There’s definitely value to this idea, it would be useful if you’re tracking a person who can’t quite get the part right, which, face facts, is going to be a fair amount of folks. But if talent isn’t an issue (like with ABR), then it’s a lot of work for something that isn’t going to make a difference at best. And these guys are damn good at what they do. In the wrong hands, this could be a mix destroyer.
Everyone in the comments if it sounds good it is good, there’s no right or wrong way of something, it’s simply a technique which in my opinion can work very well for a musician who isn’t performing at their best & as engineer needs to work their magic
So many dislikes, I assume because people don't like the idea of editing guitars? Look, I know most of you watching this are either producers, or people who want to get into producing, but the number 1 rule in music production is there are no rules. The second rule in music production is that if it sounds good_ then it is good, and that's the end result that you want. It seems opinionated that editing guitars is "wrong" because either 1) if you have to fix the guitars, you should get a better guitarist, or 2) editing and quantizing guitars makes it sound too fake / "like a MIDI" guitar. But here's the thing guys... Everybody has different tastes. Some people like raw unedited guitars, some people like syncopated rhythms and aligned guitars work well for that. This blind hate for how people choose to do production is what's wrong with communities around production as a whole. Who gives a flying fuck how people do their work as long as the end result sounds good? TL;DR: No, it isn't pop music if you edit guitars, the end result sounding good is the only thing that matters. And if you really want to spend the extra hours re-recording over and over again for that perfect take while everyone else settles for tone over timing, you do you. EDIT: Also there's some people saying "no wonder bands sound shit live because of stuff like this", you have a slight point, but at the same time you shouldn't have to go wayy overboard with fixing guitars. I'm not saying take the first trash take and then fix it - get the best you can from the source and then work with it. Like I said, tone over timing - timing can be transparently fixed, and tone cannot.
I was beginning to think that I suck at guitar and can't play as tight as everyone else, but now I realize that people edit the shit out of their guitar tracks. Moving a few notes here and there is fine, but aligning every note is ridiculous. May as well just program guitars with MIDI.
So many know it alls here. Obviously everyone has been a part of a professional musical project and has their own incredible sounding albums that we can listen to. This is a UNIVERSAL practice. The tracking parts slower isn't something I've tried myself, but cutting up guitars to get it 100% in line with the grid is damn near crucial with this style of music. You can be the tightest guitar player in the world, you're still a human. Add that to getting charged by the hour at a studio, you do the best you can with the cards you're given. I just got out of a professional studio and tracked my record, and this is nearly identical to what we did. I'm a clean player, and as OCD as you can get. If you can make something sound perfect, and are paying for the time it takes to make it sound perfect, then do it. The fact is if you suck, all the tricks in the world won't matter, you won't get a good sounding product. This requires a good guitar player who can play tight, and then the engineer using his skills to make it sound BETTER. That's the whole point. As far as playing with just a click, it depends on the part. If I'm playing a riff that is extremely intricate and precise, and I want to make sure I don't get ANY extra noise from my guitar, then I track to just the click. If I'm playing chords for a chorus or something more lax, usually I listen to it with the rest of the music. I mean, holy cow guys the PRODUCT is there for you to listen to. EVERY SINGLE one of ABR's records sound impeccable, and if you follow the band you KNOW how much work they put into it. Keep an open mind.
"Your Still a Human"....EXACTLY....so lets Produce it to sound LIKE A ROBOT???? Listen to Yourself....Thanks for Not being one of the "Know it alls here''"LOL
Ehh, not a fan. I don't see the need of being so precise with time-aligning transients with guitar parts recorded at a slower BPM. Don't get me wrong, I love ultra-tight recordings and being very precise with it, but this seems like too much. Punching in technical parts mid-riff, slip-edits, etc. all good. But if you have to start quantizing like this, you're either working with a bad guitar take, and you need to fix that at the source and play it better, or you're chasing a non-existent, time-wasting form of perfection. I could see why someone would do this if they're editing and mixing for a band who sent them tracks and say that bands guitarist sucks, but for a band like August Burns Red, why is this necessary?
Taking out character and human-ness doesn't sound good. Editing something that's noticeably off-time is fine, but editing something that is already tight to be perfectly on the grid is just unnatural.
really neat trick guys! this kind of stuff i would never think of for my own projects, but if i was recording this type of uber precise band it could be priceless. good all around advice about tracking a touch slower too. i've noticed that click track speed up as well. (now if a could find any musicians that could play to a click track!). on a haters' note: this is a cool trick. doesn't mean you have to use it. just a tool for your arsenal.
News flash, pretty much every heavy band has everything snapped to the grid regardless of how good the players are. Bands like periphery and meshugah can play super tight still but when you cram that many notes and frequencies together...a few ms difference in all the parts would just sound like a mess.
