Best ways to edit guitars to perfection in PT

[bryan_kilco]

Shaun - where you working at man? I live like 5 mins from you probably....used to share the stage with you guys a few years back. You got your own home thing going or you working at a studio?

EDIT:


Originally Posted by Shaun Werle
Yeah well everything i do is in my home studio, so this is not a problem for me.


doh!! haha

 

[Shaun Werle]

Shaun - where you working at man? I live like 5 mins from you probably....used to share the stage with you guys a few years back. You got your own home thing going or you working at a studio?

EDIT:


Originally Posted by Shaun Werle
Yeah well everything i do is in my home studio, so this is not a problem for me.


doh!! haha

I live in effort Pa buddy, where you at?

 

[abt]

Yeah this is what guitar tracking looks like:

There's no real "editing" of a performance there, more like programming the performance from tiny punches. Perfectly do-able in Pro Tools as you go while tracking as evidenced here, but I still prefer to do it in a host where I don't have to do my edits blind. It's nice to see the transients while you are dragging around the little chopped up sections! Hah...

Holy Crap! That's a lot of regions! This process intrigues me. Like I said, I've tried this before and it sounds terrible. There's been times when this would have been bloody handy.

Question for you, is what where seeing here:
- A single take chopped up and slipped into time
- Multiple takes played in time punched in at the appropriate spot
- Notes played at any speed, shopped and moved into time
- Combination of all of the above
- None of the above

 

[AdamWathan]

- Multiple takes played in time punched in at the appropriate spot
- Notes played at any speed, shopped and moved into time

These 2, mostly the first one usually. The parts are 99% of the time played "in time" but not necessarily punched in the right spot, sometimes I might just have a guitarist play a 5 note section to a click by himself over and over and over again until one of them was good, then we just paste it in.

The trick to making "note at a time" riff building sound even remotely usable is to make sure you are leaving a LOT of space before the visible transient. You need to leave like 15-20ms usually, that is the pick attack and if you cut out too much of it when splicing and crossfading things together it'll sound awful.

It never sounds as good as just getting it played properly in the first place, but it's workable.

 

[A Midnight Requiem]

These 2, mostly the first one usually. The parts are 99% of the time played "in time" but not necessarily punched in the right spot, sometimes I might just have a guitarist play a 5 note section to a click by himself over and over and over again until one of them was good, then we just paste it in.

The trick to making "note at a time" riff building sound even remotely usable is to make sure you are leaving a LOT of space before the visible transient. You need to leave like 15-20ms usually, that is the pick attack and if you cut out too much of it when splicing and crossfading things together it'll sound awful.

It never sounds as good as just getting it played properly in the first place, but it's workable.

How do you approach the band/guitarist into tracking this way? In my experience, most guitar players would either be totally against, angered, or simply discouraged from tracking this way. How do you convince them (and the other members) into being cool about it?

 

[ahjteam]

Correction: That is how guitar sessions look when you get kids that write material beyond their ability. Sadly this is about 90% or more of metal these days.

Yup, my sessions usually look something like this:

But I rather try to do music than mechanical programming that people call modern metal. I rather leave a bit of humanity and errors there to show that an actual human played. But I'm also a lazy cunt.

 

[Joshua Wickman]

^^^uke:

I'm sorry that is just hard to look at for me. Protools is much better in the Ui department for sure.

 

[A Midnight Requiem]

^^^uke:

I'm sorry that is just hard to look at for me. Protools is much better in the Ui department for sure.

When I was running Cubase it looked a LOT less-ugly than that

 

[Shaun Werle]

How do you approach the band/guitarist into tracking this way? In my experience, most guitar players would either be totally against, angered, or simply discouraged from tracking this way. How do you convince them (and the other members) into being cool about it?

I had a guy one time who was against it and high as hell every second, He kept telling me he just wants to go threw the song. I said if you want your tracks tight, like all the work i do than you do it this way, it pays off in the end.
He was so dumb (and high as all hell) that i ended up just going part for part all the way threw.
My worst mix to date and the hardest to mix/master.

So I will not do this again, it's almost like OCD if it's not perfect.

So tell them prior, tell them your way and if they don't agree to find someone else to record you.
It may seem like your loosing a client but it's not worth going threw that trouble.

My opinion.

