any shame in piecing together multiple recordings/honour in a single take?

[mc1]

i'm trying to get a recording done of a solo fingerstyle piece, about 4'30 long. it's not particularly difficult, but tough enough for me.

as much as i try, i can't get through it without something happening, whether it be catching a wrong string, muffling a note, or something altogether worse.

there's a part of me that really wants to get a single good take. i won't say i think i'm cheating if use two or more recordings to piece a better version together, but i kind of think that. i also think the time i spend practicing both the small difficult sections as well as the overall piece is useful time, so if it takes me 200 (or more) takes and another 2 months to get a recording it will be time well spent. i'll probably never lose my desire for a single, reasonably good take.

another part of me feels that i could use that time to work on another piece, and that might be more stimulating. and that it will take me years of development to get to the point i'm hoping for.

thoughts?

[Doug Young]

*everyone* does this. It's rare to have a released recording that doesn't have some sort of editing, sometimes hundreds of edits in a single tune. Piecing together a few different takes is probably the most benign edit you can do. Even when you think you're hearing a live recording, odds are that it was edited, maybe even overdubbed. Even some "live performance" CDs combine parts of songs from multiple nights, all pieced together. A perfect take is something to strive for as far as raising your overall musicianship, but unless you're trying to create a documentary about your mistakes :-), go ahead and edit - for me, creating a recording is about conveying music to the listener, and I want to give them the best experience, not let them down by hearing my mistakes. Doing it in one take might give me bragging rights, but who cares?

[mc1]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

but unless you're trying to create a documentary about your mistakes :-)

oh, snap! but's it's a realistic documentary.

i've heard you on stageit and you sounded great, with nary a mistake.

you make some good points, though. so when you put it like that...maybe i can live without the bragging rights.

thanks.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by mc1

o
i've heard you on stageit and you sounded great, with nary a mistake.

Well, thanks, you must have been distracted at all the points where I messed up :-)

Part of the issue is that hardly anyone ever thinks they played perfectly, and it's all a matter of degree. There's out and out screwups, where you fall apart and have to stop, and then there's a missed note here and there, and then there's more subtle issues. As we progress, hopefully our "mistakes" get smaller and smaller to the point that the audience would never recognize them, but we will probably always know that some part didn't come out the way we intended. When we're live, those moments pass and are gone - and with any luck, the audience missed it. On a recording, they live forever.

[mc1]

very true.

[funeralsinger]

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.

I never hold little mistakes against anyone I see or hear playing live (unless there are LOTS of them). I like to know they're human and in the moment. Too many recordings in the last 10 or 15 years just sound too perfect, with all the life sucked out of them. Nobody sings that perfectly in tune...heck, with the right gear and some know-how you could make my neighbour's giant schnauzer sound like Chaka Khan... ...though, that would be an improvement.

Sorry for the topic drift...

[RustyAxe]

I'm all about live performance, and a "perfect" take is like magic, and rare. But a consistently good take is what I strive for. So, for me, there's no reason to glue together multiple takes in a whole. What you hear on my demo is what you'll get when you see me live. A wise friend once told me, "No one knows what you intended to play".

As a multi-instrumentalist, though, I like to overdub several tracks, just cuz I can.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by funeralsinger

. 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;

I agree, it's certainly something to strive for!

a few consecutive moments in time when a performance happened.

The problem is, often those few moments happen in an otherwise disasterous take :-)

Too many recordings in the last 10 or 15 years just sound too perfect, with all the life sucked out of them.

I'd argue that that means they did it wrong. The goal of any recording should be to capture and convey a musical experience. If after editing, the result has no life, isn't musical, then what is the point?. A good recording to me doesn't mean every note was mechanically computer-precision perfect, it means something musical was captured. A lot of times in editing, what you're trying to do is capture the magic that happened (or should have happened) and convey it to the listener.

[Doug Young]

You know, the flip side of this is that sometimes when recording, we get too picky. Something about the process makes us hyper aware, and we can get too critical. I usually try to get a single take that feels good, to capture that "one take" integrity thing, then fix any small issues in the take. I recently opened one of the projects from my last CD and was looking at the edits. One take, with two small edits, just a few notes in each case. And I flipped back to the original to see what horrendous mistakes I had edited out, and I don't know why I did the edits. Certainly no glaring error, so it must have just been something that bugged me about how I played those notes. But now, 6 months later, the original sounds fine, maybe even preferable. You get some distance and you don't hear things quite the same way.

[Legolas1971]

I agree....I think it definitely matters if there's life in a particular take. So, I tend to try to get most of a take down in a live fashion. However, I am guilty of using Elastic Audio (in Pro tools) to lay back a performance. In doing that I don't change the notes or chords but I am changing the feel. Again, I'll try to get it right by playing it but if I'm not able then I'll slap Elastic Audio on there....

[PorkPieGuy]

Nothing wrong with any editing. Granted, a pieced-together track may not have the same vibe as a nice, solid single take, but do what you gotta do.

What I have found is that I've pieced together a song, then I said, "What the heck. Lemme try the whole thing." I would mute all of the "do-overs" and just do the best I could from the beginning. It was surprising how solid I had become with the song after piecing it together to death.

Shucks, when I've been in a hurry, I've only learned pieces of songs and recorded them as I learned them. They turned out alright. In addition, if you record with a click track, you can do some copying and pasting if you end up repeating a verse, chorus, etc.

[mc1]

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.

[rick-slo]

1. On solo instrumental guitar there is not much place to hide things. You do not have other instruments or voices to blend in with.
2. Recording you tend to be hyper aware of every tinny buzz, timing issue, too loud or soft note, etc. Little of this would be of a passing thought in live playing.
3. Concentrating on achieving recording perfection can freeze you up, take your mind off the music, and in generally do bad things.

Therefore
1. Know your piece well going in (although I admit to recording things the same day I finish writing them).
2. Play at an even tempo so that you can play the piece more than once in a single sitting and still be able to patch among the best parts of the repetitions if needed.
3. If you don't move around in your chair while recording you will have a more consistent sound (for the same reason as in #2.
4. Relax

[mc1]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

1. On solo instrumental guitar there is not much place to hide things. You do not have other instruments or voices to blend in with.
2. Recording you tend to be hyper aware of every tinny buzz, timing issue, too loud or soft note, etc. Little of this would be of a passing thought in live playing.
3. Concentrating on achieving recording perfection can freeze you up, take your mind off the music, and in generally do bad things.

Therefore
1. Know your piece well going in (although I admit to recording things the same day I finish writing them).
2. Play at an even tempo so that you can play the piece more than once in a single sitting and still be able to patch among the best parts of the repetitions if needed.
3. If you don't move around in your chair while recording you will have a more consistent sound (for the same reason as in #2.
4. Relax

thanks for the sound advice.

[moon]

Originally Posted by mc1

i wonder if anyone has recorded a song one note at a time.

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 don't think there's anything wrong with overdubbing or comping (I do it all the time) but it can make the process much more complicated. It's definitely a good idea to practice hard to perfect your technique so you need to do as few takes as possible.