Comping Guitar?

[Glenn75]

I have about twelve takes of rhythm guitar grooves over a beat that is about 4-5 minutes long. What is the best procedure to narrowing down the takes. I've never really comped takes before in this manner so I would like to know how some of you go about the process. Any tricks or tips to making it easier? How do I deal with multiple great takes in one section? Should I open up new tracks to A&B from? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[jeremyroberts]

1. do you have a control surface?

2. it sounds like you recorded into playlists...

In any event, comping really requires a control surface, since there's no other way to instantly mute/unmute various tracks.

Yeah, there are workarounds, but the way to do it is to line 'em up, and mute/unmute as you go. Make your choices, drag to a new track, crossfade to taste and there you go.

Without a control surface, you have to make your choices, put the comp together, listen, repeat. A box of faders/mutes will cut your time required in half (or more).

[blairl]

I have about twelve takes of rhythm guitar grooves over a beat that is about 4-5 minutes long. What is the best procedure to narrowing down the takes. I've never really comped takes before in this manner so I would like to know how some of you go about the process. Any tricks or tips to making it easier? How do I deal with multiple great takes in one section? Should I open up new tracks to A&B from? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Without a control surface you can put each take in a separate playlist on one track. Pick the best overall take, create a new playlist called ****.COMP, and paste the best overall take to that playlist as the master COMP. Listen carefully through the best take and where you don't like what's going on you can quickly switch to the alternate playlists to find the best take for that section. When you find it, copy it, switch to the COMP playlist, and without deselecting the highlighted area paste the new part into the COMP track. Continue listening until you hear something you want to change and repeat the process.

To keep the flow going quickly, don't do any crossfades until you finish all the copy/paste edits. Also, as you scan through the playlists to hear alternate takes, highlight the section on the track that you want to replace rather than having only the cursor at the starting point. This way as you listen to the various takes you can quickly copy anything that is better than the original. Copy anything that is better than the original and as you continue through more takes and like something even better, just copy again. This way you don't have to try and remember which playlist had the best take as you quickly listen. After you have finished listening to all the takes just paste whatever has been copied to the clipboard to the COMP playlist.

This is one method. There are many others.

[Seeee]

yeah, and you could unlatch solo so when ya solo one take it unsolo's the others.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

I prefer to use voice stealing myself.

Rail

[jeremyroberts]

>>I prefer to use voice stealing myself.

But Rail, how do you suggest Glenn75 listen/compare the takes? I can't be the only one who likes to perform a comp while auditioning, so that everyone in the control room hears what comes before, during and after. And what if we're crossing a word or a syllable?

I learned vocal comping on a console (tape), and there are still some workflow techniques and session-flow concepts that were pretty great 20 years ago, and even though our tools are more powerful, sometimes the artists need to hear what's happening in real time.

Mute buttons and faders, in my opinion, are still the best way to audition multiple takes.

Having to ctl-shift-select then cmd-m, a zillion regions before every playback is not intuitive. A good old fashioned score/lyric sheet in excel with comp notes is still a great way to work.

Have you ever worked with a singer who can call you on which take had which breath? I've been lucky (?) to work with a few of these divas, and my mentor produced the grand diva of all... his stories about comping an album by fedex and cassette refs (album sold 20+ million copies and won everyone Grammy's) - singer would tell producer, "no, I need the 'the' before the 2nd chorus from slave 4/track 20..." Took him 6 weeks to comp the album. I think the same techniques are still best for the artistic flow -- but this is simply my opinion. I'll spend only a few hours on a comp today that used to take a few days.

Oh, we're comping rhythm guitar.... NEVERMIND ;-)