#16
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
I wish I had a dedicated recording space. I’d leave it set up and go in there often. As it was, I had one window of time to get the track down for the song. Otherwise I’d have checked that the winning layer for each verse was tone-perfect. Instead I tracked until I played the passage well. In the end this will become the backing track for better tracks, as I try to do my best effort for this song. Next week I plan to send the rough guitar/vocal mix to a pair of professional musicians to see if they want to perform the song in their repertoire. There’s a mid-August deadline, so I’m stuck with an amateur performance and a fairly primitive mix. Oh well.
__________________
1952 Martin 0-18 1977 Gurian S3R3H with Nashville strings 2018 Martin HD-28E, Fishman Aura VT Enhance 2019 Martin D-18, LR Baggs Element VTC 2021 Gibson 50s J-45 Original, LR Baggs Element VTC ___________ 1981 Ovation Magnum III bass 2012 Höfner Ignition violin ("Beatle") bass Last edited by b1j; 08-07-2022 at 07:23 PM. |
#17
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
This episode has taught me to listen critically and set out to adjust the fewest blobs possible, even if an occasional third interval lands slightly sharp. As you say, additional instruments can mask the apparent blue note.
__________________
1952 Martin 0-18 1977 Gurian S3R3H with Nashville strings 2018 Martin HD-28E, Fishman Aura VT Enhance 2019 Martin D-18, LR Baggs Element VTC 2021 Gibson 50s J-45 Original, LR Baggs Element VTC ___________ 1981 Ovation Magnum III bass 2012 Höfner Ignition violin ("Beatle") bass |
#18
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
Bob can probably comment on this better than I, but I've heard stories of pop/rock tracks where guitar rhythm tracks would be recorded one chord at a time, retuning for each chord. We know that you can get one chord in tune, and another won't be, so this is understandable. Could be a myth that people go that far to achieve a good recording, but I read this somewhere in a description of some recording session. I've never gone that far myself.
__________________
Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
I should have mentioned that so I'm glad you recognized it at some point. It's easy to go too far in search of unnecessary perfection.
As an example, about 15 year ago I recorded a bunch of songs for a longtime friend of mine. He's a pretty good songwriter, a very good guitar player, but he can't sing in key to save his life. Some years back, as a surprise for his birthday, I decided to revisit a few of those tunes and spruce them up. I added bass lines, bg vocals, and some instrumentation. But the biggest job was tuning his vocals with Melodyne. I got through the three songs and gave them all a final listen. They sounded good ...too good. I tuned those vocals so well that it really didn't sound like my friend anymore. It was way too smooth and had lost all the character of his voice. I redid them all but backed off on the corrections. I left him a bit pitchy in places where it didn't ruin the song and tuned him where it was necessary but I didn't bring him fully into the correct pitch unless it was needed. In the end, it sounded like him doing the best performance of his life. I never told him what I did the vocals but he loved the new versions. So yes, restraint.
__________________
Jim 2023 Iris ND-200 maple/adi 2017 Circle Strings 00 bastogne walnut/sinker redwood 2015 Circle Strings Parlor shedua/western red cedar 2009 Bamburg JSB Signature Baritone macassar ebony/carpathian spruce 2004 Taylor XXX-RS indian rosewood/sitka spruce 1988 Martin D-16 mahogany/sitka spruce along with some electrics, zouks, dulcimers, and banjos. YouTube |
#20
|
|||
|
|||
I do this all the time with all kinds of polyphonic content (guitars, pianos, choirs, etc).
The issue you describe comes from "hard tuning" everything. You have to use your ears & just nudge the bad notes into the "good" range. The guitar is *never* perfectly in tune, so you have to be very careful on how you go about tuning it. If you're selective you can get undetectable results. Heck, I've even saved a few guitar solos where there was just one or two bad notes that needed to be a different notes. That said, I have Melodyne Studio (top tier). I'm not sure what difference that makes, though. I think Studio adds the harmonic shifting feature.
