How much editing is too much?

[brownbeartle]

I have to start off that i love this forum.

So let me say that a death core band came in to record, at the first session they said "we've only been a band for about two months now and played only 2 shows". This is where i first became worried about the project. We recorded ghost tracks with the guitars to a click, then we moved onto drums. He told us that parts were too short or too long. Yet again we did ghost tracks, and then while recording the drums we had to compromise because parts were either too short or too long. I tracked three good takes of the drums and edited them together, but it was still a poor performance. Next came guitars. The guitarist couldn't play to the drums and when we doubled his rhythm sections he couldn't even play to the other recorded guitar. At one phrase of the song, i'm not joking, i had about 12 takes and none of them were hardly usable. Don't even get me started on bass, he was so out of time and wasn't even in the same key as the guitars with his fills.

So after they left i was confronted with a mess of poorly played performances. I started by editing the drums to the grid (i hate doing this but it had to be done) yet the timings were so off that one cymbal hit was a beat ahead, and the next was a beat behind. I had to compromise. I then edited the one guitar to the drums for a tight performance, and moving on to the second one i had to comp it with the many many takes, and i even had to go as far as using vocalign plug in to match the one guitar to the other. Seriously with the bass i had to auto tune most of his playing, and after hours of trying to comp and match it up to the drums and guitars i just used logics flex time to place it to the grid.

I spent hours and hours, maybe even days just getting this performance to sound halfway decent. The band came in to listen to what they recorded, and they looked at me with the strangest look. Its as if I WAS THE ONE who messed up their perfect playing. I really don't know what to tell these guys, and i don't want this song to reflect on my abilities.

This is a lot to read and i'm sorry about that, but what would you guys do?

 

[MatrixClaw]

I had a friend's band come in that was like this. I tried editing a lot of it, but in the end, it was still horribly out of time on all parts, not to mention guitar solos were out of key, etc. I ended up just leaving most of it unedited (fixing the worst parts and leaving the rest) and just mixed it so at least the individual instruments sounded good.

I was not happy with the results at all, but there was no way in hell I was going to fix their performance so they sounded good, when they clearly weren't. They were happy with the finished product, but it's also clear that they were all tone deaf

At this point in your mix, it sucks to really have to trash all the work you've done. I'd just flat out tell them what their issues are and show them a before and after track. If they don't like you editing their performance to be in time, then just put it back to how it originally was and be done with it, no sense in wasting more time on a shitty performance.

 

[Trevoire520]

If bands can't play their stuff to that standard I just do a live recording of them in the rehearsal room (maybe overdubbing vocals), spend an hour or two on the mix and send them on their way. This works out as normally they have next to no budget anyway and there's no way I'm going to spend days editing that stuff for no money if they can't even play their own songs.

In all honesty this is normally the best thing for the band anyway as if you edit/replay all their parts and make it sound perfect then the reality of how much they suck won't hit home and they won't practice, which is what they really need to do.

 

[MetalSound]

you edited the drums AFTER recording guitars and bass which were played TO the drums?!?

 

[brownbeartle]

you edited the drums AFTER recording guitars and bass which were played TO the drums?!?

Whoops, i may have said this wrong. One session was just for drums, then before the guitarists came in to record their parts i edited the drums.

 

[MatrixClaw]

If bands can't play their stuff to that standard I just do a live recording of them in the rehearsal room (maybe overdubbing vocals), spend an hour or two on the mix and send them on their way. This works out as normally they have next to no budget anyway and there's no way I'm going to spend days editing that stuff for no money if they can't even play their own songs.

In all honesty this is normally the best thing for the band anyway as if you edit/replay all their parts and make it sound perfect then the reality of how much they suck won't hit home and they won't practice, which is what they really need to do.

+1, I forgot to mention this. That's actually a great idea, that I've used a few times with shitty bands.

I find it odd how the same friend I spoke about earlier can play in time if I'm playing drums live to a click, but when I record the drums to a click and he tries to record separate, he can't follow the timing AT ALL. Completely baffles me how people can be that horrid at timing.

 

[YoRich]

If bands can't play their stuff to that standard I just do a live recording of them in the rehearsal room (maybe overdubbing vocals), spend an hour or two on the mix and send them on their way. This works out as normally they have next to no budget anyway and there's no way I'm going to spend days editing that stuff for no money if they can't even play their own songs.

In all honesty this is normally the best thing for the band anyway as if you edit/replay all their parts and make it sound perfect then the reality of how much they suck won't hit home and they won't practice, which is what they really need to do.

whilst I totally agree with you, I used to do this a fair bit but I've found that when that band does maybe get better, they'll go somewhere else to record next time, as the demo they did before was shit, even though they were to blame for being shitty.

I've started insisting that everyone takes a sensible approach and timescale to get what they want, even if it does mean butchering their crappy playing to death.

 

[drew_drummer]

Listen to the band in the rehearsal room before taking the job. If they suck. Refuse the job. Simples.

 

[corybrunnemann]

I spent hours and hours, maybe even days just getting this performance to sound halfway decent.

welcome to my world, and they're ALWAYS on an unreachable deadline!!

you could always tell people you didn't do the recording? lol

 

[Jrich4967]

worst comes to worst, just try to get back to the way the track was before you edited it. give them that as a final mix, tell them you didnt edit AT ALL, and then tell them that your computer crashed and the files got deleted. then tell them that you will do it again, but to tell them that they need to practice their asses off to a click before. of course, charge them. Make them know that they werent good

or instead of doing that, just tell them that the takes they gave you werent good enough to work with.

 

[brownbeartle]

just try to get back to the way the track was before you edited it. give them that as a final mix, tell them you didnt edit AT ALL

Funny thing is that i always keep a saved file of the raw tracks without edits, and one after editing but before any consolidations. I played the original, then showed them then showed the band EVERY edit i did for them. Needless to say they apologized for the sloppy performance, and only took one song out of the 4 they recorded that had half decent playing.