Do you edit your bass lines?

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Nola said:
Can you elaborate on this?
Are you saying that letting notes sustain negatively affects the groove?
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yes you are spot on, sustain is super important, it's where 'the pocket' of the groove is. Sometimes I shorten notes, and sometimes lengthen them slightly, using gates can be interesting as well in how it affects groove.
 
i play with my eyes closed while watching tv and reading a book, at the same time, and drinking a pepsi, while eating a burger, and i never miss a beat. but that's only because I am the greatest musician who's ever lived. if you can't do that, you might as well put your instrument down. it isn't that hard. but you're not me, so...
 
It is important for the bass and the drums to line up fairly well. It is not important that the drums sound like a robot played them and every note of the bass align perfectly. I have had "perfect" takes (meaning tight, not robotic) and I have had junk that I re-tracked. I've also had takes where one note was too early or too long for my taste and edited. It's not a crime. But quantizing everything you record will lead to bad EDM...everything perfectly on the mark sounds fake. Good EDM has a bit of groove to it, too.
Music should be from the heart to the hands, not from the eyes to the grid.
 
I usually keep 3 takes of a bass line and then edit them together. It's rare that I'll move individual notes.
 
andrushkiwt said:
i play with my eyes closed while watching tv and reading a book, at the same time, and drinking a pepsi, while eating a burger, and i never miss a beat. but that's only because I am the greatest musician who's ever lived. if you can't do that, you might as well put your instrument down. it isn't that hard. but you're not me, so...
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Playing a part all the way through without screwing it up is not an impossible, unattainable goal.

I will grant you that most of us who say we never edit, come from a time or situation that made it impossible to edit. Which is why we had to learn to just play it properly or deal with what we did play.

But, sinice we put in the time to learn how to play well, there is no need for editing. It just takes a little time and patience. Unless you have a record company breathing down your neck to finish the album, you have all the time in the world to play it well without editing.

Take the time now to learn to play the parts better and later on, you will not need to waste time editing things at all.
 
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Farview said:
Playing a part all the way through without screwing it up is not an impossible, unattainable goal.

I will grant you that most of us who say we never edit, come from a time or situation that made it impossible to edit. Which is why we had to learn to just play it properly or deal with what we did play.

But, sinice we put in the time to learn how to play well, there is no need for editing. It just takes a little time and patience. Unless you have a record company breathing down your neck to finish the album, you have all the time in the world to play it well without editing.

Take the time now to learn to play the parts better and later on, you will not need to waste time editing thingsoftware at all.
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It is impossible to play every note in perfect time - no matter how much you practice. There is not a person on this forum who can play some guitar part that I cannot - I have as much experience as the next guy, if not more, but I will never claim every note is perfectly in time. That's ludicrous. What seems like "tight" or good to you might be not good enough for someone else. I want my bass and kick extra tight. No one here can play it perfectly aligned throughout a 4 minute track, I guarantee that. Nor can I.

There is an extra dose of "let me teach you, son" that comes from some of these posts, and it's rather eye-rolling. It sounds like most of you are assuming his bass lines are all over the place and incredibly sloppy - in that EXTREME circumstance, yes, practice more. If there are a few notes out of whack - grab your damn mouse and move them and don't give yourself a hard time about it.

Nola, don't let anyone wag their finger at you. If you think practice will help, then practice. If you want to move a couple things in place, then go ahead. Platinum albums have been edited for timing, but you know the stance around here on those things. Their principles don't need to be yours. Do what you think is right - and in the end....no. one. will. know. the. difference. (especially a few bass notes).
 
Farview said:
Playing a part all the way through without screwing it up is not an impossible, unattainable goal.

I will grant you that most of us who say we never edit, come from a time or situation that made it impossible to edit. Which is why we had to learn to just play it properly or deal with what we did play.

But, sinice we put in the time to learn how to play well, there is no need for editing. It just takes a little time and patience. Unless you have a record company breathing down your neck to finish the album, you have all the time in the world to play it well without editing.

Take the time now to learn to play the parts better and later on, you will not need to waste time editing thingsoftware at all.
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This ^^^^^

It's sad that playing well has to be defended.

