Tight guitar tracks- recorded riff by riff?

[dayve]

I track on different playlists in tools. I have a comp playlist then another one for recording. I always get people to play along a few bars before the part we are actually recording so the drop in sounds nice and natural, then zoom in to a sample level and chop at zero crossing points to top and tail the take. Then double click it. Copy it. Then select the comp playlist and paiste it. Most of the time you then need to edit the origional audio to get zero crossing points, and if there's going to be silece for more than a few samples to do this then perform a crossfade.


One of the things that annoys me about tools is that it doesn't default to zero crossing points when you edit. Logic does it and it must be easy to implement. Zooming in and out all the time to make every edit is pretty annoying.


Interesting about meshuggah. They want that mechanical sound though so it works. One of the reasons I like "I" is because it sounds so emotionless and crushing. It really sounds like they don't care what you think if you see what I mean??

 

[ThomasT]

then zoom in to a sample level and chop at zero crossing points to top and tail the take. Then double click it. Copy it. Then select the comp playlist and paiste it. Most of the time you then need to edit the origional audio to get zero crossing points, and if there's going to be silece for more than a few samples to do this then perform a crossfade.

You have to edit every little part in Protools?

Thats much easier in the older Cubase 5.1!
Just press record and a new audio seqment appears in the current audio part.
That's what I like on cubase. There are not only a track with audio part(segments, regions etc.) but all such segments are grouped in one audio part. So you have an additional order structure. E.g. you can edit all recorded audio pieces in one part, and cut and copy the relevant part of this part with out the need of grouping the edited audio seqment.
And clicks are not a problem. Cubase has an automatic crossfade between audio on one channel. Theres a little button in the lower left corner for each channel.

 

[Andy Sneap]

Its so easy in pro tools, just select all your tracks and group fade, easy!
I'm confused to what you guys can't figure out, it works perfectly, even if theres 200 edits? You just group fade (apple f) with the setting of your choice, usually 10 or 5 ms with equal gain then consolidate , its a doddle.

 

[Andy Sneap]

make sure you have auto crossfade switched off in your pref by the way

 

[James Murphy]

Very easy in Digital Performer 4.12 as well.. just drag across all the edits you want to select then and then grab the fade handle on the end of one of the edits and drag a little fade and it will apply the exact same amount to all the edits you have selected.. i just zoom in close to more easily create a short, inaudible fade. works close to the same as that on every DAW i've ever used. it's a very intuitive thing usually.

 

[blackcom]

So when cutting and pasting, do you time align the tracks by ear or use some kind or grid/bar system to snap to?

 

[Andy Sneap]

use the grid

 

[Lopes]

Tight playing, a click track, and the grid make editing anything so much easier.

 

[blackcom]

Do you use a click-track generated in real-time from within the DAW, or do you use an audiofile?

 

[Lopes]

Either one will work fine, as long as it syncs up to the grid. Lately, I've been using audio files to handle my click tracks.

 

[DracWell]

I tend to get it a section at a time. Mainly so the tuning stays exactly the same for the four tracks. If I can cut and paste, I'll do that also, the guitarist could sit there and do it again, but whats the point??? If you've got it perfect, why do it again.

aaah! thanx!
that's the perfect excuse for me now
"Andy said he cut & paste, so can I !"

Our bassplayer hate that I do that, he doesn't feel it's "true" enough

 

[Ermz]

Is this cutting and pasting in relation to layering a certain part, or just for recurring riffs? Because for layering, I can't see how doubling the exact same part digitally wouldn't cause phasing problems, giving a 'chorus' effect, or whatever. With recurring riffs though... yeah, I can see why someone would take the easy way out .

 

[Andy Sneap]

no, you can't cut and paste to double something, its for repeating parts, sorry Moonlapse, you still have to play something 4 times to get the effect of 4 tracks

 

[Ermz]

Haha, yeah that sounds about right.

 

[TheSweetener]

I'm a little too late in this discussion, but I copy and paste everything I can! I mean let's concentrate on doing one take that is really tight and copy it!
It simply saves time. If you have clients in the studio with almost no budget it saves their lives (musically)!

 

[Ermz]

Anyway, sort of going back to the main topic, I've always had the problem where when I take down the gain and layer my rhythm guitar tracks, I find I lose alot power from the pick attack. So essentially whenever I hit those palm muted notes, they hardly come out at all. Is there a good method of averting this?

 

[ThomasT]

I also use copy and paste but I let the whole song play for two reasons:

1. I hear the complete guitar during the song and can do the editing later alone.

2. "Got it perfect" can be a problem when it's late in the evening. You _think_ it's perfect, but this opinion may change if you hear it with fresh ears the other day. So you have some reserve material for editing.

 

[DracWell]

Moonlapse, try turning down the gain a lot. At least if you're layering 4 guitars. I find that too much gain destroys the attack when layering.

 

[Soundscaper]

on copy/paste

When i have the luxury of having a clicksync band in my studio i often let them do the whole song and cut the repeated riffs/parts in sections per 2 or 4 bars. I then copy bars 1-2-3-4 to another track on 5-6-7-8 and vice versa. Kind of autodubbing you see. You can take this principle very far in terms of dubbing possibilities. First bars of second refrain switched with first refrain etc...
You get it huh?
Don't forget to first throw out all the of sync stuff there might be going on in the song and watchout if you do this with drums. Some drummers put some small differences in their playing depending on "where" in the song they are... and don't like it too much when this get's aborted for the sake of editing.
Remember too, NOT everything NEEDS to be edited

Sidenote: since i am relatively new to this board i'd like to say MASSIVE RESPECT to Andy and megathanks for this forum!

Cheers,

Tony

 

[Soundscaper]

no, you can't cut and paste to double something, its for repeating parts, sorry Moonlapse, you still have to play something 4 times to get the effect of 4 tracks

Well see my previous post... in that case you DO

Cheers,
Tony