Absolutely, and we use the deletion of artifacts, lots of cleanup and quantizing, rx9 type stuff, heavy noise gate use and even audio tempo increase for the sake of the song, and the live sets are so loud and distorted there is little to compare for the average ticket holder, introduce the live raw vibe, the excitement of the show, lights, beer, weed ect, lol I’ve worked on projects from direct from board with F1s digi recorders around the room so we could add crowd noise and “full room irs ” (meaning a reflection value when bodies are present) as “live edit cross fades” and of course having the talent record directly over the live takes back in the studio, think Judas Priest “Unleashed in the East” Yes I’m that fucking old Obviously the digital tools and daws were not available to us then but tape stretching for pitch, vocal and track riding for both tempo and volume are some primitive but effective tricks everybody used with great results
It's weird, I've been doing this technique quite frequently for years, I thought I was doing something stupid so it's good to know great engineers do this too haha this sounds much more natural than simply recording note by note or punching in a lot Also, huge LOL to anyone saying they aren't down for this idea or that "maybe the playing just isn't good enough". 1) if you're not accepting of a perfectly efficient editing technique that pros are suggesting, maybe you need to "edit" your way of thinking, and 2)musician's skill level is not aways in question when it comes to editing techniques, ABR are certainly not lacking in skill level so there's that
Rafael Ortega no one said you "have to do it", but looking at it with an open mind, giving it a shot, and seeing if it works for you could be benificial, rather than dismissing it right off the bat
But why would you do that ? wasting hours putting every transient on the grid for what ? how about letting the guitarist play style with all of the subtle off tempo notes that makes him an actual human and make it worth it to become a tight guitar player ?
By playing just to a click (in my opinion) makes it hard to get the feel out of the song. The way I track any instrument is to make a demo of the entire song out of midi and just play along to that. It works for everyone in the band, and when you have a “perfect performance” to practice and track to then it helps not only get the feel, but also get a better performance out of anything. Besides, the closest thing I’ve done to editing is crossfade different sections of the song together if we decide to record the song in sections. Also: I think that if you have to resort to editing techniques like this, then maybe the musicians aren’t good enough. Most of the time my band will record songs in sections, but other then that there is no editing involved, it’s just the actual performance. I’m not claiming we’re amazing or anything, but seriously, you would think a decent musician could play a take that doesn’t require a bunch of editing like that. Geez.
I can assure you that skill isn't a problem in the case of ABR :) And there is a world of difference between editing that is used to make up for poorly played tracks, and editing that takes tracks that are already excellent from A to A+. That extra bit of effort and refusing to settle for less is a HUGE part of what separates the pros from everyone else.
URM Academy Point taken. I understand why some people would want to edit their tracks that way to sound as polished as possible, but in my personal opinion I’d rather get “the perfect take” right from the source. Besides, I know they can really play, and play well, but personally I think they would sound even better if they tracked the way I suggested in my comment above. It all comes down to personal taste and preference really.
Into The Forest I agree with you completely! I'm more intrigued by the human aspect. Too much importance is placed on the "grid". Furthermore, listening to a clock puts me to sleep after 4-5 minutes. That's why most songs, lately, are under that in time!
Tisbonus Yes! I think that is a very compelling point, I never do any edits really, just crossfade different song sections together if we record in sections. Other than that, it’s all human!
You explain your opinion on editing by referencing your band, so is your band selling out tours around the world like ABR? If not than your reference means nothing. This is what URM mean when they say taking A to A+. This is what recording is in general, taking a sound of an instrument to the next level, and the next, and the next with certain techniques.
For those complaining, this is nothing new. Master of Puppets (and I think Ride the Lightning?) was recorded slower and sped up after. The only difference is that they had to tune down their instruments first. Mutt Lange had Def Leppard play one string at a time as well.
Yes, MOP and many other albums was recorded like you describe. But in above example idea is NOT to stretch recorded guitar parts, but cut them on transients and align to grid with other tempo. In other words you can record guitar with tempo 60 and after cut transients and align to tempo 180.
All and all music is a listening experience once the final product is done and at that point The Listener could care less how it was done or in which way was done technically or otherwise they could give a s*** less as long as they can connect with it and they like the way that it sounds and it sounds right to their ears hence music a good listening experience this is a tool that one could use and one could use it very efficiently one could also trackitt how they want to and that's okay too bottom line the LISTENER DOESN'T CARE . LOL.. it just needs to sound good... this is just a tool use it or dont.. I love ABR.. and they sound amazing record wise and live..
I do this guitar tracking trick. Been for a while. Always want to pull left, not right (& create a gap) only difference I do is track slower out the part slower with no click. So you still get some vibe.
saw him do the nudge in another video! mind blown. why i watch videos like this, even though it may go against the general way i like to record. still pro's doing pro stuff, and i'm a worthless dweeb if i'm too pure to learn their awesome free tricks their spending time and effort putting out here. (now i'm not a pro, so i probably won't be doing this except as an excercise to make sure i can if i ever need to for a client- assuming i ever take paid clients! lol).
Slaves Forging hey dude! Seems like you’re really humble and excited about recording. That’s awesome man. I started when I was very young (15) and started getting paying clients 6 months after (16 or 2009) back before ANYONE used pod (Joey did obv) It was great because no one was doing “Modern Metalcore Mixes” There was far less editing. And we got into the scene with the more polished sound. Learned how to track guitar from the dude who recorded Structures first EP, back when my band was managed by their manager, Coincidently. Basically creating the vibe of a take, but having it be perfect time and pitch wise using similar methods in this vid. Still record like that 10 years later. But dude, you got this! Me and twin Shaun Werle lucked out because we entered the arena when the clients wanted the sound and other engineers didn’t practice that sound. Just stay consistent, ambitious, and creating! It’s all about content. Make something great and it can & will speak for itself. Best of luck! Visit our FB, insta’s. Etc if ya want some advice! Ig: dylanwerleybird and/or shaunwerle FB: Werleybird Studios -Werle bro
Thanks Dylan! i try to be in the pocket as a player and person. no reason not to admit what i don't know or glorify what i do. i'm definitely new to this, and am learning as i go while recording my own stuff. sometimes friends want me to record them, and that's been fun. right now definitely better at recording than mixing. eventually i may get to the point were i charge people money, and possibly even accept mixing gigs, but that's a long way off. id say at least two years. really just focusing on my own solo project for practice right now, while i build a project studio and test out methods. but it's been really fun learning all this stuff. thank you for all your encouragement and for sharing how you started off! that really helps to know other people's experience.
