Slice, Dice And SoftEdge It Into A Song

[Microstudio]

Have a song idea? Pickup you guitar and record an Intro, a couple of verses, a couple of choruses maybe a bridge and an outtrow on one track and then let the Slicing and Dicing begin!

Slice, Dice And SoftEdge It Into A Song (http://www.thessvideos.com/newvideos.html) and when you are done..... BUY ME A BEER!

[Dave Labrecque]

This approach comes in very handy when recording clients who aren't as solid on the performance as they might be. Why wait for the perfect take when you can move forward in sections, then splice 'em together? Makes me wonder how often this approach has been used when tracking to tape. The splicing's not as precise, but still...

[Jeff Scott]

This is precisely what I'm doing for a client right now. We have moved ahead into getting the song down by having me edit the Verse, chorus and Bridge sections into a larger song. He's had trouble cleanly executing a few chord changes so we've pieced parts of the song together chord by chord. It's worked really well. The client is happy. They end up sounding a better player than they actually are.

[Marvin]

I've done projects where we have recorded guitars and bass note by note. No fun..

martin

[Microstudio]

The key is timing and learning how to play to the CLICK. Sometimes I will play along to the click and then record just the verse over and over and I always come up with 2 or 3 good takes out of 10 or 15 then I just Splice, rename it and its there then I move on to the Chorus... ect. I find it much easier this way rather then trying to record the whole song perfect in one take or punching in and out to fix things.

[UpTilDawn]

The key is timing and learning how to play to the CLICK. Sometimes I will play along to the click and then record just the verse over and over and I always come up with 2 or 3 good takes out of 10 or 15 then I just Splice, rename it and its there then I move on to the Chorus... ect. I find it much easier this way rather then trying to record the whole song perfect in one take or punching in and out to fix things.

That's a great way to keep the repeated sections from sounding identical too.... having multiple good takes to choose from. If needed, even splicing half of one take and half of another take to produce a whole new version as well.

Improvised sections benefit from this also.

songs come together much faster sometimes as a result... Memorizing the finished version for performance is far easier sometimes than trying to play the perfect take for the recording, no doubt.

[Dave Labrecque]

The key is timing and learning how to play to the CLICK.

I never used a click, and yet this method of tracking in sections works fine. Of course, you need to be in the ballpark tempo-wise.

[Microstudio]

I never used a click, and yet this method of tracking in sections works fine. Of course, you need to be in the ballpark tempo-wise.

Playing to the Click is just being able to play in time and if one is playing in time they can play to the click.

[Dave Labrecque]

Playing to the Click is just being able to play in time and if one is playing in time they can play to the click.

Right. I'm just saying I haven't used one, and so the slice/dice method you outline still seems to work great for us non-click types. :)

That said -- I was told by an engineer who worked with him and Jeff Lynne during the Beatles Anthology "new songs" pre-production process that George Harrison had trouble playing to a click. Otherwise, I think he played in time okay. ;)

[wascomat]

In reference to slice and dice, is there a way to line up the takes on the same screen so that ,as an example, takes 1 through 8 are below each other on the same time line. Similar to the MT but in this case a single track exploded out to all of the takes? The 1-8 keys I would expect still select the take to listen to.
This would make it easy to compile a single take out of several by cut and paste, etc.

-wascomat

[Microstudio]

In reference to slice and dice, is there a way to line up the takes on the same screen so that ,as an example, takes 1 through 8 are below each other on the same time line. Similar to the MT but in this case a single track exploded out to all of the takes? The 1-8 keys I would expect still select the take to listen to.
This would make it easy to compile a single take out of several by cut and paste, etc.

-wascomat

The only way to see the layers is one at a time that I know of.

[UpTilDawn]

A layer view has been discussed before... and I believe is somewhere on Bob's list.

[wascomat]

It seems to be a quicker way of selecting the best of all takes when they are all available at the same time but I understand the concept of listening and selecting to a final take as well. Probably not much different than being able to see all of them at once since you can only listen to one at a time anyway.

-wascomat