Cut and Paste

Fishmed

Fishmed

Well-known member
Does anyone else here feel that when you cut and paste a song to death to get those "Perfect" tracks that it some how sucks the life out of the recording, leaving a sterile/nudered song?
 
Absolutely. There's nothing like a computer to take the humanity out of a human performance.

Andy Rooney said:
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
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G.
 
Ani Difranco said, in a song . . . "People used to make records, as in a record of an event, the event of people making music in a room. . ." Yeah, music today is only "music" by definition. Rarely is art made anymore. I'm recording on tape, partly as a way to force myself out of the "ctrl+alt+delete" music mentality. The best we can do now is make music with integrity and hope that the world catches on.
 
omtayslick said:
Depends on how bad it was without cutting and pasteing.
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I don't know, every several measures... basically play until any minor mistake... stop... cut... paste... start again, etc... until there are ZERO mistakes.. mechanically perfect.
 
Fishmed_Returns said:
there are ZERO mistakes.. mechanically perfect.
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But real performed music is NEVER perfect in any sense. Humans are falliblbe. We have minor timing issues, we have minor pitch issues. Art represents humanity (either as it is, or as the artists sees it, wishes it, or imagines it.) Humanity is flawed. Art is flawed. A mechanically perfect "musical piece" is an exercise in scale and chord work. Not music.


Just my $.02
 
nate_dennis said:
Ani Difranco said, in a song . . . "People used to make records, as in a record of an event, the event of people making music in a room. . ."
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What a GREAT quote!

Before we have folks chime in here (which is inevitable) saying I'm pooh-poohing the idea of manufactured music, I want to go on record now that at the same time I was learning about and listening to Willie Dixon and Son House in my late teens, I also had all the latest albums from Synergy and early Vangelis (loooong before any chariots caught fire) and built my first project studio around an Arp 2600 w/Sequential Circuits 800 sequencer.

But what we're talking about here is not the validity of sequenced, MIDI'd or programmed music, it's about sucking the humanity out of a recording of humanity.

And speaking of sucking, if the uncut/unpasted is *that* awful where it sounds better completely castrated, I think that's a pretty reasonable indication that the recording needs to be re-tracked.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
what we're talking about here is not the validity of sequenced, MIDI'd or programmed music
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Absolutely. But I would say that MOST really great electronic or programmed/sequenced music is not rigidly quantized or made "mechanically perfect." Even in these genres imprefections exist and they are what make the music interesting. IMHO
 
I don't know.... cut and paste... multiple takes..... punch in, punch out... comping.... what's the difference??

If I sing the second chorus better than the first, then I'm probably going to copy it over to the first. If I totally blow out the first verse (which I always do), I'm going to do more takes until I get it right. If I flub a guitar lick I'll probably leave it, unless it's really bad, then I punch in. (For some reason, I hate punching in and would rather leave a mediocre performance than go through the trouble... I don't know why that is... :confused: )

peace.
 
I never cut and paste or punch in or allow minor mistakes. But I think I should.

Whenever tracking I stop at any minor imperfection and re-track from the beginning. This ends up persisting for hours for a single guitar track. Soon I grow tired and start making more mistakes, and begin to hate the song. Then even if I do get a good take there is little feeling in it.

It's sad.
 
yeah it can destroy a recording. My brother hardly does any of that possibly cause he doesn't know how but he likes the little nuances and tiny slips that make recordings human and real
 
c_olin said:
Whenever tracking I stop at any minor imperfection and re-track from the beginning. This ends up persisting for hours for a single guitar track.
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There's an easy way to break one's self of that habit; go and record one or two cuts in someone else's studio where one has to pay cash for their time. ;) :D One either learns very quickly to live with minor imperfections or practice harder before they even step in front of the mics.

Out of curiosity, when I was out in the car running errands earlier, I popped a randomly-selected, fully-commercial playlist into the car stereo. I had this thread in mind as I was listening to it. Of the five songs that played while I was in the car, three of them - all Top 40 hits spanning about three decades - had small but fairly obvious errors or glitches (all in the guitar parts, BTW) that would/should have been fairly easy to fix, but weren't. And it seems as though, except for me making this point in this thread, nobody cares and even less probably noticed.