Seems like people in the comments don't get the purpose of this method. It's not a technique that's supposed to only be used whenever a guitar player can't play the riff or anything, it doesn't really have anything to do with skill or so. Rather, it's based on the assumption that however good the guitar player is, the recording will be edited and quantized afterwards anyway. Which is kinda the standard, especially for metal. As good as ABR's guitarists are, it will still be edited, no matter what. So, if you're gonna edit the takes afterwards no matter what, doing it like this yields the least amount of artifacts. As he talks about in the beginning, if you record at full speed, and a note is late, it's going to create gaps in the audio when you quantize it. And you _could_ timestretch it to fill in the gap, but that comes with it's own artifacts. So, recording at a slightly lower tempo greatly minimizes the risk of gaps post-quantization, meaning you don't have to timestretch it as well. All the transients and stuff like that are still natural. So, TL;DR; This isn't a technique for "bad" players to "cheat", this technique would be valuable even to the most skilled guitar players as everything is edited anyway, especially in metal.
If you are working with a band which you just got the mixing job for had no take in the recording process,things like this help there since you just need to make the client happy but I get your point this wouldnt be my first choice either.
Michael Bach This is the exact problem with these modern metal bands and producers. They are trashing the whole concept of raw talent and the whole originality of this genre which was started on people not trying to be perfect and polished “the grid.” My band record stuff to a clinic and whatever. If a note or two was rushed , it’s what it is. Why try to sound all robotic and dominated.
Seriously just play the damn part correctly and you wont have to edit what the fuck? I mean i understand it to an extent because i guess my way of "punching in" is technically cheating..or at least it feels like it to me. i recently wrote a song at 200bpm and while i always always make sure i can play what i write i will still track it in parts using reapers "record time selection" feature so that i can get it perfectly clean especially at such a fast tempo. I play each little section until i get it perfect...and because of that i have became a much better musician...but fuck..maybe next time ill just record a few chugs and a couple chords and chop something together haha
What about studying and practicing your instrument so that you can actually play at 190? This makes me sick because I hate EDM for how fake it sounds, and now heavy metal has become that way...And also, why eliminating all the speed up slow downs at all? I mean, that would show the difference between one player and another when you listen to a record, and you may resonate more with one or another. If everything is fake, you will not resonate to a machine I believe... I play guitar and bass, and I make other drummers play the parts I program. if they speed up, fine! I'll track the guitars on the tempo of the drummer, and also I track the guitars at the right tempo and don't edit anything...Play each part until it sounds good, and it sound natural and still well done...I hope people start to realize that, and produce more "real" records...
@@orangepapya to your bottom right, there should a small box that indicates the BPM. I think it's set to 120 BPM by default. All you have to do is change it to whatever tempo you want and Reaper shifts all tracks automatically
in my book the term "tight" is listed next to the picture of annihilator's never neverland album cover. what you are doing there, quantizing everything is just excessive. imagine dark angel quantizing everything in darkness descends...
Jeff Waters is so tight of a guitar player he doesn't need such drastic quantization but some minor editing is often necessary (excessive editing only hurts and is annoying to do). Dark Angel live at Hammersmith Odeon 1989 is so brutally good despite them being sloppy, because that's what that music is all about, and same applies to Darkness Descends yet Time Does Not Heal is more complex and proficient, certainly better recorded, and Gene Hoglan went to become one of the top drummers of metal. Both rawness and overproducing is good, depending on context.
What the fuck are all those tracks for? I feel like my tracks are empty is that all just drums or what? I have 6 guitar tracks 2 for rhythm 2 for clean tones and 2 for leads and then 2 tracks for bass and one where I do my midi drums am I missing anything
This is rediculous. If you have to edit police trim fix etc that much, just track it again or learn the part better. I get the idea of editing to enhance a performance but there has to be a limit. Besides, a perfectly synced part sounds too robotic to me anyway. That is not how humans play. So stop trying to make it sound like a robot played it.
I just finished tracking the guitar for my band's EP, and some riffs had over 100 takes to get it perfect. This method completely removes the integrity of musicianship from the industry, which at this point, may be the only thing we have left.
Tracking guitars to a click only should be enough to get super tight takes. If you have to edit runs after that... it’s no longer the artists song. It’s the engineers song. Only thing you should need to edit are mistakes and chugs.
Weird I've been teaching myself how to record my own songs and covers for practice. I figured out how to do this very early. I just thought it would be considered wrong or cheating. Hard to believe it's done by professionals.
It's not cheating.. Art isn't a sport. As long as you can play the shit live to the people who are spending money to watch you do it, whatever you do to make your art sound the way you want on a record doesn't matter.
Really cool idea, as an engineer I’m all for it. How many guitar players run into the issue of the feel being off? The difference of 5 Bpm is quite a lot for some people.
