Do you 'cheat' when you record?

Leslie Ehrlich · Post by **Leslie Ehrlich** » 29 May 2004 6:33 pm

Since I started messing around with digital recording I found a way to eliminate mistakes by cutting, splicing and pasting notes or phrases. This works especially well with riffs, chords, or phrases that are repeated throughout a song. I just simply take the best one, copy it, and replace all the bad ones with it. Does anyone else use this method?

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 30 May 2004 4:52 am

I don't cut , splice and paste..but I do record songs in sections. I never record the whole song from beginning to end in 1 take..

I think it is possible to LOOSE the flow , loose the smooth passages that merge phrases with the cut and paste methods..although many recording pro's do this ( I'm not saying Steel) just that it is not uncommon..Just like it is not uncommon to take several sessions to complete one Lead vocal track.Many writings state that this is a prefered method of recording vocals with a vocalist who is middle of the road..Not a Vince Gill..

at the end of the day there are no rules..if the end result is what your looking for then thats the correct recording method for you.

Recording is an art, like writing a book..painting a picture..it's the end result that matters not the journey getting there..

t

Post by **Joey Ace** » 30 May 2004 5:39 am

I won't name drop here, but a top pro told me about the time he laid down many tracks at a top session. A while later he was given a CD where the producer had cut and pasted a solo togeter from his many takes.

He was asked to learn that solo, and come back and record it, thus insuring the flow that Tony posted about.

The real lesson here, for me, is that even the best producers and engineers, with the best technology, feel that a single take is better than anything they can piece together.

Frankly, I was surprised that this is still the case.

Bryan Bradfield · Post by **Bryan Bradfield** » 30 May 2004 8:12 am

One form of "enhancement" that you didn't mention is pitch correction. For this steel player, that tool was necessary for one off-pitch note in an otherwise perfect solo.

Al Marcus · Post by **Al Marcus** » 30 May 2004 9:00 am

I use to like one take and that's it. If I go over the song too much I lose that emotion and spontaniety.

Back in the old days, we did a lot of one take songs, because they had to throw away the wax and start over, so it saved wax.LOL

Although now, with digital, I can see where they can splice the best parts together, to make a good clean record....al

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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 30 May 2004 11:20 am

"The real lesson here, for me, is that even the best producers and engineers, with the best technology, feel that a single take is better than anything they can piece together."

They may have pieced out all their favorite phrases, but that does not mean they would fit together, thus resulting in needing the solo replayed to make the phrasing work out correctly... The above statement is a bit too general for me.

Do I "cheat"? Absolutely, if it produces the end result I am seeking

.

Mark Herrick · Post by **Mark Herrick** » 30 May 2004 11:26 am

Does anyone else use this method?

Yeah. Just about every pop singer who can't sing or play their instrument. It's how the music industry manufactures "stars"...[This message was edited by Mark Herrick on 30 May 2004 at 12:28 PM.]

Bill Llewellyn · Post by **Bill Llewellyn** » 31 May 2004 5:25 pm

In doing my home recordings, I do multiple takes for the steel track and cherry-pick the best sections which I then assemble as the final track. Occasionally, that can even mean replacing just one note in an otherwise good section from another take where I played it better. I do the very same optimization process when I write word processing documents at work. Cut and paste to make the best finished product. The composition tool lets me do it, so I do because I want the best final product. Don't we all?

I've thought about buying pitch correction software for the slightly sour notes I can't quite play right no matter what, but too many passages have two or three strings ringing out simultaneously and pitch fixing software won't let me correct only one of the two (or more) simultaneously played notes.

I will never be a PF, BE, JH, BB, or anybody else who can play a track flawlessly start to finish, but I expect I will always be a perfectionist, so this bandaid approach will be necessary for me indefinitely.

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Bill, steelin' since '99 | Steel page | My music | Steelers' birthdays | Over 50?[This message was edited by Bill Llewellyn on 31 May 2004 at 06:29 PM.]

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 1 Jun 2004 3:24 am

There is also the issue of a slight change in tone or attack from take to take, this gives a slightly disjointed feel sometimes.

Tony's approach of working entire sections as a unit is the best approach I think.

"Tape Is Cruel" ; been sayin this for decades.
It forgives nothing, and this is more so for steel and fiddlers for sure, no frets and your on your own.

But you can reach a reasonable level of incompetance and this is recordable,
and will make people happy.
So that's what you must leave on tape.