__________________
-Steve 1927 Martin 00-21 1986 Fender Strat 1987 Ibanez RG560 1988 Fender Fretless J Bass 1991 Washburn HB-35s 1995 Taylor 812ce 1996 Taylor 510c (custom) 1996 Taylor 422-R (Limited Edition) 1997 Taylor 810-WMB (Limited Edition) 1998 Taylor 912c (Custom) 2019 Fender Tele |
#21
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
The grand finale was an accapella version of Billy Joe's Longest Time (with parody lyrics). Twenty-Two vocals. Partly due to the inexperienced home recording, partly due to the singing ability, and so on, the timing of each track was plus or minus several beats, and pitch was plus or minus several steps. I couldn't just select everything and auto-correct it, because people weren't just a bit flat or sharp, they weren't even within the ballpark much of the time. But with Melodyne's ability to overlay instances so I could see multiple tracks on the same grid, I was able to move everyone in time and pitch, compare to the score, and basically reconstruct the vocal parts note by note. Took a long time to even make sense of what it was supposed to be, but in the end, I had 22 voices singing barbershop/do-wop harmony. The result was pretty stunning, and I bring up the before-after every now and then just for grins. I don't think I overdid it, the results were still believable because you can still hear the quality of the amateur voices. I never showed the group the before version, they only heard the final result, and they seemed to just think "hey, we're not half bad".
__________________
Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar Last edited by Doug Young; 08-07-2022 at 11:50 PM. |
#22
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
Next, funny you mention recording one chord at a time. I’ve had that fleeting thought! But then I reasoned, no, that would be over the top, even for a mediocre player like me. Better to rehearse more before trying to track. Don’t tempt me, though.
__________________
1952 Martin 0-18 1977 Gurian S3R3H with Nashville strings 2018 Martin HD-28E, Fishman Aura VT Enhance 2019 Martin D-18, LR Baggs Element VTC 2021 Gibson 50s J-45 Original, LR Baggs Element VTC ___________ 1981 Ovation Magnum III bass 2012 Höfner Ignition violin ("Beatle") bass |
#23
|
||||
|
||||
Quote:
I didn’t dwell on how much or how little correction I had done, I just said I had sweetened the vocals a bit. I left in maybe half of his naturally heavy vibrato and kept in a fair amount of pitch drift at the end of phrases to keep it real, but nailed the basic notes to within 5 to 10 cents, depending on where it was in a phrase.
__________________
1952 Martin 0-18 1977 Gurian S3R3H with Nashville strings 2018 Martin HD-28E, Fishman Aura VT Enhance 2019 Martin D-18, LR Baggs Element VTC 2021 Gibson 50s J-45 Original, LR Baggs Element VTC ___________ 1981 Ovation Magnum III bass 2012 Höfner Ignition violin ("Beatle") bass |
#24
|
|||
|
|||
Quote:
I’ve gone through EXACTLY THIS, but with photo retouching! We are all mostly, collections of flaws. |
#25
|
||||
|
||||
One typical recording problem is guitar and piano. Pianos have "stretched" tuning, meaning that as the strings march away from the middle C octave the piano tuner will tuner the octaves slightly sharp, just a few beats, as you go up from middle C, and slightly flat as you go down from middle C. Why? Because the system of equal temperament only exists within a single octave. As you move away from that octave, the harmonics begin to clash. However, the guitar is equal tempered and left at that. So, if you tune to a piano middle octave, the moment the pianista goes outside the middle octave the guitar sounds out by comparison. It is amazing how many pianist don't understand that the piano isn't perfectly tuned, it is purposely de-tuned to sound better with itself.
There is a raging argument concerning whether or not pianos used to accompany orchestras should use stretched tuning because it clashes with the other instruments. Of course, if you tune the piano without the stretch, it doesn't work well for piano solos or piano as the lead instrument. If you were to abandon stretched tuning for accompaniment, each orchestra would need two pianos. The result is that guitars need to tune to a tuner and pianos need to tune separately and realize that they won't be exactly in tune except perhaps in one octave. In recording, any out-of-tune moment may be jarring and as you know, a recording is for ever. You may have to touch up and punch in at points to cover. It is interesting that playing live allows humans to sympathetically cover for slight tuning inaccuracies that are profoundly jarring in a detached recording. It's a little like the fact that we can tune out room acoustics and background noise in person but can be profoundly annoyed by the same acoustics and background noise in a recording. And yes, there are plenty of recorded examples where a prominent guitar chord hasn't matched another fixed-tuning instrument so they punched in the chord or note. There are also plenty of examples where they didn't, and should have!!! Bob
__________________
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website) |