Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Lonesome Fiddle Blues

#21

— Begin quote from "ldpayton"

…record another 3 or 4 takes, and A/B them again. I repeat until I get a take that satisfies me or I get frustated with trying.

— End quote

I haven’t tried making a loop like that. That’s a great idea. I usually ctrl-z and start over if I know I blew it. Otherwise, I compare it with the previous ones that are in the running. What really bugs me is when I have two or more stumbling blocks and I can’t ever get them all on the same take. It’s not quite as frustrating as getting the hard parts down and then blowing something you can typically play well 10 out of 10 times. For the LFB break, I spent the first 30 or 45 minutes working it as one complete piece, and then I shifted to I working it as two parts as the first half was getting pretty consistently ok. I removed a note from what I practiced after listening to the first few takes as it just sounded kind of forced, like the note was there just because there was a blank spot. As a result, there is a brief pause about midway and that was my break point. Even so, it took me over an hour to get what I got and I still feel the need to get a better one. I played it better all the way through when practicing, so it would seem I could get lucky and nail it once while the red light is flashing. I’ll probably get away from it for a few days then go back and try the one piece approach again with your looping idea.

— Begin quote from "ldpayton"

Mike, I notice you are approaching the 1000 post milestone. Are we going to have a party?

— End quote

Well, I have been secretly hoping that one of these posts, I’ll stumble across the secret “Easter Egg” number of posts… I’ll hit “submit” and then I’ll be congratulated and prompted for a shipping address where I can receive the big prize. I said I was hoping… I’m not really expecting it.
I dunno what one typically does when they reach 1000 posts. It sounds like a good excuse for a party to me. Either that or a valid reason for ridicule… some other husband to wife, “I don’t spend much time on the forum at all. Look at this Mike guy. 1000 posts!!!”

#22

I’m not sure if this is what one of you has already said, so apologies if you have.

This is what seems to work for me in Audacity:
If I think I have got a good take down then review it and find a few notes wrong, or timing slightly out, I run only that section of track again and record against it as another take. That way I’m not doing the whole thing, just concentrating on the bad bit, and it doesn’t take as long. When I get it right I expand the section out for better precision, silence the bad section and unwanted sections on the two tracks and play both takes together. If it sounds right I then mute out the backing tracks and save my tracks as a combined track.
Hope that makes sense …

— Begin quote from ____

Either that or a valid reason for ridicule… some other husband to wife, “I don’t spend much time on the forum at all. Look at this Mike guy. 1000 posts!!!”

— End quote

Maybe, but she’ll likely say : “how much time have you spent reading those 1000 posts?” :blush: Potential minefield there …

Think I’ll just have a few beers for you :wink:

#23

— Begin quote from "ozicaveman"

Think I’ll just have a few beers for you :wink:

— End quote

So it’s official. The celebration will be held at Ozzie’s. Please RSVP to him by the 16th. BYOB.

#24

No wukkers Mike - I assume you’ll be flying the others over in your Miss Kittyhawk :mrgreen:

#25

Sure, I’d be glad to fly everyone over. I am not sure how we will fuel up along the way, but I bet there’s gotta be some place to land and get gas every 300 to 400 miles. What could possibly go wrong?

I am getting a distance between Cresson and Wee Jasper of 8683.56 miles (glad they gave me hundredths of a mile). That’s 13974.84 km for all the metric types. After you figure climbs and descents for each leg I probably average about 120 mph. So if the wind isn’t blowing, the trip will take about 72 flight hours. Figure in about 24 stops for fuel and add an hour each for various pit stop activities and we are up to 96 hours. That’s 4 days. I figure we better sleep. Figuring 10 hours to go to the hotels (that we are certain to find along our route across the South Pacific), get some sleep and get flying again leaves us with 14 hours of flying time each day. That means if everything goes perfectly well: the winds don’t impact our flying and we find places to land, get gas and sleep perfectly distributed in the middle of the ocean then we will have about 7 days of travel time each way. As Oz, said, “No wukkers!” I’m in! Who else wants to go?

#26

No thanks Mike, I spent 48 hours in the USO at an airport once…after 2 flights had to come back and land due to technical difficulties so I am not much of a long distance traveler (On my way to the Persian Gulf during the 1st war over there…military planes…the kind you jump out of) I’ll gladly accept a Concord Ticket though.

in other news, I got my mic today. Was waiting on my porch when I got home 1/2 hour ago. I figure that it will be tomrrow eve learning how to use it then I will record this weekend. So if any of you guys that have the same mic (At2020)want to tell me the best set up then I am sure it will help my learning curve and speed things up a bit.

So expect tracks this weekend…however Momma is flying home tomorrow for 2 days then has to fly back out on Monday, so I am sure since she has not seen the kids for a week and has only seen me for 4 days over the past month that she will have my schedule booked, so it may spill into early next week on the tracks.

#27

Sounds like a breeze Mike.
I’ll throw some beers in the fridge then and chuck a couple of yabbies on the barbie - we live inland :mrgreen:

BTW did you make any sense of what I said re recording?

