...means you let go of the idea of recording one perfect take. Instead, you do three or four takes, you go back through the best take and punch in fresh stuff in the bad places, and then you send the heavily punched-in "best" take and the other two or three takes to the producer in question.
Or, if the producer in question is actually handling the session, you just shake his hand and let him decide how to use all the stuff you've given him.
I know nobody with a better sense of how to dance this particular dance than my friend and co-producer, Bryan W. Ward. Here's a track I sweetened for him two or three years ago. He's taken bits and pieces of my various takes--different harps, different positions--and used them as flavoring.
This is the future, I think. One version of it. At least some people are still using a harmonica player rather than a synth player.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Sep 10, 2015 7:41 PM
Great harmonica , Adam, and Bryan did a fine job of bring the different parts together. It's a wonder how it gets done , post-recording. It was a revelation that A good amount of Miles Davis modal/fusion stuff, commencing with "Bitches Brew", were long improvisationa sessions that were edited and constructed--"composed" in a sense--by producer Teo Marcero. It sounds all of a piece when we get to the final release, a whole piece of music that is compelling and organic in sound. Your harmonica work has the same quality here; one wouldn't have thought that the portions were selected from different takes, as the all flow melodically, one idea to the next, in response to other the vocal other instrumentation. ---------- Ted Burke tburke4@san.rr.com
I did a session for Warner Brothers when I lived in Orlando. They were putting together a traditional music program for the schools and needed harmonica sound. I was hired for one hour. After I finished my takes in well under an hour, producer wanted me to play long sustained notes all up and down the harmonica.
What they did was use the original takes as well as construct an idea here and there cutting and pasting the single notes. ---------- The Iceman
When I did the session for the movie Fried Green Tomatoes back in 1991 for MCA Records, we only cut two tunes, but we had to do five takes of each tune and every track on every take got tweaked, sometimes by overdubbing an entire phrase differently over a solo I played, sometimes a comping part, etc., and this is actually pretty standard stuff in most recordings but even with that, they wanted every solo close to the same on every take.
Very few recordings over the years have ever been done in one take, even on so called "live gig" recordings as well. Heck, if I remember correctly, there's an Elmore James session that one tune had to be done with 22 takes. There are many different reasons for using so many takes and it isn't just instrumental parts that need to get tweaked alone because sometimes it's things like actual mic placement in a recording or things many people often times aren't gonna be paying attention to that are ridiculously subtle but can have a huge effect on how the final product turns out and in so many studio sessions, the average player without any real studio experience would be thinking these guys are way too anal about little crap, but that little crap always tends to effect the big picture and the final product in ways that many just won't be able to comprehend because recording engineers and record producers tend to listen with "bigger ears," much like the way a real professional musician does, meaning listening in FAR greater detail than 99% of musicians whose only playing experience may be just in open jams. ---------- Sincerely, Barbeque Bob Maglinte Boston, MA http://www.barbequebob.com CD available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbmaglinte
My senior year in high school our school choir got to perform a Christmas special for WMHT, the local PBS station (they pick a handful of choirs every year). We went over to the local Unitarian church, which was nice enough to give us a performance space. They set up the lights and we put on our wool choir robes (the school was slowly phasing them out, but probably 80% of the robes were still wool). The lights and the robes were very hot and they made us do multiple takes of each song. There was a lot of sweat, and then it happened. Someone fainted. And then another. And another. 6 girls and one guy (we never let Matt live that down) feinted.
The thing is, visual splicing is harder that audio splicing. When you watch the special the camera pans one way, and the kid is there, between two friends, and then back, and they are gone. And then back, and there they are again! In the same song! True Christmas magic. (I guess they made a big rush on getting rid of the wool robes after that.)
That wasn't even our only Christmas Miracle. Another year we had a lower quality of video recording. I don't know why, but me and this other kid were in the front row center (usually, as basses, and tall guys we were in back). The other guy and me both were sort of metal heads. We were the only two guys with long hair (my hair, what I have left, has gotten darker, but maybe the choir teacher thought our long dirty blond hair made us look like we belonged in a Christmas celebration?
Anyway, the spotlights above us were shining down on us in the center, and the effect only hit the two of us. There was a glow above our heads shining off our hair. It kind of looked like... a halo, over the heads of the two headbangers in the choir!
Multiple takes is how we record our music. Usually we try to get recordings pretty early on, and then get them tighter by practicing to the recordings. I'm not great at editing, but I can edit out plossive p's and string together different takes. At least 2 of our songs we could never perform live the same way- spots where I sing and play harp or the bass player also plays guitar (and keyboard) at the same time.
I'll do a bunch of takes on each song I record and splice my favorite parts. It's standard practice now -- some pop vocalists get recorded by the syllable.
My first time in a professional studio was a vital learning experience. I learned how important attention to detail is. Before that, I'd whip off takes and just let things happen. Now I do that with a run-through, but when I'm capturing the final version of a song, it's all very slow and steady.
Also, splicing stuff together is much easier with a good DAW. I tend to record guitar, cobble together the final guitar part from the takes I've done, record harmonica and do the same, and then focus on the vocals.
Adam, that track is really strong. Production is just the way I like it -- dark, with a hint of saturation, but very clean. Your playing (and in general the timbre of acoustic harmonica playing) shines in a setting like that.
---------- Check out my music at http://bmeyerson11.bandcamp.com/
Adam it sounds consistent with no feeling of being chopped up. I did two cuts on the Deb Callahan album Grace and Grit. The same thing, record a bunch of stuff and the producer puts it together. With digital recording cut and past is so simple now.