2 Bpm is a lot sometimes. I write everything without a click going or anything and then figure it out after the fact. I find that tracking a part at a slower tempo actually screws me up way more and will take me WAY longer to get a perfect take than if I just do it at the tempo I wrote it at, or even faster if I feel like the part could be faster. Idk, I hate the idea of editing guitars to this degree. Takes away the vibe too much :P
Funnily enough, I only really run into the issue of the feel being off if I can hear everything. When recording, I play the best when everything except me and the click is muted, I don't rush to a click, it all comes out really even, particularly in solos. I'm definitely all for quantising rhythm guitars though, regardless of how good you are, you're not going to be as in time as the grid all the time, it's just not human, and in Modern Metal, everything has to sound superhuman.
I see a lot of comments about guitarists tracking to more than just a click, but honestly I find that I get my best takes when I track to the click alone. I'm very nitpicky with rhythms so I always try to lock rhythms with the click, because the click is never wrong.
agree. but it's a level of perfection fans have come to expect. I mean, most pop music fans don't know they're fans of producers not the bands. in a perfect world, they'd be both. and in the case of metal i think that is generally the way it is. fans might not realize it, but producers, engineers, and probably most professional bands, do. production is a massive part of the music. even the stuff we grew up on. It's like the difference between Rust in Peace and Killing is my Business. (aside from Marty Friedman).
I'm conflicted on this one. As a guitar player who came up listening to guys that didn't edit their tracks and just put in the work this type of editing disturbs me. As a creative, I understand sometimes this type of editing is necessary to get a super technical sound which might be what the band wants the song to sound like. I also believe there are no rules, but I don't understand the need to make everything so machine like. Listen to bands like Decrepit Birth who manages to be super technical and don't feel the need to edit like this. That said, if that's what the band wants, they have the right to do whatever they want, even if the final result is a keyboard sound.
You can also have a couple of beers before recording so you don't have to change the tempo and edit everything later. It's actually how my band records, haha)
I think that if you’re recording yourself, you should have some pride and get the takes right. In a professional setting where a band is being recorded by a legit studio (on studio time) doing something like this makes sense to keep costs down and not waste time
It's called making a production. Stop standing in your own way for the sake of being a purist, that's literally all you're doing is standing in your own way. What do you gain? Do you notice that the professionals who do this for a living have no issue with it? Reality check for you.
I get the haters, but you have to accept that recording in a studio is different than playing live, period. Should you be able to play your parts live? Obviously. Are certain parts, particularly very technical riffs and fast 16ths, going to sound better tracked slower or edited in small chunks? Definitely. It's just a fact. Conversely, do you lose some of the authentic feel of certain sections when chopped up? For sure. Every move should be intentional. Should you chop up guitar solos and record licks slower? Personally, no. But I'm an elitist snob 😂 End of rant
This is great, so glad someone made a video about this. I've always had a worry that people will be like "well why do you need to slow it down if you can play it cleanly." Well very simply, when you're playing a song with LITERALLY thousands of notes, to get the take perfect is usually a game of "lets do this over and over and over until I get a take with every. single. note. correct" when in reality you KNOW damn well you can nail it every time live. But then in tracking (where an insane level of perfection is necessary) you run into that issue. Where yeah you can nail it live, but maybe one or 2 notes eery run is kiiiinda screwy. Because think about that, just by math alone you'd need to have a 100% "shooting average" (basketball analogy) even if you had 99.5% accuracy, you'd be missing MANY notes and it would ruin it. I think it's common knowledge, that nobody is perfect. However, we still expect perfect recordings. In Logic Pro, you can just use the various speed option to slow it down just a few bpm, like literally 5% or less. This way it gives you the little bit of extra time to REALLY nail every single note (because if you're playing slow enough to nail every note you're not pushing yourself and it sounds boring. It don't need to be crazy, people just need to be able to tell you're pushing yourself to your max or a bit past it. Tracking clean at that speed is possible, but it's a LOT more sensible to slow it down the slightest bit to allow some room for perfection. I usually don't need to actually go into slip editing like he does here unless the part was tracked at full speed, usually when you track just a bit slower, there's about zero editing necessary. So you can retain the feel of the guitarist (which always gets killed slip editing, its honestly the whole point) and at the same time get a full speed damn near perfect take. I think we put wayyyy too much worry into feeling like we're good enough to track it. The way I see it, recording is to capture what you can do live and a good mix doesn't change the way it sounds, but makes it sound the way it SHOULD and how it sounds when being played. So if you can nail it in a live setting, who cares what you need to do to get it tracked and sounding similar. That's just the game, taking something that can only be experienced live and package it for the rest of the world in a way that feels the same. We aren't here to keep it all just like the source, if that were true none of us would have a job haha. So can they nail it live? Yes? sweet, stop worrying about extra tracking techniques not being "legit." It's holding us all back. (at the same time, don't straight up fake your performances haha that's awful too) But hell yeah, this is one of the most important videos you guys have done to date, in my humble opinion.
I'm pretty sure the guys can actually play this a 100% live. But uuh no? I mean, record will sound awkwardly tight and all, but there's like insanely tight records where none of this was applied.
Seems like the whole recording process is taylored around a specific editing technique, yeah, set it up so you get the tightest recording possible, but this seems to be the most tedious way anyone can produce guitar. Even playing at a slower tempo and speed the di up, and reamp the amp would feel better than this haha
a little bit controversial here, but considering the face of metal themselves, Metallica, did the same principle even on their earlier albums like RTL and MoP.