G.
 
c_olin said:
Whenever tracking I stop at any minor imperfection and re-track from the beginning. This ends up persisting for hours for a single guitar track.
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There's an easy way to break one's self of that habit; go and record one or two cuts in someone else's studio where they have to pay cash for their time. ;) :D One either learns very quickly to live with minor imperfections or practice harder before they even step in front of the mics.

Out of curiosity, when I was out in the car running errands earlier, I popped a randomly-selected, fully-commercial playlist into the car stereo. I had this thread in mind as I was listening to it. Of the five songs that played while I was in the car, three of them - all Top 40 hits spanning about three decades between them - had small but fairly obvious errors or glitches (all in the guitar parts, BTW) that would/should have been fairly easy to fix, but weren't. And it seems as though, except for me making this point in this thread, nobody cares and even less probably noticed.

G.
 
Like many other topics, the obvious answer is that it depends on the type of music and the preference of the musician. I think its unfair to say that musicians aren't making art, because what may sound like generic commercialism to one person may be what the artist really feels passionate about creating. Sure, if we hear it on the radio, we can bet that they've comprimised their original ideas to an extent, but who's to say for sure?

Again, it's kind of a universal answer to countless other questions, but shouldn't it be up to the person creating the music to decide the best way to do it?
 
Chili said:
I don't know.... cut and paste... multiple takes..... punch in, punch out... comping.... what's the difference??

If I sing the second chorus better than the first, then I'm probably going to copy it over to the first. If I totally blow out the first verse (which I always do), I'm going to do more takes until I get it right. If I flub a guitar lick I'll probably leave it, unless it's really bad, then I punch in. (For some reason, I hate punching in and would rather leave a mediocre performance than go through the trouble... I don't know why that is... :confused: )

peace.
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I have no problem with a cut here, paste there, and even less issues with punching in/out little trouble places. I do feel that you should be able to perform your own song from start to finish reasonably well before you begin with editing. Bristol Posse pretty much hit it home, practice more... better yet, write something you can actually perform. :rolleyes:
 
I realized my previous post sort of contradicted the purpose of discussing these things in a thread about recording techniques. So to elaborate, I meant that I can't really bring myself to let recording techniques influence how I feel about the completed music.

nate_dennis said:
Ani Difranco said, in a song . . . "People used to make records, as in a record of an event, the event of people making music in a room. . ." Yeah, music today is only "music" by definition. Rarely is art made anymore. I'm recording on tape, partly as a way to force myself out of the "ctrl+alt+delete" music mentality. The best we can do now is make music with integrity and hope that the world catches on.
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I love every aspect of creating and recording music, but I feel that the songwriting and the music itself should hold the highest importance as a basis of artistic integrity.

There are many musicians making art with integrity and they're hoping that you'll catch on.
 
I Got Riffs said:
Like many other topics, the obvious answer is that it depends on the type of music and the preference of the musician.
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This is, of course, true. For example, One of the two songs that didn't have any obvious errors is/was all about the artisanship of the title artist (for the record, the cut was Jake Shimabukuro playing his virtuoso version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"), where the whole idea is the excellence of the musicianship itself. You just don't let mistakes slip through for that kind of recording. Then again, I'm sure there was not a whole lot of editing involved, either. While it's possible perhaps that different verses may have been from different takes. I'd be willing to place a substantial bet that it was a straight-through take, even if it was take #3.
Fishmed_Returns said:
I have no problem with a cut here, paste there, and even less issues with punching in/out little trouble places.
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Agreed. It's not a question of whether editing to fix mistakes is bad; very little of what hits our ears these days is a straight-through take like the artisan recordings often are, and like practically all recordings were before the Vietnam War.

It's a question more (IMHO) at what point does excessive editing cause the cut to loose it's groove? I think the answer depends a lot on just how much of a groove the performance had to begin with. The more it has, I think perhaps, the less it will hold up under excessive cut/paste and - perhaps - the less one will care about technical imperfections.

G.
 
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