio recording you'll be happy to listen to a year from now, vs. just being able to say "it's a single take" recording.

I was doing some home videos in the height of last year's shutdown and really worked on the single take thing, but it is stressful. The last couple of efforts have been just audio and it's always a process of 2 or even 3 takes, sometimes just focusing on one part or another that I felt didn't turn out as well. Occasionally that last take is good, but if I'm not in a hurry, I always find that there's a note or two that can be improved by comping. Is that really different than de-essing a vocal track or even applying EQ or compression, a little reverb?

Also, I've found that in home recording, even where I can leave things set up for days, getting the exact same sound if I try to punch in some days later, e.g. a nit that's turned into one of those "the only thing I can hear" specks is sometimes not as easy as if I just have some extra takes from day 1.

[DCCougar]

I enjoy building up original pieces playing multiple parts. I just improvise solos. I'll record two or three takes of the solo, then copy and paste the best sections together into a single solo. So all the playing is "live," but just not in a single take.

[SprintBob]

Yep, I hear you all on trying to do the separate sections in the same day to keep the recording environment (and mental state) as consistent as possible. That's what I'll strive to do but the demands of life may make require separate sessions where at that point, I'll have to do my best to duplicate the environment.

Two other skills I need to work on are:

1. Just play through a mistake (don't let the tempo change) as if I am playing live to an audience.
2. If the mistake is really ugly, stop playing and re-start ahead of the mistake and take the mistake out in post processing.

[Brent Hahn]

I'll record anything in sections. If you click on the Couch Standards in my sig, some of those are one straight take, but a lot of them are pieced together. Usually the best bits comped together from two or three full takes. I'm like a quarantine newscaster working from home -- if I look okay on TV, it doesn't matter that I'm not wearing pants.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

I’m working on putting together a recording of William Coulter’s arrangement of Si Bheag Si Mhor and at his performance speed it’s almost 4 minutes long while at my comfortable playing tempo it’s a bit under 4-1/2 minutes long.

Mentally, I find it can be difficult to stay focused and relaxed to play musically and error free for that long. The song is broken up into eight sections that are fairly distinct and my new strategy is to try to record two at a time and than “splice” them together in Reaper.

While I love the challenge of 1 take, this seems way more relaxing and less stressful to get a nice complete recording for sharing with others. Requires more attention to be sure mic placement, levels, and sitting position are all as close to exactly the same also for each recording session.

Hi SB
There are many ways to record pieces successfully, and accommodating musicians as they record is an art and craft, not a technical exercise.

When I'm the recordist on projects, my first step is to record a scratch track of the artist with guitar/piano (their instrument) the way they perform the song live/on stage, or in a version they have pre-planned to record the song.

This is the track we later feed to players as they record supporting tracks. My first instruction to the artist is, no matter if you make a mistake, don't stop & start over. Keep playing/stumbling on at tempo so we keep continuity. Sometimes we have to re-record the scratch till we get a good one, but it's actually usually really easy. It's they way they perform it at gigs.

The scratch track is important and more useful TO ME, and my style of recording than a click track for several reasons.

You can change/adjust styles, tempo and meter internally within a song without interference of a click track.

After nailing the scratch-track, most of the process is adding/recording single instruments, or parts. It's so easy to punch-in these days (it's automated), so segmented recording is easy from a technical standpoint. Supporting players, or the same artist replacing passages, need to respond to the intensity and emotional input of the player/singer. Click tracks don't reflect that, scratch tracks do.

A weakness of only playing to click track is an additional player/singer shifting their musical intensity when they dub over or play it numerous times. The power of that scratch track is it portrays the mood of the original performance qualities we're looking for.

Scratch tracks are not the only tool…it's my process I evolved over years of mixing in a small studio. Other recordists mainly work with click. If you only work with trained musicians, in a situation where they return repeatedly, you can deploy different levels of recording tools and processes than on a one-time-recording basis with amateur players. For 8 years, I recorded projects for amateur players who had never been in studio, and were counting pennies when they showed up. They had never sat in front of a mic that cost as much as their car, nor done a serious recording EVER.

My skills (if you can call them that) were developed because of this dynamic.

Hope this adds to the discussion.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by Brent Hahn

I'll record anything in sections. If you click on the Couch Songs in my sig, some of those are one straight take, but a lot of them are pieced together. Usually the best bits comped together from two or three full takes. I'm like a quarantine newscaster working from home -- if I look okay on TV, it doesn't matter that I'm not wearing pants.

Copy that

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Do you ever record a long song in sections?

Yes, it's called a composite track (comp track for short) and, as has been said already, it's a very common technique. So common, in fact, that many daws have added features over the years to make it an easier task to accomplish. In the hands of anyone with reasonably good editing skills, it's not noticeable at all in the final result. I'd bet a large percentage (perhaps even more than half) of what you listen to includes comp tracks in the final product.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Yes, it's called a composite track (comp track for short) and, as has been said already, it's a very common technique. So common, in fact, that many daws have added features over the years to make it an easier task to accomplish. In the hands of anyone with reasonably good editing skills, it's not noticeable at all in the final result. I'd bet a large percentage (perhaps even more than half) of what you listen includes comp tracks in the final product.

Interesting, Im guessing because I have never really done it, I did not realize recoding in specific song sections was also called a composite (but makes sense) . I had always thought of it more in reference to using different clips from multiple takes of the same instrument part (in my case say multiple takes of the vocal for the entire song, for example ) to comp together a single take. Which I have do often.

[Dave Hicks]

Given my playing skills, I record short pieces that way, too.

D.H.

[Doug Young]

I've done this, but usually only in the context of a tune I have no interest in actually memorizing and being able to perform. For my DADGAD Christmas book, for example, I had some tunes that were more pages long than a music stand could hold, and I needed to play them exactly as I'd written them, and I wasn't trying to memorize them. So I'd record 2 pages, then the next 2, etc, and then stitch them together.

Otherwise, I typically record an entire tune, hoping for a single good take- it happens occasionally :-), but more often doing as many takes as needed to be sure I played everything right somewhere, and then edit. Lately, I've been trying to shoot a video for any new tune I record, or sometimes doing only video, in which case I pretty much have to do the entire tune in one take.

[j3ffr0]

If you can play all the sections well enough that you get each of them cleanly sometimes. It can be worth it to record 3, 5, 8, or however many takes of the tune in a row and then comp/edit. I've only recently gotten into the possibilities of digital recording, so I'm new to this too However, it's a wonderful technique that can save you a lot of time and frustration and allow you to piece together a quality version of something.

Should be some online tutorials for doing this on your DAW. For me, the first several tries were practice.... just getting half way competent at comping.

Best of luck.

[Doug Young]

I made a video demo - wow, 7 years ago... on using the "fast comping" feature in Logic for solo guitar, looking at both the case of using a click and no click. Might be interesting to some. As far as I know, Logic's approach is fairly unique, tho there are some things in the same general vein with some other DAWs