#28

Your recording technique makes sense to me, ozi. I’ll often splice together takes for rhythm tracks, and I’ll do the same thing to merge a rhythm track with a break, but I’m more stubborn about getting through my breaks in a single take (especially if they aren’t too long).

Hide the 2020 from the kids, oldhat

[attachment=0]1000post.gif[/attachment]

#29

You mean to tell me you guys have been cutting and pasting some! Come on Man!

Can’t say that I have cut and pasted anything yet, but I also can’t say that I won’t do it moving forward.

Oldhat

#30

Ozzie… your method makes perfect sense. I sometimes do something similar, but I’ll typically just go until a bit before what I want to replace and punch in and keep chugging along from there. I do that more on rhythm than on breaks. On breaks, it’s typically hard to find a place that is a good punch in candidate. I used to record breaks for future personal reference, so whatever I could best get in a single shot is what I wanted to save anyway. Sometimes when you feel like you haven’t improved it’s helpful to go back and listen to earlier stuff. Progress is a slow thing, but it usually keeps chugging along.

Nice graphic Larry! We are really building this up now :slight_smile: I’m gonna call the local news and see if I can get them to do a story.

Jesse, if you have a project and you want full takes only that’s fine with me too. Just let it be known. Ricky Skaggs likes to do that some. Of course he has guys like Leftwich and Sutton hanging around the mic.

If I seem scarce for a bit… my new mando arrived. Yay! We are getting acquainted. I am busy recording each note on the fretboard so I can cut and paste some smoking 300 bpm sixteenth note breaks. :laughing:

#31

— Begin quote from ____

You mean to tell me you guys have been cutting and pasting some! Come on Man!

— End quote

Call it cut-and-paste, looping, punching-in, or riding the faders, it’s a technique as old as multi-tracking. My old 1980’s model Tascam 4-track even has a punch-in feature.

Though our recordings certainly aren’t live, I do like them to sound as organic as possible, so I try to be judicious in my use of technology. For instance, on a low priority scratch guitar track I might only play a verse/chorus one time through and then loop it, or if I want to change the ending on a rhythm track I want to keep, I might punch-in a couple of measures rather than start over, but on prominent tracks like breaks I prefer to work at it until I can get a single good take.

I find it tough to make the transitions seamless, especially for the tracks that are up front in the mix. And it can become more noticeable once I start mixing because I almost always use some compression and that makes all those little blemishes more noticeable.

— Begin quote from ____

I am busy recording each note on the fretboard so I can cut and paste some smoking 300 bpm sixteenth note breaks.

— End quote

Cool! I love robotic music. :laughing:

#32

My first multi-track recordings were done on my little Fostex 4 track. I suspect my friend and former band-mate still has the 4 track in his attic. Even in the “real” studio stuff I did back then, the basic technology was essentially the same as the 4 track. It just had more tracks and a few more bells and whistles. Back then, punching in and punching out was a manual maneuver (hence the term “punch in”). The kind of precise punching in and out possible with digital were simply not available. To make matters more difficult, once you punched in, you over-wrote that portion of the original track. One could not “undo” a punch-in. Everything you did (punching in, ping-ponging, let the tape sit there) degraded the recording. Blending a line from two different sources was a manual affair unless you were at a pro studio with automation. It was a different world, but somehow we managed to get recordings we were happy with. The capabilities available with digital recording are just staggering to someone who started out analog.

When I record music, I am trying to make music with the instruments at hand, not the technology. I do like to use technology to make the recording sound better. On the flip side, it is more satisfying to get a single take that is good. I have recorded rhythm tracks that are a single take all the way through with no “fixes” applied. But typically for an initial rhythm track, I will almost always do as Larry discussed and loop a verse and chorus. Quite often, that rhythm track gets sliced and diced and ends up in the final mix. For different songs and /or tracks, I’ll be more “live” than others. I think in the professional world you see a wide variety of approaches. On Skaggs & Rice, I have noticed clear blunders where an errant string gets hit, but it’s an incredibly impressive album. It could have easily been fixed with a quick fade, but I suspect the “blunders” are left there as a testament to the live nature of the recording. On other recordings they are polished to perfection. I think it comes down to what each individual’s goals for a given recording are. I certainly want to adhere to the desires of the other people involved in a collaboration, so if someone wants to make their project using only complete live takes, just say so.

#33

— Begin quote from ____

I’ll typically just go until a bit before what I want to replace and punch in and keep chugging along from there. I do that more on rhythm than on breaks.

— End quote

Agreed. I’m talking more the situation where on a rhythm track there are a few notes where you lose the plot but the rest of the take is good. I know sure as hell (from experience) I’ll probably stuff up a few notes somewhere else on another take :blush: and as the rhythm is a backing for the lead instruments to lay down their parts I want it to be right.