It's pretty clear where the dividing line is - the modern DAW. Not that they didn't edit in the old days, but they certainly did not splice tape for one note. Since studio time costs money, musicians had to be able to play to make it cost effective. They didn't have to be virtuosos, they just had to be able to play their part. We don't have that anymore. You don't have to be able to play at all. You can piece something together note for note to infinity and beyond. Cut, splice, crossfade, perfect! Being able to play what you actually want to "record" is unnecessary. :(
 
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Greg_L said:
Cut, splice, crossfade, perfect! Being able to play what you actually want to "record" is unnecessary. :(
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You're putting your entire beliefs about modern recording into this guy's simple question of moving a couple bass notes around. No one is piecing things together one by one, note by note. Nothing like that is happening here or being discussed here. One person, a good songwriter and creative musician, is asking about moving a few bass notes in place.

Let's not throw the book at him for this. Be realistic. Please.
 
andrushkiwt said:
You're putting your entire beliefs about modern recording into this guy's simple question
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No I'm not. I truly could not care less what Nola does or how he does it. I don't care who is asking or how nice he is. My impressions are based off of years of watching this kind of thing just get worse and worse. It's not just about a few bass notes. It's everything. There has been a massive thought-shift about this sort of thing, and it's ugly to me. I think some of us are just trying to protect and defend the legacy of actually being able to play a part, while some of you make jokes about it as if being able to play is a bad thing. I really do think it's sad how happily accepted it is to fumble your way through a part and just fix it later. That's like mixing no-no #1. The more it gets celebrated like it's a great thing, the more it becomes accepted, and I'd like to fight that....even though I know it's a losing battle.

So I only see this getting worse, and I always end up on the bad end of these things, so I'm out. I'm sorry nola if you took this personally. My comments are not about you specifically, just this kind of editing in general.
 
Greg_L said:
It's not just about a few bass notes. It's everything.
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but it is about that - that's exactly what it's about. he never suggested anything of the sort to make someone think he was doing anything more than that. it was really simple. move a few bass notes if needed. that's all.

i understand where you're coming from, i'm new to the DAW thing too - i started playing when i was 8 in 1990. I just got into this stuff 3 years ago. still, i don't think it's fair to throw the book at him, or his post, for this simple adjustment he wants to make.

i'm done too. i think my point is equally clear. he can decide what to do.
 
My approach is to practice a part a whole bunch of times until it feels comfortable to me to play it and record it.

At that point...I'm hitting REC...and if it should happen that I flub a couple notes, it becomes a decision making process while I'm tracking.
IOW...If I'm only at the 4th measure into a take...and I flub...then I just REW and track over.
If I play 3/4 through the song and it sounds really good...and then I flub a note or two...fuck it...that's a keeper take, because I know that my playing is good, and those two notes are just minor quirks of the moment.

Of course...if I then keep playing after the couple of flubs...and then I make some more flubs...then again, REW and do the whole thing over.

On most stuff, I end up with only one take that I'm then working off of. On a few more critical tracks, I'll do 2-3 good keeper takes, and slice--n-dice or just pick the best out of the bunch, and if I edit a couple of notes...it was still a good take and good playing.

I mean...it's not about faking or cheating or not being able to or wanting to learn to play the part...it's about keeping the best of the take, and if I gotta edit out those couple of notes, I'm not losing any sleep over it....and frankly, there's a point of diminishing returns, and a point where I want to move on to some other track.
I don't really have any room to do 85 takes, and then pick out note-by-note from them to compile a track because I'm always tracking to a finite set of available tracks (23 & 1 SMPTE sync) on my tape deck. I think I would go nuts if I had to sift through 85 takes and/or bits-n-pieces of takes...etc...etc. :D
 
andrushkiwt said:
It is impossible to play every note in perfect time - no matter how much you practice. There is not a person on this forum who can play some guitar part that I cannot - I have as much experience as the next guy, if not more, but I will never claim every note is perfectly in time. That's ludicrous. What seems like "tight" or good to you might be not good enough for someone else. I want my bass and kick extra tight. No one here can play it perfectly aligned throughout a 4 minute track, I guarantee that. Nor can I.
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So, you are saying that nothing recorded before 1990 is up to your exacting standard?
 
