record again, or copy and paste

N

Newbie dude

New member
who here, when recording a song on a guitar, or vocals, or bass, or anything where you repeat the same riffs in a song, play the song entirely through each session, and who will record the chorus riif, and then copy and paste wnever theres another chorus?
 
I think that if you're recording a song, you should feel it's good enough to warrant being played through the whole way on its recording. If you're willing to do a quicky job on a song you're recording, is it really that good?

My philosophy...
 
I just do the whole song. It just doesn't have the same feel to the music if you cut and paste. Besides, I'd feel like I'm cheating.
 
Also, if your song is such that no one would notice if you copied and pasted parts, it would seem that it's a pretty generic, boring song. Even repetitive songs add something as they go along.
 
he'll know that he copied and paste, the listener probably doesn't, you can actually copy and paste, then added ornaments when u sing (just the ornaments parts) and no one will know if u match the dynamic right.

a really good example is vocal comping, they are literally patching up sections/words that's like freaking 1/2 a sec together, it's really hard to tell because the thing goes by so fast. if the song is tiring then there's nothing wrong with copy/paste. People have to realize that to record a decent song, the singer has to sing the dam thing about 4-5 times, and that's alot of work, if you're not trained to do that, by the end you're pretty much out of gas, hense copy/paste :)
 
I know from an interview I saw that Def Leppard used to record the chorus/riff once then copy/paste (or whatever the analog tape equivalent is), I think they called it "flying it in".

I assume they were just talking about the main riffs, as they had layer on layer of guitars doing different things in each chorus/verse.

This was on a DVD of the making of Hysteria, which sold over 18 million to date. So I say, if it's good enough for them........
 
i copy/paste the fuck out of things when i'm writing and coming up with scratch tracks and shit

but when it comes to tracking, i'm a "play it all the way through" sort of guy
 
it really depends what your going for, certain styles and certain songs sound good with the same take, possibly more mechanical.
And as Ironklad Audio said, for demos cut and paste like its going out of fashion;)
 
When I first started recording I would do that. But now I just play through the whole thing even if I make a couple little mistakes or if I have to start over a lot. It will improve your playing.
 
Ironklad Audio said:
i copy/paste the fuck out of things when i'm writing and coming up with scratch tracks and shit

but when it comes to tracking, i'm a "play it all the way through" sort of guy
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Exactly how I work. Copy and paste my ass off with very rough scratch tracks to get the structure. But I play everything all the way through. The only exception might be back vocals that might come up every chorus.
 
I copy/paste backing vocals all the time. Sometimes even the chorus. What the Hell, my client doesn't notice.
 
It depends. I have absolutely no problem pasting, but it really depends on the type of song that I'm working on. A lot of the stuff that I do is Pop oriented so pasting parts is allowed (almost encouraged). If the song that I'm working on is more "organic" then I usually have the artist play all the way through. Also, sometimes copying and pasting can be as big of a pain as just tracking it all the way through so sometimes I play it just for sanity's sake.
 
warlock110 said:
a really good example is vocal comping, they are literally patching up sections/words that's like freaking 1/2 a sec together, it's really hard to tell because the thing goes by so fast.
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I've had to work with a few "clients" where i've spend longer comp'ing together vocal take than recording them.


Why? cause they were crappy singers/musicians. I've even split words up into syllables and comp'ed that. Not fun. But hey - the clients are happy as they sound better on record then they ever could live.

Do I like doing it? NO! But i end up doing it more often than I'd like to.
 
I do the whole song a couple of times. Should be fun to play. If it ain't fun to play, then it generally gets scrapped.

But yeah, I do copy and paste scratch tracks massively when I'm writing. A lot of stuff gets moved around while I sort out the arrangement, and none of the recordings get used in the final piece. But the actual thing I play every note of.

But then again, if I'm working on something more electronic or industrial, I'll copy and paste a lot of stuff.
 
that depends on what you're going for.

I love to hear performances, not technical composits of non-consecutive audio files.
 
This is a very general statement and will not apply to everything.
For the most part, I feel copying and pasting is ok on anything but vocals or guitar lead lines. Those are the two things that really stand out if they're identical. As long as those two things are different each time through that part of the song, the song will sound fresh all the way through for the AVERAGE listener.

Now for instance if I have a song with a really funky bass line that's just all over the place and really makes the song, then obviously I wouldn't copy the bass line the second time through the chorus. You get where I'm going with this.
 
89gtsleeper said:
This is a very general statement and will not apply to everything.
For the most part, I feel copying and pasting is ok on anything but vocals or guitar lead lines. Those are the two things that really stand out if they're identical. As long as those two things are different each time through that part of the song, the song will sound fresh all the way through for the AVERAGE listener.

Now for instance if I have a song with a really funky bass line that's just all over the place and really makes the song, then obviously I wouldn't copy the bass line the second time through the chorus. You get where I'm going with this.
Click to expand...


what doesn't apply in all situations? My liking of performances rather than assembled songs?

I don't know man, it's pretty easy to tell when an engineer has comped a song together.

the artists that i love (ray charles, beatles, stevie, miles davis etc...) were performers first, and recording artists second. I would surmise that they would not have even found themselves in a studio unless they were not solid performers. Sure the beatles went on to basically redefine recording, and in some ways helped to usher in the studio "magic" we're talking about here (with the help of George Martin and Geoff Emerick), but i think something is lost in a piece when the performance takes a back seat to perfection.

It would be easy to say that the copy paste thing works in some genres (say hip hop/R&B) but let me tell you, when i hear hip hop performed with live instruments and without the aid of sequencers and the such, it strikes a chord with me, and it reminds me that underneath all that phoney balogna production, and all the samples, are some f*cking great grooves, and very talented poets.
 
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