Monthly Archive for September, 2009

After the new-job ridiculousness, and with the assurance that bills can be met for a bit longer, things are starting to settle back into some sort of music-allowing pace. I’ve been simmering on some brain-ideas for T3E album #2, and I’ll be getting them down on tape/disk/flash in the near future. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

I’ve been participating in CAPE again this year. If you’re not aware, it’s a really cool online collaborative recording/songwriting/performance “competition”. I put “competition” in the golden squirrels because it’s not really competitive in any serious sense – rather we all get together virtually at the end of the process, listen to each other’s work, comment, and gain a bunch of cool new tracks for our iTunes playlists. It’s a great social activity as well – I’ve “met” some great musos, producers, and engineers through the event, and projects are in the works (for a given value of “in the works” which have grown out of CAPE collaborations.

Anyway, after a few stints in a row as just a vocalist, I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring as a songwriter for the first time. Also doing lead vocals, harmony vocals, and apparently (fake) mellotron and (fake) string quartet. And possibly mixing, and editing some of the parts for cohesiveness.

But I’m not a control freak. If you find anyone who says I’m a control freak, send them my way so I can tell them what they should be thinking instead.

Ah, mirthfulness….

The editing of takes is a funny thing.I’m normally a bit of a stickler for authenticity of performance and all that jazz. Actually that’s not entirely true – in the right genre I’m all for some judicious DAWsomeness being applied (see Frost’s “Black Light Machine” at about 7:50 for a good example of some Command-D and grid mode Pro-Toolery). But the song I’ve written for CAPE is a pretty straightforward Beatles-y ballad-y kind of thing, and while yes, it does have two mellotrons and a string quartet and an everything-including-three-kitchen-sinks crescendo, the core instrumentation should sound something like a drum kit, piano, bass and guitar playing in a room, just like John, Paul, George and Ringo used to do.

"Paul, stop sniffing my chest"

Of course playing in a room you have all sorts of cues to work with. You can see each other, you’re all listening to each other play at the same time, and so on. On the other hand, the nature of an online collaboration means everyone’s laying down parts individually to a click and a guide track, and they’re all being shoehorned into a timeline at the end. Even with good players and a good click, it’s challenging to get things to “lock”. “The whirligig of time brings in his revenges”, as Shakespeare once said. Granted, he was basically talking about Karma, Vis-à-vis having people locked up for grinning like idiots whilst wearing yellow stockings and cross-garters, but the quote still holds some relevance I think. At the very least it gives me an excuse to post this picture:

Hey baby - how you doing?

Where were we? Oh yes, editing.

So with my nifty portable copy of REAPER on a USB drive, I’ve spent a rainy lunch-hour at work applying nip here and a tuck there, and our kicks, pianos and basses are all lining up nicely.

I should give an example.

Here’s a bass, piano and drum track in their raw, pre-edited state:

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I’m not inclined to say that any of the parts were “wrong” by any objective measure – it can be great to have parts which push and pull against the click. These ones are just pushing and pulling in different ways, by virtue of the fact that they were performed without the performers being able to hear each other. It all contributes to make the total result less than the sum of the parts played.

Chop and slide the parts around a bit, and you end up with something more like this:

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I haven’t done any sort of cynical audio-quantise malarkey (and definitely NOT any pitch correction), and I think it still sounds like humans playing instruments. But now they’re playing in slightly better time. A bit more like they would if they were in the same room together, rather than continents apart.

Ideal? Probably not. Cheating? Ahhh, well, that’s more of your philosophical sorta question. Is it cheating if you’re in another state, it doesn’t really mean anything, and you do it standing up? Well, yes actually. But as far as editing, I’m inclined to think not so much – at least no more than the whole recording process itself is a cheat.

For my money, the more pertinent question is “does it do a better job of presenting the song?” And I think the answer is undoubtedly a resounding “yes”.

And as Shakespeare might well have said, had be been a composer rather than a playright, “the song’s the thing”.