This method works and has profits for weak guitarists, but kills natural "rhythm flow". This is why present metal albums sounds like techno-metal. Too much editing, too less real skills.
This should be a last resort. Not in some sort of bullshit 'auto tune is ruining the industry' way, it just seems so inefficient. The whole idea that 'sometimes guitar players actually play the right tempo and you don't even need to edit if you record at -5 bpm' is just unfathomably wrong. Also, you could get the exact same results (better, probably) just fucking slip editing a take than using this workflow. I understand that pick attack can be lost when you tab to transient to edit guitars, so instead of using all this nudging and such, JUST SLIP EDIT. It's so easy. You have total control of your crossfades, transients, etc. I hope new guys don't read into 'Wow!! Try tracking guitars this way!' because it's going to be a huge time sink.
Just curious about most metal bands, if a near perfect sounding metal guitar VST came out would you use it instead of a real guitar for recording? I mean you can't be the precision of a 128th MIDI note! What's the next step for this? Just learn your parts! It comes across better in the final product.
I always find myself rushing a bit. But I think this approach would make the guitar sound a bit unnatural. 🤔 Maybe tracking at 188-189 bpm for a song intended to be at 190 bpm and then dragging the whole track to align to a 190 bpm grid would be a better thing to do instead of all that splitting. 🤔
Record it at the intended tempo. This is just dumb. The only time stretching you should be doing on guitars is to unalign them so they sound wide and huge.
They actually do play it really well live. This also helps them practice to get tighter when they do play it live at full-speed. It's ABR. A lot of great artists do this just to optimize the record-version of the song.
"Optimize" They sound like computers Doesn't sound good to me removes the human element of music Quantised and edited performances sound less unique and honest
My comment was a sarcastic stab at the editing done to the guitars likening the guitar takes to computerised takes because thats what they have become genuine performances get turned into super on the dot waveforms If they can play it tight on stage in worse conditions why not do it right in the studio Obviously they did but the engineer/ mixer whatever decided that wasnt good enough
I know what you're saying, but that's still just your biased opinion and belief. A lot of people like how tight and clear it sounds, and a person still played it with they're hands and actually wrote the music from their feelings and emotional expressions, so the musical writing and material is still there. It's just about record production. They don't edit guitars or mime it live. You should probably let go of strongly held opinions and beliefs like that, you could see things from other perspectives and angels and have a bigger view on everything.
You would be amazed at how much music is edited like this. Nobody is perfect and some performances are just straight shit and most times there is a time constraint that will force this to happen. Is what is and IMO an album should sound as perfect as possible anyway. I have been given guitar tracks that may as well have been recorded without a click (and maybe they were lol) so the only thing you can do is have them re-track it for you or hard edit like this if the track is workable.
This is just ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, it's an useful technique and I see it being useful with a bad guitar player. But to be honest, if the performer isn't comfortable with a higher tempo, what's the hecking point of editing a slower performance to a faster tempo then???, wouldn't it be more appropiated and honest to just release the goddam song in the bpm the performes are able to play it? idk I believe it's ok to not be the fastest in the game 🤣 there's no need to fake it.
Everyone hating on this technique has to realize producers have been using similar hacks for decades. Master of Puppets was recorded at a slower speed and sped up. That's why it sounds so tight. If the results sound good, what's the problem?
Uuuhhhh no. What guitarist does their final takes just to a click? The drummer should play to a click and everyone else should track to the drums AND the click. Then everyone should redo their takes until they're tight. This is a horrible way of doing things.
SkreamerOfficial yep spot on. Im baffled what this dude is doing? You should never change the tempos of the songs for recording then speed them up - this is really "bedroom studio" thinking
yeah, that's the way i generally track too, but i get where he's coming from. sometimes i get a glorious scratch track on guitar that i really want to use that was played to a click. and we're assuming that everybody has all the time in the world, which we sometimes don't. especially not if there's a label involved, or an upcoming tour schedule, not to mention people's family stuff. in a pinch, this could be a great technique for recording a technical metal album quickly and retaining the human feel and attack of it. i think it's a great tool to have in a professional engineer's toolbox. I mostly record myself, so i'm not generally rushed (though sometimes i am). but this would be very useful when being contracted by someone, and i need to fit their schedule and style of music. recording everything only once by recording to a click could save so much time if it was necessary. the world doesn't always cooperate! i think this technique is rather brilliant, and probably wildly useful in the real world of professional music production.
Dude what are you doing? You're creating your own problems. The drummer should track to the click. Then everyone tracks to the drum tracks. No guitarist should be having any holes or gaps.
I got an idea. just individually record every note on the guitar and then patch all the notes together to create a song that is totally in time to the grid. Real dumb.
I see how this would be useful if you're mixing a track that someone else recorded and have no other option, but for Christ's sake if you can't play your parts you're not ready to record them.
I am a professional producer and studio musician.. I would NEVER give this advice to ANYONE in the studio.. First of all.. Any music that's gridded to shit takes out the human element of groove.. Drums, guitars ect. And if you can't play your part at tempo.. Then you didn't practice enough. Or the tempo is too fast for the song.. This seems like fighting uphill underwater.. to track someone 10 or 5 bpm slower just so you can "grid" them into a faster tempo seems ridiculous honestly.. Get your parts correct.. Get good with the click or drummer.. Problem solved.
