Do you edit your rhythm guitars?

[Santuzzo]

I am in the process of finishing my 1st EP, and I am in a bit of a dilemma:

So far I have never done any editing on the guitar tracks in terms of going into the wave forms and splicing them and inserting silences.
So far all I would do is maybe cut off the end of a take to get an instant silence at the end or cut off some string noise at the end of a take.

I have to admit I do like the modern metal sound, and I assume in the genre a lot of editing is done on guitar takes?
While I do like that sound, I think for my own stuff I personally prefer a kind of old school thrash production sound (even if the music I play might be more modern rather than old school thrash).

Besides that, what I'm a bit worried about is this: if I do a lot of editing on rhythm guitar tracks, then I will be in trouble when having to perform live as I will not get it to sound as tight (even if I manage to play very accurately).

Also, apart from all of what I stated above, I would not even know how to go about editing the tracks....

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you guys edit your rhythm guitar tracks (a lot)? If yes, how do you manage to achieve a similar tightness when playing live?

I'd appreciate your guys' opinions.

Thanks,
Lars

 

[theo]

I've never done any of that, usually I'll just record to a loop and listen to each take till I get the tightest one. If my strings are ringing out too much I'll step back the gain a little and possibly up my gate just a tiny bit.

Im also interested in hearing the replies to this though.

 

[Santuzzo]

I've never done any of that, usually I'll just record to a loop and listen to each take till I get the tightest one. If my strings are ringing out too much I'll step back the gain a little and possibly up my gate just a tiny bit.

Im also interested in hearing the replies to this though.

Thanks!
What you described is pretty much what I have been doing so far as well.

 

[bhakan]

Besides that, what I'm a bit worried about is this: if I do a lot of editing on rhythm guitar tracks, then I will be in trouble when having to perform live as I will not get it to sound as tight (even if I manage to play very accurately).

Editing the tracks won't magically make you play them worse. If you can play them fine, but then just do some editing to clean it up to the point of perfection you will be fine.

I don't really edit my tracks. On rare occasions I will go in and clean a part or two up though.

 

[ttiwguitar]

I think over-editing is a bad habit, and you'll be a better player in the long run if you spend time getting a good take. Nothing wrong with punching in if you screw something up in an otherwise good take, though. Just my opinion.

 

[Prime]

Very rare...there would have to be something super special about it.

 

[isispelican]

It depends, if the noise between the notes is caused by your hands then you shouldnt edit it, you should practise more till its tight. If its hissing though caused by the amp or some other factor its better to edit it out, it just makes everything clearer.

 

[Speculum Speculorum]

Hey - play as tight as you can, and shoot for extremely fine technique. But seriously? Look at some of the big boys around here and elsewhere. If you can find screen shots of their mixes, there's editing all over the guitar and bass parts. It's not that their technique is sloppy, but that the level of tightness that is required for some of the super modern metal is just not human. Don't confuse this for "fixing it in the mix", of course. You use editing like cuts, fades, crossfades, etc. to add the shine onto a great track.

 

[Zer01]

Every. Single. Note.

/not ashamed
//gotta make it tight
///well, maybe a little ashamed

 

[tedtan]

Speculum Speculorum nailed it. The modern metal sound is edited within an inch of its life, even your heros' tracks. If that's the sound you want, learn to edit. If you want the old school sound, play it several times and pick the tightest takes.

 

[theo]

So can someone school me on tightness editing? Say for quick staccato sounds, do you just automate the volume of that track, or do you edit the waveform itself. If the latter part, can anyone point me to a good tutorial for this in cubase 5?

 

[Speculum Speculorum]

The simplest way is to track your guitars as dead solid as possible, and then slice up the audio regions in between sounds (e.g. the small moments between palm mutes), adding very small fades at the end so the new regions don't *pop* into silences. You could also automate the shit out of your volume, but that would be a serious pain in the ass. If you've double tracked everything tightly, your regions should all be able to be sliced and faded the same way. Then you have super tight staccato sound. If need be, some rhythm editing may need to be done (like Logic's flex operation), but try and keep that to a minimum so it doesn't sound like a computer ate your face off.

 

[manana]

I record something tight and then cut out silence, noise and manually sync the tracks to get it super tight. For example, with the classic djent stuff, I would cut and move my guitars to perfectly align with my kicks. I dont really do much else because guitars dont usually need heavy waveform editing. Volume with distortion should pretty much be even.

 

[Yo_Wattup]

With cubase 5, just double click the audio waveform, highlight the little bit you want to silence, on the left hand side of the waveform editor window you're in, there will be 'select process' in there there will be a button for silence. (From memory). You'll also find other useful things in the select process menu, like fade out, fade in, gain, reverse, etc.

Good luck!

 

[Winspear]

I have a lot of experience in extreme editing. For myself in the past, but mainly for other people.

These days I am mainly tracking no less than a bar or two at a time (a lot more for easier riffs) - sometimes a note or two will be edited within that. I think that's very reasonable for modern metal and still requires you to play.
With regards to just noise between notes, that can mostly be sorted with a noisegate.
My editing is generally for blending in a punched note that needed redoing, or editing timing to make things tighter.
The best way to go about it I find is to cut as close to the transients as possible - move the note back for example if it was late - crossfade to its left, and extend the audio clip after it backwards again to fill the gap - basically resulting in a lengthened note of which the end is actually repetition. Again crossfading. That's kinda hard to explain.
I have comped solo runs, sweeps, you name it - from single notes or triplets etc. to sound natural. It's a lot of work though!

 

[Santuzzo]

Thanks a lot, everyone for your input, much appreciated!

 

[C2Aye]

I definitely recommend editing out the regions of silence between guitar parts, as it's quite a big part of the modern metal sound as other guys have said.

What I've had a tendency to do is delay the cut by a bit to make it sound less robotic. In more exact terms, instead of cutting out an 8th note between two notes exactly, I would leave a 32nd of the first note hanging over into the edit region so that it's not as harsh as when you'd cut the entire 8th note gap. Obviously, none of this would work if your track isn't tight enough in the first place!

 

[sear]

I record music I can actually play myself. Unless you are playing extremely complex riffs which are very hard to nail (i.e. crazy tech death) I don't think there is much excuse for making mistakes. If you make mistakes in tracking then it's clear you don't know how to play your material properly.

Then again I'm not a fan of metal that sounds like electronica with guitars, as some people seem to enjoy these days, but if I see you editing relatively simple riffs to get the timing perfect then I don't know what to say, that's just lame.

That said, I do plenty of splicing in the recording just to save time. If I make a mistake I punch in and re-record just that section, moving into the next riff as normal and leaving it in to crossfade, so I get the two takes to blend properly. There's a difference between cutting in just to clean things up without having to spend hours getting "the perfect take" and cutting up every other note to get it "perfect."

 

[necronile]

IMO there is no problem in editing the tracks since that when you record your songs you go for the tightest and cleanest sound therefore ''everyting is allowed'', but still
I think playing precisly is better and less time consuming.

 

[Orsinium]

I would personally just automate it like I would lead vocals just cut down on the silence and raise the quieter parts. If you automate then it will still be there just not as noticeable so the best of both worlds as far as new age metal sound and old school.