Jonathan Cullifer · Post by **Jonathan Cullifer** » 1 Jun 2004 4:24 am

I've found it very hard to cut and paste anything, especially in a solo instrumental track. Fills in a song are ovbiously a different story because there's noticable breaks, but full songs are not easy to do it with. Even then, it's difficult getting little pieces changed and make them sound like they should. For example, I goof up a backup lick I record the whole song again to make sure it still sounds right...rerecording one small piece is hard for me.

mtulbert · Post by **mtulbert** » 1 Jun 2004 5:38 am

Even in the "Golden Days" of recording, we did punch in sections of instruments when they needed to be done. It was a challenge because of the latency of the sound to the picker and the slow electronics.

I one time had to have Weldon play the same part about eight times because I missed the punch each time!!!. What a pro he is; never said a word and was very gracious in accomadating me to fix a glich on my end.

If we got a great vocal with a couple of glitches, we absolutely would do a punch and fix the part. It saved time and money.

Where the abuse comes in is when you are dealing with someone with no real talent to speak of and you have to assemble an entire performance with punching in. That normally did not work well and it sounded pretty bad. As previously mentioned hours of singing the same tune repeatedly will change the timbre of your voice and there were times when it almost sounded like two different people from the beginning to the end.

This type of editing is a great tool IMHO, if not abused. I hate to lose a good take because of a couple of minor goofs, so I would rather fix them than risk losing the feeling of the majority of the performance.

Regards,

Mark T.

Ron Sodos · Post by **Ron Sodos** » 1 Jun 2004 8:50 am

By no means am I a studio expert. However I have done many sessions at high class studios . It seems to me punching in is standard technique. That goes for country recording as well as pop, rock and all the rest. I've never seen a recording session where some punching in is not part of the session.

Tim Whitlock · Post by **Tim Whitlock** » 1 Jun 2004 9:17 am

Les - The digital techniques of cutting, pasting, splicing, punch-in, etc, all have their roots in the days of tape, going back many decades. It was common for the engineer to duplicate an entire section, such as a chorus of a song, and splice it in to correct a glitch. Multiple takes were recorded and the best take served as the base and glitches were edited out. Digital just makes these techniques much faster and easier, which is a godsend for a band on a budget. I don't consider it cheating, but I prefer to capture as much of the live continuous performance as possibe.

Dan Tyack · Post by **Dan Tyack** » 1 Jun 2004 1:18 pm

Most of the overdubs I do are on ProTools or similar digital systems. The engineer (me, in some cases) usually has me do multiple runs, and then picks and chooses, sometimes taking entire takes, but often mixing takes. For me it's a very natural environment, and can come up with a result that is much more live sounding than going back and 'fixing' a single take. I've also gone back an 'fixed' a bad note or two in an otherwise great take. It's ironic that this digital technology can often enable the production of a more natural and 'live sounding' result than the old school technique, where you had to worry about doing a 'perfect' take. Personally I feel a lot freer about taking chances when I know I can fix it.....

Garth Highsmith · Post by **Garth Highsmith** » 1 Jun 2004 7:30 pm

.[This message was edited by Garth Highsmith on 09 January 2006 at 08:51 PM.]

Dave Boothroyd · Post by **Dave Boothroyd** » 2 Jun 2004 12:59 am

This is a silly question.
You might as well ask if you cheat by using pedals to alter the tuning of your strings.
Is it cheating to use an amp so you can play louder?
Did Les Paul cheat when he bodged up a German tape recorder so he could multi-track his recordings?
We use technology to help us create music. We should use the best technology we can get to create the best music we can make.
We need to be as free and fluent with the post production suite as we are with the bar and fingerpicks.
Style and quality apply equally to both.

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Cheers!
Dave

[This message was edited by Dave Boothroyd on 02 June 2004 at 01:59 AM.]

Tim Whitlock · Post by **Tim Whitlock** » 2 Jun 2004 5:02 am

Well, I think it is a very valid question. Many years ago I was shopping for a studio and an engineer showed me some new recording gear that would edit out mistakes, correct pitch, etc. He told me that all the big studios were going to this technology, and I thought my God, so this is how they are sucking the soul out of modern recordings. No wonder they sound so sterile and unnatural.

In the old days the purpose was to record a unique event in time and the spontaneous interaction of musicians at a given moment. Nowadays, many recordings remind me of a Picasso painting; lots of fragmented pieces juxtaposed in a very unnatural sounding way. My goal, when recording, is to capture the most natural sounding performance and the use of digital tools can be a two edged sword. There exists the possibility of misrepresentation of a musician's or of a band's true musical capabilities, which could be interpreted as "cheating". I think this was the gist of Les's original question.