As a guitarist Id be embarrassed if me or someone else had to chop up my riffs note by note and patch them back together to make them sound okay. Either get better as a musician or stop writing stuff beyond your ability.
well.....when you on a metronome and you don't play in time, due to many factors.....back then, tape would be cut and glued....now it's the same concept by digital......don't be so arrogant.
@@emilianosg8385 yeah idiot, they would splice takes of entire riffs together, not going note by note and moving them by fractions of a second and editing out the sound of pick scraping the string and your fingers sliding across the fretboard. Ive been in the studio before and i record guitar and bass daily so don't act like your some fountain of knowledge. people that talk like you are people that are okay with not practicing your craft and saying "eh we'll fix it post, its okay if your playing sucks"
@@ryanschindler923 Exactly, now you can choose.....and I hate it when idiots call me idiot......Private Ryan....maker of the mighty elevators that are boosting your ego.....
yeah i feel like this technique is like last resort, pain in the ass, bullshit "mixing". not to mention time consuming like a mother. nope not for me sorry
Really?!?!?!?!?! This is the worst piece of advice to anybody who wants to actually become a better guitar player and/or wants become a good producer and run a session successfully
So in other words, these guitar tracks aren’t even real? I can understand doing this in the demo stages of pre production on your album. But to use this as a main studio tool? Absolutely not. You should be good enough to go in and record the parts at tempo and clean. If you can’t, you need to practice until you can. I’m a player as well as an engineer, and it’s not very difficult to just practice and play it right. And why does everything HAVE to be perfect on the grid to the smallest millisecond? I can understand some slight time alignment if something is slightly off. But even at that point, if your not playing tight, then ya do it again. Otherwise it isn’t even real.
Lazy. Do what you want, the way you want, but Metal is becoming as fake as pop music. Recording is simple. Learn your parts. Play them, and let they be. Mistakes and all. Don't want mistakes? Then don't make them, or fix the mistakes. Don't cut, copy and paste, cause while that's making music, it's cheating and it shines through live. I've seen Ring of Saturn live a few times, and man, does it show that they cheat in the studio. Great players, but editing (aka cheating) in the studio, comes across live. Speeding up and all this shit, is pretty lame, but hey, it's 2018, and it's just the way things are, and will be, until people get sick of this fake crap, and start going back to pure recording.
I'm sorry but that's not ok with me. this should be music played by humans. Some imperfections are what makes music alive and interesting, as apposed to today's lifeless , mechanical one.
Meanwhile you have real artists like Lucas Mann being defamed and slandered for this sort of trash and he actually plays his parts. Why can't they play mediocre metalcore garbage ? Lmao
this is one of the takes of all time I guess everyone has their limit for what is "acceptable". The guitarists in ABR are already really tight players, this editing is just to bring it from 99% to 100%. Guys like Lucas Mann literally record it note-by-note, or record it at half the BPM and then speeds it up. There's a difference. : D
There’s definitely value to this idea, it would be useful if you’re tracking a person who can’t quite get the part right, which, face facts, is going to be a fair amount of folks.
But if talent isn’t an issue (like with ABR), then it’s a lot of work for something that isn’t going to make a difference at best. And these guys are damn good at what they do. In the wrong hands, this could be a mix destroyer.
recording just slightly slower I feel does not take away from the di quality or the way it sounds in an overall performance thats just my opinion
Everyone in the comments if it sounds good it is good, there’s no right or wrong way of something, it’s simply a technique which in my opinion can work very well for a musician who isn’t performing at their best & as engineer needs to work their magic
Exactly. If you dont like it, dont use it! Simple.
So many dislikes, I assume because people don't like the idea of editing guitars? Look, I know most of you watching this are either producers, or people who want to get into producing, but the number 1 rule in music production is there are no rules. The second rule in music production is that if it sounds good_ then it is good, and that's the end result that you want.
It seems opinionated that editing guitars is "wrong" because either 1) if you have to fix the guitars, you should get a better guitarist, or 2) editing and quantizing guitars makes it sound too fake / "like a MIDI" guitar. But here's the thing guys... Everybody has different tastes. Some people like raw unedited guitars, some people like syncopated rhythms and aligned guitars work well for that. This blind hate for how people choose to do production is what's wrong with communities around production as a whole. Who gives a flying fuck how people do their work as long as the end result sounds good?
TL;DR: No, it isn't pop music if you edit guitars, the end result sounding good is the only thing that matters. And if you really want to spend the extra hours re-recording over and over again for that perfect take while everyone else settles for tone over timing, you do you.
EDIT: Also there's some people saying "no wonder bands sound shit live because of stuff like this", you have a slight point, but at the same time you shouldn't have to go wayy overboard with fixing guitars. I'm not saying take the first trash take and then fix it - get the best you can from the source and then work with it. Like I said, tone over timing - timing can be transparently fixed, and tone cannot.
I was beginning to think that I suck at guitar and can't play as tight as everyone else, but now I realize that people edit the shit out of their guitar tracks. Moving a few notes here and there is fine, but aligning every note is ridiculous. May as well just program guitars with MIDI.
Word dude I can't believe people are doing stuff like this.
So many know it alls here. Obviously everyone has been a part of a professional musical project and has their own incredible sounding albums that we can listen to.