For solos and breaks , warts and all works - that is the feel, it is like playing live and the moment is done & gone right or wrong. You don’t notice someone else’s stuff up because you are concentrating on getting your own bit right.
But when the lead players are going over that recorded track again and again to get their parts right, they don’t want a few wrong notes in the backing track that throw them off (cause they’ll know they are coming up cause they heard them last time).

Being new to recording I actually hadn’t tried this until I think Larry(?) might have corrected a wrong bass note in You Wish in the mix. It has saved me hours of recording time that I don’t have to redo an entire rhythm track until it is note perfect.

#34

I think as long as we aren’t billing our recordings as “live”, it’s not deceitful to use the available technology. I remember reading that Lowell George overdubbed bunches of his guitar playing on Little Feat’s live album, “Waiting For Columbus”. Though I love the album, that always seemed like cheating to me.

The use of technology is a slippery slope, though. On one end is live acoustic music, on the other end is auto-tuning and virtual instruments. There’s lots of space between the two. Even the use of a metronome could be seen as a technological aid that wouldn’t be used in a live setting. Obviously, for our type of music we want to position ourselves toward the “live acoustic music” end of the scale, but we’ve got some leeway as to where we draw the line. We are netgrass, after all. We’re never going to be able to shed technology complely (I save that for Saturday nights).

— Begin quote from ____

The capabilities available with digital recording are just staggering to someone who started out analog.

— End quote

Thanks for reminding me what a hassle 4-track cassette recording was! Many times after ping-ponging a few tracks I’d end up with so much tape hiss and background noise, I’d render my mix unlistenable. And you are so right about the limits of the punch-in feature. I always looked for a long silent section to jump in, because otherwise the transition was really distracting.

Reading back about the old days of recording, I am amazed that engineers managed to physically cut up the tape and precisely splice sections together to acheive a punch-in. By comparison, my home computer DAW is exponentially more powerful than what the pros used to have. (Yet they still managed to produce some of my favorite albums in the 60’s and 70’s)

I used to wonder why in some genres of music (like Rap), musicians would go from being successful performers to producers. It seemed like a step backward until I understood the power producers have nowadays. In genres that use lots of technology, the producer has more of a role in defining the sound than the performers do.

#35

— Begin quote from "ldpayton"

Reading back about the old days of recording, I am amazed that engineers managed to physically cut up the tape and precisely splice sections together to acheive a punch-in. By comparison, my home computer DAW is exponentially more powerful than what the pros used to have. (Yet they still managed to produce some of my favorite albums in the 60’s and 70’s)

— End quote

How did they splice that stuff? I wonder if the tape had reference marks or something. I guess if one had two players that were synched, you could physically remove the tapes and overlay them on top of each other and cut both at once. Kind of like the way they splice movie films. At least film has frames and holes on the side. That is amazing.

Your comment about albums from the 60’s and 70’s hits home. If they had the technology we have today back in the 60’s, I don’t think we would have gotten much of the same great music. Jimmy Page might have spent all his time playing with a sequencer or something.

#36

— Begin quote from ____

How did they splice that stuff?

— End quote

I think over time the industry developed machines to match and cut perfect crossfades into the tape (probably a lot like with film), but the early innovators were using an Exacto knife and Scotch tape.

#37

Oh I wasn’t getting on you guys about the fact that you punched in, spliced, or whatever…just I should have though about doing that myself!

I kind of look at it like "I can’t do the dern’ thing all the way through then I need to go practice it more. I’m anal like that! So instead of me taking the time to learn how to edit music, I intead took that time to play the song over and over and over and over. Now I know I am not getting anywhere on editing but I manage to memorize the track.

I like making my breaks fit into the track in a single take (no editing) as this gives me the confidence to play it live as when you play with others there is that “push-pull” thing going on sometimes with timing and if you know it by heart you can jump back in, slow down, speed up skip notes etc to keep it sounding right with an audience not even knowing that there is a battle royal going on among the players.

I do have to learn how to work with editing software better though…but seeing how fishing and golfing season is here I guess I will have to put that off until next winter!

#38

— Begin quote from "Oldhat"

I kind of look at it like "I can’t do the dern’ thing all the way through then I need to go practice it more. I’m anal like that! So instead of me taking the time to learn how to edit music, I intead took that time to play the song over and over and over and over. Now I know I am not getting anywhere on editing but I manage to memorize the track.

— End quote

Well, I think that’s generally the right approach. We’re here because we want to be better pickers, not computer experts.
I think there is a big benefit to working in such detail and practicing our breaks over and over. I have noticed that the more challenging licks I’m able to figure out here are slowly bleeding over into my improvising.

#39

Hey Mike:

I’ll make you a deal - You add in/come up with the B part for LFB and I will do a sep track for my lead guitar!

Deal?

#40

My fiddle playing friend hasn’t had any time, but he keeps promising/threatening. Also, someone was saying the other day they had a B part to go with this in the mando section. I was looking forward to hearing it. If none of the above pan out, I’ll come up with something. It will be later in the month if it’s me. I have put off some things that are about to come due or the IRS will surely smite me.