Ron Sodos · Post by **Ron Sodos** » 2 Jun 2004 6:49 am

Its odd how you refer to Picasso. The whole world considers him to be one of the greatest painters of all time.....

[This message was edited by Ron Sodos on 02 June 2004 at 07:49 AM.]

chas smith · Post by **chas smith** » 2 Jun 2004 9:21 am

It's 'cheating' only if the purpose of the recording is to showcase the player's/performer's skills. If the recording is about showcasing the music, then whatever is necessary to make the best performance is what should happen.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 3 Jun 2004 4:43 am

Cheating? Cheating?? Nah! That's not cheating. THIS is Cheating!
http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum10/HTML/004046.html

Tim Whitlock · Post by **Tim Whitlock** » 3 Jun 2004 6:32 am

Now that's just plain wrong!!

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 3 Jun 2004 10:15 am

Here's a quote from Mike Shipley, who is a very heavy mix engineer, about Shania's vocals (ie-getting a breathy vocal sound to cut in a mix)...

"Well Shania's vocal sound takes a lot of bouncing and re-bouncing really. In a song like "you've got a way'' she obviously sang it kinda breathy but in order to get that sound in the whole song took a lot of work.
Again with Mutt it is just gonna take as long as it takes to get the sound so for all the vocals on that record (and others with him) I would automate the eq on every consonant/syllable and I did it on that record using the SSL automated eq that they built fot the G console. We had a J so we bought a G+ computer to slave off the smpte of the J so we could run the G+eq!!!. there are 2 eq's in one package so I could go out of one and into the other so that I could safely seek out some horrid frequency one one consonant and leave the other eq for the following sylable!!!!!! It was mindnumbingly laborious but was the only way to get rid of masking frequencies in the upper mids and find the area to boost etc.
This would take a day or so per song and as silly as it sounds , really helps. Mutts opinion is that it's the only way to make the vocal be extra loud and not have offensive frequencies and on that record , it's just sold over the 40 million sales mark internationally and for really believes that songs and sound are important , so it's whatever it takes on both acounts.
There wasnt a lot of compression..an LA2 that works for her and riding the vocal into the track would take about a day...we would ride every nuance to give more charachter.

John Billings · Post by **John Billings** » 3 Jun 2004 12:15 pm

Has anyone here tried John Cuniberti's Reamp? They're great. Record dry tracks, cut/paste, pitch correct, time correct, whatever. Then Reamp the track through your favorite amp with a mic on it. Sometimes c/p, and other editing can screw up the tail-ends of notes, and other stuff. Reamping an edited track can work wonderfully.

Dan Tyack · Post by **Dan Tyack** » 3 Jun 2004 12:39 pm

True stories:

I work with a great engineer who:

at mix time lost all but the first 20 seconds of the bass part for a song. In about 15 minutes he rebuilt the entire bass part for the song using that material (while the artist was sitting in the control room, oblivious to what was going on).

Fixed all the drum parts to a record to the point where the drummer asked which hot studio drummer he had hired to replace all his drum parts.

I like the brave new world......but it can be disconcerting.

Clay Vandenburg · Post by **Clay Vandenburg** » 4 Jun 2004 4:51 pm

I am currently using sonar3 Producer Edition, and am currently doing a gospel album for a friend (Tony L) that gave me my first paying gig when I was 14 years old, that would be in 1964. I played with him for 2 years as a drummer. Since 1966 I bounced around playing different instruments and different tpyes of music, but went back to good ole Country. Now I'm a steel player for a local band here in Pueblo Colorado. In Sonar I cut and paste all the time and use pitch correction on various instruments if needed, as well as vocals. Tony in his day had a great voice, but now sings a little flat, so pitch correction helps him stay in tune prety much on the CD. He's not aware that I am using pitch correction. On this album, he gives me the song list and I work up the tracks before he comes in to do his part. I make sure everything is just right before he comes in. Most of his tracks require steel,lead guitar,bass, rythum guitar, dobro, mandolin & fiddle and of course drums. Since I am playing all of the instruments, I have the leasure of doing, redoing, pasting, cutting all I want, but as John Macey said, it is the end results that matters. I am also doing my own country album in the same manner,except I am doing the singing as well. I also use a vocal harmonizer on some of Tony's songs (with taste of course) and it sounds great. This winter, I am going to do a instrumental steel CD the same way. Cheating? nope! not in my way of thinking, but I refuse to use a drum machine so I use a Yamaha DTXpressIII drum kit and it sound great.

Just my thought

Clay

Carter uni
Zum uni
Mullen uni
and the steel black box