How Many Mistakes Do You Find Acceptable?

[rick-slo]

In an involved piece getting near perfection - every note the right volume, the right micro tempo before or after the beat,
with the exact flow and feeling you intended, and all nice and tidy and clean sounding - is near impossible.

On a recording day, first warm up. Figure out how your fingernails (if you use them) are catching the strings that day. Learn
to go back a measure or two to redo a mistake. Over all play through the whole piece at least twice (you may start to relax,
or get more tense - could go either way, but if you get more tense perhaps you need to stop, work on the piece some more
and try recording again later). If you keep a steady tempo and a steady position in relation to the mikes you can patch in
from anywhere in the whole recording session.

[usb_chord]

I can really only do two takes in one sitting - it just requires too much of me to really put in the mental and physical effort to "nail" a piece. If I can't get it on the second take, I'll go for a walk, browse the internet or read until I fill the urge build up to go for another take.

[KevWind]

None if it is blatant, perhaps 2 or 3 if subtle.

I always do at least three takes back to back

[SeamusORiley]

As difficult as it is to get down a solid track, I have new found respect (and awe) for beautiful recordings.

[Rodger]

"..............

[Howard Emerson]

Originally Posted by Fichtezc

That's what I've been asking myself. I'd be willing to bet no one who isn't familiar with my pieces would notice anything. I'd be willing to bet a lot. For the people that are familiar with them, I think only the musicians would catch the mistakes. Sometimes at the end of a session I find myself saying, eh, only the musicians who know it will notice but the next day I scrap the recording and start again anyway.

When I did my latest CD, I told my engineer that if I liked what I was doing, but tossed a clam, that I would back up 1 beat or so, and keep playing.

He said "No problem", and he was great. It's seamless.

Feel and groove are paramount. I've had perfect takes that just sat there, so we threw them away.

Learn how to edit and you can get past this stuff. Insisting that you get through in one take, and still be happy with the result is a romantic notion, best left to live performances.

Use the technology that's available to make your life easier.

HE
It Ain't Necessarily So: http://howardemerson.com/music2.html

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Howard Emerson

When I did my latest CD, I told my engineer that if I liked what I was doing, but tossed a clam, that I would back up 1 beat or so, and keep playing.

That's a useful approach. To some existent, it depends on your recording software and how you want to work as both performer and recording engineer. I used to do this when I recorded with Adobe Audition, because it was easiest to cut a single recording and join the halves. These days I use Logic, and tho I could still do it that way, I find it easier to use Logic's "Quick Swipe" method of editing, which needs multiple takes more or less lined up. In the simplest case, of playing with a click track, you can literally just select a section (say a measure) from any take and Logic assembles it all for you. A little trickier when you're not playing to a click, but you can still do it. Here's a screen snap of some edits. 3 takes, and the final track (on the top) combines all three, basically mostly being take 2, but with several short sections of takes 1 and 3 injected - as shown by the colors. (This isn't a real example so don't look too close at the waveforms - they don't line up).

[Fichtezc]

Originally Posted by Howard Emerson

When I did my latest CD, I told my engineer that if I liked what I was doing, but tossed a clam, that I would back up 1 beat or so, and keep playing.

He said "No problem", and he was great. It's seamless.

Feel and groove are paramount. I've had perfect takes that just sat there, so we threw them away.

Learn how to edit and you can get past this stuff. Insisting that you get through in one take, and still be happy with the result is a romantic notion, best left to live performances.

Use the technology that's available to make your life easier.

HE
It Ain't Necessarily So: http://howardemerson.com/music2.html

This is an interesting approach I never thought of, I might give it a try. Could be more or less work than Doug's approach...worth trying at least. I feel like I could do this fairly easily, though I'm not sure how easily I could go back a beat. We'll see.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

That's a useful approach. To some existent, it depends on your recording software and how you want to work as both performer and recording engineer. I used to do this when I recorded with Adobe Audition, because it was easiest to cut a single recording and join the halves. These days I use Logic, and tho I could still do it that way, I find it easier to use Logic's "Quick Swipe" method of editing, which needs multiple takes more or less lined up. In the simplest case, of playing with a click track, you can literally just select a section (say a measure) from any take and Logic assembles it all for you. A little trickier when you're not playing to a click, but you can still do it. Here's a screen snap of some edits. 3 takes, and the final track (on the top) combines all three, basically mostly being take 2, but with several short sections of takes 1 and 3 injected - as shown by the colors. (This isn't a real example so don't look too close at the waveforms - they don't line up).