This is a UNIVERSAL practice. The tracking parts slower isn't something I've tried myself, but cutting up guitars to get it 100% in line with the grid is damn near crucial with this style of music. You can be the tightest guitar player in the world, you're still a human. Add that to getting charged by the hour at a studio, you do the best you can with the cards you're given. I just got out of a professional studio and tracked my record, and this is nearly identical to what we did. I'm a clean player, and as OCD as you can get. If you can make something sound perfect, and are paying for the time it takes to make it sound perfect, then do it.
The fact is if you suck, all the tricks in the world won't matter, you won't get a good sounding product. This requires a good guitar player who can play tight, and then the engineer using his skills to make it sound BETTER. That's the whole point.
As far as playing with just a click, it depends on the part. If I'm playing a riff that is extremely intricate and precise, and I want to make sure I don't get ANY extra noise from my guitar, then I track to just the click. If I'm playing chords for a chorus or something more lax, usually I listen to it with the rest of the music.
I mean, holy cow guys the PRODUCT is there for you to listen to. EVERY SINGLE one of ABR's records sound impeccable, and if you follow the band you KNOW how much work they put into it.
Keep an open mind.
"Your Still a Human"....EXACTLY....so lets Produce it to sound LIKE A ROBOT???? Listen to Yourself....Thanks for Not being one of the "Know it alls here''"LOL
@@markgraeff1496 it doesnt sound robotic
just really tight
Ehh, not a fan. I don't see the need of being so precise with time-aligning transients with guitar parts recorded at a slower BPM. Don't get me wrong, I love ultra-tight recordings and being very precise with it, but this seems like too much. Punching in technical parts mid-riff, slip-edits, etc. all good. But if you have to start quantizing like this, you're either working with a bad guitar take, and you need to fix that at the source and play it better, or you're chasing a non-existent, time-wasting form of perfection. I could see why someone would do this if they're editing and mixing for a band who sent them tracks and say that bands guitarist sucks, but for a band like August Burns Red, why is this necessary?
Because it sounds good
Taking out character and human-ness doesn't sound good. Editing something that's noticeably off-time is fine, but editing something that is already tight to be perfectly on the grid is just unnatural.
But it sounds good though
Then use a guitar VST and kick out your guitar players, they're now useless if so.
Guitar VSTs don’t sound good though
really neat trick guys! this kind of stuff i would never think of for my own projects, but if i was recording this type of uber precise band it could be priceless. good all around advice about tracking a touch slower too. i've noticed that click track speed up as well. (now if a could find any musicians that could play to a click track!).
on a haters' note: this is a cool trick. doesn't mean you have to use it. just a tool for your arsenal.
News flash, pretty much every heavy band has everything snapped to the grid regardless of how good the players are. Bands like periphery and meshugah can play super tight still but when you cram that many notes and frequencies together...a few ms difference in all the parts would just sound like a mess.
Absolutely, and we use the deletion of artifacts, lots of cleanup and quantizing, rx9 type stuff, heavy noise gate use and even audio tempo increase for the sake of the song, and the live sets are so loud and distorted there is little to compare for the average ticket holder,
introduce the live raw vibe, the excitement of the show, lights, beer, weed ect, lol
I’ve worked on projects from direct from board with F1s digi recorders around the room so we could add crowd noise and “full room irs ” (meaning a reflection value when bodies are present) as “live edit cross fades” and of course having the talent record directly over the live takes back in the studio, think Judas Priest “Unleashed in the East” Yes I’m that fucking old
Obviously the digital tools and daws were not available to us then but tape stretching for pitch, vocal and track riding for both tempo and volume are some primitive but effective tricks everybody used with great results
It's weird, I've been doing this technique quite frequently for years, I thought I was doing something stupid so it's good to know great engineers do this too haha this sounds much more natural than simply recording note by note or punching in a lot
Also, huge LOL to anyone saying they aren't down for this idea or that "maybe the playing just isn't good enough". 1) if you're not accepting of a perfectly efficient editing technique that pros are suggesting, maybe you need to "edit" your way of thinking, and 2)musician's skill level is not aways in question when it comes to editing techniques, ABR are certainly not lacking in skill level so there's that
Just because “the pros” are doing it, it doesn’t mean we all have to do it..... “huge LOL”
Rafael Ortega no one said you "have to do it", but looking at it with an open mind, giving it a shot, and seeing if it works for you could be benificial, rather than dismissing it right off the bat
But why would you do that ? wasting hours putting every transient on the grid for what ? how about letting the guitarist play style with all of the subtle off tempo notes that makes him an actual human and make it worth it to become a tight guitar player ?
Maybe because you or the band think it sounds better on the grid?
Meh. Different philosophies I guess. Playing tight without editing is now a thing of the past
By playing just to a click (in my opinion) makes it hard to get the feel out of the song. The way I track any instrument is to make a demo of the entire song out of midi and just play along to that. It works for everyone in the band, and when you have a “perfect performance” to practice and track to then it helps not only get the feel, but also get a better performance out of anything. Besides, the closest thing I’ve done to editing is crossfade different sections of the song together if we decide to record the song in sections.
Also: I think that if you have to resort to editing techniques like this, then maybe the musicians aren’t good enough. Most of the time my band will record songs in sections, but other then that there is no editing involved, it’s just the actual performance. I’m not claiming we’re amazing or anything, but seriously, you would think a decent musician could play a take that doesn’t require a bunch of editing like that. Geez.
I can assure you that skill isn't a problem in the case of ABR :) And there is a world of difference between editing that is used to make up for poorly played tracks, and editing that takes tracks that are already excellent from A to A+. That extra bit of effort and refusing to settle for less is a HUGE part of what separates the pros from everyone else.
