Do you edit your rhythm guitars?

[Konfyouzd]

I don't do a lot of editing. I do the same as theo. I record everything to a loop over and over and over and over and I just pick the tightest take.

I hear some folks record at half speed to ensure tightness. Honestly, if you're planning to edit the hell out of a track, this seems like a less tedious way to not really play what you have recorded.

And tha's not a jab at you at all. You said yourself that you'd have the dilemma of not being able to reproduce what's recorded with an editing solution and the same can be said for half speed recording. I really hope this doesn't turn into a debate about that, though...

 

[axxessdenied]

I record a few layers... instead of choosing the "tightest" loop I'll opt to make a "composite" track of the various layers and pick and choose the best parts from each take to make one clean take. Could care less if people think it's cheating. I have no problem admitting that I am still practicing in order to get my chops up to par for the music I want to play.

 

[Konfyouzd]

If you pull it off live it shouldn't really matter, man. The recording phase is for presenting the ideas you have in your mind. The performance phase is for proving you wrote it.

... or can play it at the very least.

 

[VBCheeseGrater]

I say make the album as good as you can, don't worry about playing it live (to a degree, no trombone player or whatever), you are making an album so make it the best you can.

then, when it comes time to play live, you'll find a way to play it. If you can't, then you'll have to step up - which is a good thing.

 

[sh4z]

Awesome thread! thank you OP for posting this question. Lots of useful information in here

 

[tedtan]

I record music I can actually play myself.

I don't get why every time we discuss modern recording methods the conversation always comes back to "don't try to record what you can't play". All modern recordings are edited to death and back - its the modern sound. It's absolutely OK not to prefer it (I myself prefer some life and humanness to a recording), but its still the modern sound and all of your heros are recording and editing this way. It doesn't have anything to do with being able to play the part or not. It has to do with super-human tightness.

I record a few layers... instead of choosing the "tightest" loop I'll opt to make a "composite" track of the various layers and pick and choose the best parts from each take to make one clean take. Could care less if people think it's cheating. I have no problem admitting that I am still practicing in order to get my chops up to par for the music I want to play.

This is a great way to go. But technically, its still editing.

 

[Santuzzo]

Thanks a lot everybody for your input!

Some of you may have misunderstood what I meant in my OP, I am not talking about fixing mistakes by editing, but just editing silences to get stops to ring out less or to cut off any kind of string noise I might have created by shifting my hand on the strings a bit after the take was over.
Fixing timing issues or sloppy playing by editing note for note, that is an absolute no-no for me personally, I do want to be able to play what I record, so in that case I'd probably even much rather settle for a take that might not be 100% perfect, but I know I did actually play it for real.

That said, I have always been wondering how these modern metal bands get that extremely tight and precise sound, and I'm sure they are very tight players to begin with and then maybe some of the takes are edited in addition to that.
But in my case editing to an extent to get that kind of sound would result in something I would not be able to reproduce live. Also, like I mentioned earlier, I do like that old-school kind of production sound where the playing is tight and accurate but not edited to sound almost non-human. And I don't mean this in a negative sense towards that modern metal sound, I guess it's a matter of personal preference.

 

[goldsteinat0r]

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."

Wow, you sound like an uptight dick in this post. Guitar/bass/drum/vocal/everything edits are part of recording, and I don't see how the two scenarious you lay out in the last paragraph are different.

I know this is "pointless bickering" to some, but this whole school of "if you can't play your material with inhuman precision you should never have written it" is total bullshit, IMO.

 

[ttiwguitar]

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."

Exactly!

 

[Overtone]

Santuzzo, I think you should rely on your ears and not your eyes for this, and listen in the context of the full mix. It'll save you a lot of time and also stop it from sounding too mechanical. Just listen and where you can hear some noises try to determine if to you it is something that gives the track some life and makes it feel more musical and alive, or if it is discordant, distracting, or makes the track sound sloppy and not as punchy. If you start analyzing the waveforms visually and listening in solo mode you can easily end up in the trap of wasting time editing tiny little things that aren't worth it, to the point where the track is surgically clean.

