Recently there were posts about speeding up tracks and audio quantizing, so called cheats. Much flaming ensued with many of the so called purist took it upon themselves to edify the world of how great they were and how they would never cheat. Talk is cheap.
Im classically trained as a guitarist. The mentality of the classical guitarist is that we are all cheating. The classical approach is to rehearse pieces, sometimes for years, before attempting to record them. The recording process is this: the engineer hits record, you play the piece from start to finish, repeat. At the end you choose the best complete take.
Being relatively green I dont really know many of these so called cheat techniques but I can see their value.
Is it better to create some music using whatever means possible or spend what limited time you have rehearsing for a recording that may never see the light of day?
What if you have a client that wants a product to sound a certain way but cant quite get there in the performance?
What if the opposite is true? Ive done some session work where the client wants some ridiculously demanding parts played with little or no time to rehearse.
If you practice forever trying to get every note on the beat without quantizing you might be a better player. You might be better spending your time learning something else. If the end result is that the notes end up on the beat and you cant hear the difference then have you spent you time wisely? Youll know that you didnt need to use any cheats but will anyone else? Will they just assume you cheated? Would anyone even notice? Do they even care?
I understand fully that in a live performance it is completely unacceptable to do anything other than your best live performance. Were talking about recording. Recording is it the time to use the tools that we have, including technology, to achieve our creative vision.
Of course there are limits for all of us. I dont want to hear a robot play a guitar and have little time for commercial music. The line in the sand for me is when I can hear that it is a fake. All want to do is hear great music.
So here is it, tell us what your best cheat is. How did you do it? Can you hear that it was a cheat? Did anyone ever even notice?
Flame away if you must but someone out there must have some goodies for us.
Oh, and just relax
Im classically trained as a guitarist. The mentality of the classical guitarist is that we are all cheating. The classical approach is to rehearse pieces, sometimes for years, before attempting to record them. The recording process is this: the engineer hits record, you play the piece from start to finish, repeat. At the end you choose the best complete take.
Being relatively green I dont really know many of these so called cheat techniques but I can see their value.
Is it better to create some music using whatever means possible or spend what limited time you have rehearsing for a recording that may never see the light of day?
What if you have a client that wants a product to sound a certain way but cant quite get there in the performance?
What if the opposite is true? Ive done some session work where the client wants some ridiculously demanding parts played with little or no time to rehearse.
If you practice forever trying to get every note on the beat without quantizing you might be a better player. You might be better spending your time learning something else. If the end result is that the notes end up on the beat and you cant hear the difference then have you spent you time wisely? Youll know that you didnt need to use any cheats but will anyone else? Will they just assume you cheated? Would anyone even notice? Do they even care?
I understand fully that in a live performance it is completely unacceptable to do anything other than your best live performance. Were talking about recording. Recording is it the time to use the tools that we have, including technology, to achieve our creative vision.
Of course there are limits for all of us. I dont want to hear a robot play a guitar and have little time for commercial music. The line in the sand for me is when I can hear that it is a fake. All want to do is hear great music.
So here is it, tell us what your best cheat is. How did you do it? Can you hear that it was a cheat? Did anyone ever even notice?
Flame away if you must but someone out there must have some goodies for us.
Oh, and just relax
But what I do is that I first compose a piece, then record it, and only later on start to rehearse it in full for live performances. That way I can keep the edge of recording something that I can get right only after many takes, and then later on master it through hard practice 
And that in turn improves my skill and allows me to record something even more difficult for the next release, and then repeat the process.