I've used the quick swipe before but I've found I have to use a metronome to make that work. The non click takes are all within a few seconds of eachother but not perfectly in time. How do you do it without a click? I gave up on this because I thought I had to do it with one.

[Howard Emerson]

Hi Zach, Hi Doug,
Fred Guarino, my engineer, uses Pro Tools HD, and although I am a very analog guy at heart, it never failed to amaze me how fluent Fred was with the software.

I never use a click track because they always slow down, and almost all the tracks took 2 takes.

Long ago I came to accept that I'm a very imperfect player, very noisy breather, etc, but I know that I have good things to say, musically, when I'm loose.

My main problem was red-light fear, but this time I was practically fearless, mainly because Fred's abilities enabled me to relax, be myself and concentrate on the important things: The Music.

I can't over-emphasize how comfortable it felt after the first take when I heard the sonic quality. But more than that, when I asked him to move a couple of notes from a previous figure, or when he'd do the 'splice' where I'd backed up a beat or two, it took less than a minute most of the time, and there was absolutely no indication that anything had been changed.

It was worth every penny of $85/hour.

I can't wear two hats. I don't know how you guys do it, and my only hat is off to you who can do it!

HE
It Ain't Necessarily So: http://howardemerson.com/music2.html

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by Fichtezc

I've used the quick swipe before but I've found I have to use a metronome to make that work. The non click takes are all within a few seconds of eachother but not perfectly in time. How do you do it without a click? I gave up on this because I thought I had to do it with one.

Without a click, you have to move the track you want to swipe in to line up. That may mean cutting the section around the edit, so you can line it up. If you're lucky, the length of the edit is the same as the destination. If not, you may have to cut the destination track at the edit point and slide it, too, so the end point matches the end point of the edit. With a bit of practice, this becomes pretty fast. Of course if you end up with all these cuts, you're close to the same way Howard is recommending, and in Logic, you can simply cut the track and slide the parts together and get an auto-crossfade. But I like the option of having multiple takes I can listen to after the fact to edit. Most of my edits aren't major mess-ups that I notice at the time I make them, so I can back up (not that those don't happen! :-) but usually, I'm fixing some little phrasing thing, a muffled note, or whatever, that I probably didn't even notice while I was playing.

Editing is something you get better at with practice, and as Howard said, watching a full-time engineer who does it day in and day out, is eye opening.

[rick-slo]

If your DAW allows you to splice and paste so that there is no gap in the waveform you do not need a fade in and fade out. You do need to listen carefully to select the start and stop points.

[Doug Young]

Zach, here's a screen shot of a session I did for someone else, where I was just engineering, showing the kinds of edits I was talking about. There's even an edit-within-an-edit here. The orange track was patched in by cutting it so it could be lined up and a section selected. I also had to cut track 1 (dark red) so I could slip it and make the end of the edit line up. But one note of the orange part was bad, so I took one good note from track 1 and and left it in the middle! The blue and green edits were simpler, I had to cut and slide the edited part to make it line up, but the length was exactly the same as the destination, so I didn't have to mess with track 1 at all. You could do this same stuff by cutting up a track and pasting parts in, but once I got comfortable with the quick swipe stuff, it's just a lot faster and more flexible, and you can even create different comps non-indestructibly and switch back and forth.

[fdwill]

Not mentioned is the skill of an experienced audio engineer to know the skill-level of a musician or singer. Knowing when doing-it-over will not improve it. If you can't sing well and you want to sound like Merle Haggard (at his best), or Marty Robbins you will not be happy with your recording. If you don't have the skill of a Chet Atkins you could probably do it over hundreds of times and it still will not be good enough for you. You must realistically match your expectations with your ability.

[Howard Emerson]

Originally Posted by fdwill

Not mentioned is the skill of an experienced audio engineer to know the skill-level of a musician or singer. Knowing when doing-it-over will not improve it. If you can't sing well and you want to sound like Merle Haggard (at his best), or Marty Robbins you will not be happy with your recording. If you don't have the skill of a Chet Atkins you could probably do it over hundreds of times and it still will not be good enough for you. You must realistically match your expectations with your ability.

A very good point!

A great engineer can not make steak from tofu.

HE

[Fichtezc]

I must say you guys have added 10 years to my life which stress had taken away. I've found a method where I record two takes and decide which one is better. From there I use logic to make a loop thingy around the places I messed up and I rerecord a few sections. Then I find the one which meshes best and use quick swipe to insert it. SO MUCH EASIER. I can make the pieces sound flawless now. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.