 

[A Midnight Requiem]

I had a guy one time who was against it and high as hell every second, He kept telling me he just wants to go threw the song. I said if you want your tracks tight, like all the work i do than you do it this way, it pays off in the end.
He was so dumb (and high as all hell) that i ended up just going part for part all the way threw.
My worst mix to date and the hardest to mix/master.

So I will not do this again, it's almost like OCD if it's not perfect.

So tell them prior, tell them your way and if they don't agree to find someone else to record you.
It may seem like your loosing a client but it's not worth going threw that trouble.

My opinion.

I've heard of people saying "screw it" and just giving the band back a sloppy performed recording. In a way it's their own fault for not taking the engineer's advice, but in a way I don't think I could let myself be associated with a shitty end product.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I had a guy one time who was against it and high as hell every second, He kept telling me he just wants to go threw the song. I said if you want your tracks tight, like all the work i do than you do it this way, it pays off in the end.
He was so dumb (and high as all hell) that i ended up just going part for part all the way threw.
My worst mix to date and the hardest to mix/master.

So I will not do this again, it's almost like OCD if it's not perfect.

So tell them prior, tell them your way and if they don't agree to find someone else to record you.
It may seem like your loosing a client but it's not worth going threw that trouble.

My opinion.

Hate to be that guy, but nice spelling.

 

[AdamWathan]

For some awesome in depth discussion about this stuff check out this thread:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/550738-so-you-want-tight-mix.html

It should probably be locked because it's a fucking shit show, but tons of good info.

 

[JoeJackson]

The trick to making "note at a time" riff building sound even remotely usable is to make sure you are leaving a LOT of space before the visible transient. You need to leave like 15-20ms usually, that is the pick attack and if you cut out too much of it when splicing and crossfading things together it'll sound awful.

So you're saying, that the visual transient should NOT be exactly on the grid, but a few ms behind, right? I just want to make sure, that I got this correctly ... I'm starting kind of a tecchie-project next week, that will sure be full of edits and punch-ins.

Mind sharing a screenshot of how a correctly edited and aligned guitar-track should look like?

Cheers

 

[Behind]

For those who edit after the tracks are recorded, could you post the before and after to hear the difference? It'd be really interesting to hear that.

When I see a session like these, full of punch-ins, I wonder how many hours take to do that :zombie:

 

[bryan_kilco]

I live in effort Pa buddy, where you at?

Saylorsburg, bro. You used to be in Life Beyond Reason I believe? I played for Act of Brutality a few years back. Small world I guess? We should hang sometime.

 

[AdamWathan]

So you're saying, that the visual transient should NOT be exactly on the grid, but a few ms behind, right? I just want to make sure, that I got this correctly ... I'm starting kind of a tecchie-project next week, that will sure be full of edits and punch-ins.

Mind sharing a screenshot of how a correctly edited and aligned guitar-track should look like?

Cheers

Here you go, top half of each track is the DI (I record DI/Amp as stereo and just disable left or right depending on what I need to use, easier than grouping in Reaper)

 

[JoeJackson]

Here you go, top half of each track is the DI (I record DI/Amp as stereo and just disable left or right depending on what I need to use, easier than grouping in Reaper)

Awesome insight ... thank you very much. I would have shoved the exact start of the Wave onto the grid.

Cheers, mate

 

[Shaun Werle]

I've heard of people saying "screw it" and just giving the band back a sloppy performed recording. In a way it's their own fault for not taking the engineer's advice, but in a way I don't think I could let myself be associated with a shitty end product.

Haha Oh and I forgot to mention they, had old ass strings on there guitars and the worst guitars. The "high" kid tracked his sloppy shit on the left speaker, the bass is tight, and the other speaker is way better than the other side.

If i know the other guitar was the better one i would just of had him do everything, It always seems to happen that i record the tight beefier player after 10 hours of tracking the weak off time mess.
This is why I ask who the better guitar is and have him track the hell out it!

I'll post a mix if i get the chance

 

[Shaun Werle]

Saylorsburg, bro. You used to be in Life Beyond Reason I believe? I played for Act of Brutality a few years back. Small world I guess? We should hang sometime.

that's like a 10 minute drive!

Small world it is!
and yes.

Once i get more situated in my new home we can hang!


God, I always seem to find local people on here somehow. haha

 

[Shaun Werle]

^^^uke:

I'm sorry that is just hard to look at for me. Protools is much better in the Ui department for sure.

I agree that is the ugliest daw ever, But hes got the right idea with his tracking!