A good compromise is to just do a simple fade at the end of each rhythm guitar region to ensure you don't have any extra noise after the fact, but not to worry about anything in the middle of the region unless you can really hear it. In other words worry about the end of a rhythm guitar part, not the stuff happening during rests within that part. The extreme overproduction would be to cut up all the regions and silence/fade EVERYTHING between the notes you are playing, and then also quantize or move all the chunks so that they line up perfectly with the kick drum that is playing 16th notes

 

[sear]

Wow, you sound like an uptight dick in this post. Guitar/bass/drum/vocal/everything edits are part of recording, and I don't see how the two scenarious you lay out in the last paragraph are different.

The difference comes down to the frequency and nature of edits. If you are just splicing in a take because your existing take wasn't good, then I'm fine with that. When people start splitting up individual bars or even recording each and every note on its own, or set the tempo to 50% and get it that way... sorry, I think that's lame.

Is it the "modern" way of doing things? I guess. I know that the artists I listen to don't need to do that sort of thing to sound good.

 

[cakejetski]

I started recording about 4 months ago, and the worst habit I got into was over-editing my tracks. I would (and still do, though less) chop my tracks to shit and move notes to make them fit perfectly, rather than playing tight recording takes. Inorganic, and feels terrible man.

Get better at playing tight and clean, that's my goal right now anyway.

 

[tedtan]

Thanks a lot everybody for your input!

Some of you may have misunderstood what I meant in my OP, I am not talking about fixing mistakes by editing, but just editing silences to get stops to ring out less or to cut off any kind of string noise I might have created by shifting my hand on the strings a bit after the take was over.

Just use a noise gate on the guitar tracks (or edit the silent spaces out) in your DAW. This will clean up the "holes" and be 100% repeatable live if you use a gate in you live set up.

 

[AlexAlaska]

just do w/e C2 says, he is the master

 

[theo]

This thread has inspired me to start editing my takes.
Not trolling or anything. But I've come to realize that I can make my tracks sound a lot more professional by doing to. I'm not talking super slow takes with ultra quantising. Just little bits and pieces.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Rehearse well, record well, perform well.

Aside from that, the occassional "go back and track the clean part separately" since program changes realtime can have some timing issues. For the most part, I prefer to track ryth gtr & bass along with drums, clean up as needed. In fact, with PODS & other DSP's, you can rehearse your program changes too. Since we build everything around a click track and the whole song is mapped out with tempo and signature changes in advance, you can pinpoint where your program changes should be automated by rehearsing them and then placing them well.

 

[Paul666]

When I record some new ideas or riffs I don't do any sort of edits or somehting like that. I record a few takes and keep the tightest.

But when I record other bands I edit almost everything. In breakdown or "rhythm riffs" I edit everything to the grid and edit out pick attack and fingerslides. So that all rhythm tracks are as tight as possible.

 

[MassNecrophagia]

The difference comes down to the frequency and nature of edits. If you are just splicing in a take because your existing take wasn't good, then I'm fine with that. When people start splitting up individual bars or even recording each and every note on its own, or set the tempo to 50% and get it that way... sorry, I think that's lame.

Is it the "modern" way of doing things? I guess. I know that the artists I listen to don't need to do that sort of thing to sound good.

If that's how they want to make their music, let them.

 

[Ratel]

What i do with double tracked guitars is choose the tighter take, edit it a little bit, and then use that as a basis for the other guitar. That way, it will sound tight and still have a human element. Taking solid takes is still much preferred, you don't want to waste a shit ton of hours editing guitars.

 

[Santuzzo]

Sorry for bumping this thread, but once again thanks to everybody for your input, and I have a new related question (thought I'd post it here instead of starting a new thread on the topic):

I do want to give the editing a shot, but all I am planning on doing is editing the cut-offs at the end of stops.

How would you guys go about doing this: would you just zoom in on the track (I'm using Cubase 7, btw) and then cat the tail off at a suitable point OR

would you highlight the tail and then create a fade out?

Also: would this also be done at the start of a riff/group of notes, or only at the end/stop?

I have never done this before, so any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Lars