andrushkiwt said:
It is impossible to play every note in perfect time - no matter how much you practice. There is not a person on this forum who can play some guitar part that I cannot - I have as much experience as the next guy, if not more, but I will never claim every note is perfectly in time. That's ludicrous. What seems like "tight" or good to you might be not good enough for someone else. I want my bass and kick extra tight. No one here can play it perfectly aligned throughout a 4 minute track, I guarantee that. Nor can I.

There is an extra dose of "let me teach you, son" that comes from some of these posts, and it's rather eye-rolling. It sounds like most of you are assuming his bass lines are all over the place and incredibly sloppy - in that EXTREME circumstance, yes, practice more. If there are a few notes out of whack - grab your damn mouse and move them and don't give yourself a hard time about it.

Nola, don't let anyone wag their finger at you. If you think practice will help, then practice. .
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hey taras thanks for writing this post. i was thinking the same thing that there was an assumption the bass notes were all over the place, which is why in the first post i said "a smidge" and hoped that people would realize we're talking micro amounts only seen on the grid (i forget the numbers right now, but I think 4 notes i could actually hear were early, 1 late, the rest just slightly off on the grid visually, and i couldn't hear them off). so my question was more in relation to those notes that were off and couldn't be heard rather than some overarching ethos. i have 30 days to get 10 bass lines down because at that point i finally get a space to record loud guitar parts for all 10 songs i have written, and i want the bass all done, so do i edit the notes and get the job done or keep redoing the part? i left that time-crunch part out of the initial post, so that's my fault, and maybe it would change some opinions.

i recorded this song eight years ago on analog, but it had a poor vocal and stiff drum track done on an old drum machine, so i want to redo it. but i did it analog back then without the ability to edit and played the bass well on it. i did get rusty since then because i took a lot of time off to focus on work instead of music, and just got back into music this year. i practice 2hrs per day since last October trying to get my "chops" back up to speed, and i'm getting close to where i want to be. I'm not sure I'll ever be a great musician where people are in awe, but I hope to just be to the point where my musicianship doesn't detract from the song. I'm all about the song...it's my only natural musical talent (lyrics/melody/song), and the rest is more of a struggle that I'm working on just to enhance the song.

I did wind up editing the notes last night. I'm going to listen to it again this morning and see what I think. If it feels mechanical I'll redo it.

I guess the final question I have is: I was reading more about groove last night, and a lot of these academic papers were defining it as the musical quality that makes you want to tap your foot, dance, or somehow move. I think this song has that just in the drums alone, and when i laid down the bass, even with some notes off, it still had that. Some notes were early on the grid, and one or two late. So even though the notes weren't consistently early or late, it still had a groove if that's how we're defining it. I just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone coming across this thread and wondering about the elusive groove!

Thanks for calling me creative, too. That's the biggest compliment I could receive.
 
Nothing wrong with editing.....if needed. We do have tools available that weren't in the past.

On the other hand why does it 'need' to be perfect? Some of the finest recorded tracks of all time had 'flaws'

However, playing it right is better.

If you can't do it in the relaxed, comfortable environment of your home studio, how the fuck are you gonna pull it off live under pressure?
 
andrushkiwt said:
There is not a person on this forum who can play some guitar part that I cannot
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Most arrogant and egotistical statement of the year. You don't know that.
'If' that were true, you'd be in high demand and making a great living as a session player.
:D
 
To answer the original question, if you can't hear that they are off, there is no reason to edit them. If you zoom in hard enough on the DAW, you will find that nothing lines up to anything. However, if you zoom in hard enough, you can get into a situation where you have to define what the start of the note is. Is it when your finger first touches the string, as it's pulling across, when it starts to speak, or when it settles into the note?

Since music is all about listening, that should be how you make the decision if it needs to be edited. No one is listening to the grid and no one will be inspecting the waveforms against it.
 
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