URM Academy Point taken. I understand why some people would want to edit their tracks that way to sound as polished as possible, but in my personal opinion I’d rather get “the perfect take” right from the source. Besides, I know they can really play, and play well, but personally I think they would sound even better if they tracked the way I suggested in my comment above. It all comes down to personal taste and preference really.
Into The Forest I agree with you completely! I'm more intrigued by the human aspect. Too much importance is placed on the "grid". Furthermore, listening to a clock puts me to sleep after 4-5 minutes. That's why most songs, lately, are under that in time!
Tisbonus Yes! I think that is a very compelling point, I never do any edits really, just crossfade different song sections together if we record in sections. Other than that, it’s all human!
You explain your opinion on editing by referencing your band, so is your band selling out tours around the world like ABR? If not than your reference means nothing.
This is what URM mean when they say taking A to A+. This is what recording is in general, taking a sound of an instrument to the next level, and the next, and the next with certain techniques.
Does this work just as well with beat detective?
For those complaining, this is nothing new. Master of Puppets (and I think Ride the Lightning?) was recorded slower and sped up after. The only difference is that they had to tune down their instruments first. Mutt Lange had Def Leppard play one string at a time as well.
Yes, MOP and many other albums was recorded like you describe. But in above example idea is NOT to stretch recorded guitar parts, but cut them on transients and align to grid with other tempo. In other words you can record guitar with tempo 60 and after cut transients and align to tempo 180.
Except in this video they didn't stretch just edited. So not the same
All and all music is a listening experience once the final product is done and at that point The Listener could care less how it was done or in which way was done technically or otherwise they could give a s*** less as long as they can connect with it and they like the way that it sounds and it sounds right to their ears hence music a good listening experience this is a tool that one could use and one could use it very efficiently one could also trackitt how they want to and that's okay too bottom line the LISTENER DOESN'T CARE . LOL.. it just needs to sound good... this is just a tool use it or dont.. I love ABR.. and they sound amazing record wise and live..
I do this guitar tracking trick. Been for a while. Always want to pull left, not right (& create a gap) only difference I do is track slower out the part slower with no click. So you still get some vibe.
My lord though, that nudge trick just saved me 87 hours this year
saw him do the nudge in another video! mind blown. why i watch videos like this, even though it may go against the general way i like to record. still pro's doing pro stuff, and i'm a worthless dweeb if i'm too pure to learn their awesome free tricks their spending time and effort putting out here. (now i'm not a pro, so i probably won't be doing this except as an excercise to make sure i can if i ever need to for a client- assuming i ever take paid clients! lol).
Slaves Forging hey dude! Seems like you’re really humble and excited about recording. That’s awesome man. I started when I was very young (15) and started getting paying clients 6 months after (16 or 2009) back before ANYONE used pod (Joey did obv)
It was great because no one was doing “Modern Metalcore Mixes” There was far less editing. And we got into the scene with the more polished sound. Learned how to track guitar from the dude who recorded Structures first EP, back when my band was managed by their manager, Coincidently.
Basically creating the vibe of a take, but having it be perfect time and pitch wise using similar methods in this vid. Still record like that 10 years later.
But dude, you got this! Me and twin Shaun Werle lucked out because we entered the arena when the clients wanted the sound and other engineers didn’t practice that sound. Just stay consistent, ambitious, and creating! It’s all about content. Make something great and it can & will speak for itself.
Best of luck! Visit our FB, insta’s. Etc if ya want some advice!
Ig: dylanwerleybird and/or shaunwerle
FB: Werleybird Studios
-Werle bro
Thanks Dylan! i try to be in the pocket as a player and person. no reason not to admit what i don't know or glorify what i do. i'm definitely new to this, and am learning as i go while recording my own stuff. sometimes friends want me to record them, and that's been fun. right now definitely better at recording than mixing. eventually i may get to the point were i charge people money, and possibly even accept mixing gigs, but that's a long way off. id say at least two years. really just focusing on my own solo project for practice right now, while i build a project studio and test out methods. but it's been really fun learning all this stuff. thank you for all your encouragement and for sharing how you started off! that really helps to know other people's experience.
Seems like people in the comments don't get the purpose of this method. It's not a technique that's supposed to only be used whenever a guitar player can't play the riff or anything, it doesn't really have anything to do with skill or so. Rather, it's based on the assumption that however good the guitar player is, the recording will be edited and quantized afterwards anyway. Which is kinda the standard, especially for metal. As good as ABR's guitarists are, it will still be edited, no matter what.
So, if you're gonna edit the takes afterwards no matter what, doing it like this yields the least amount of artifacts. As he talks about in the beginning, if you record at full speed, and a note is late, it's going to create gaps in the audio when you quantize it. And you _could_ timestretch it to fill in the gap, but that comes with it's own artifacts. So, recording at a slightly lower tempo greatly minimizes the risk of gaps post-quantization, meaning you don't have to timestretch it as well. All the transients and stuff like that are still natural.
So, TL;DR; This isn't a technique for "bad" players to "cheat", this technique would be valuable even to the most skilled guitar players as everything is edited anyway, especially in metal.
What happened to tracking your shit tight / on click? Next thing they'll start autotuning guitars.
Michael Bach auto tuning bass and guitar has been a thing for a while bro. intonation is never perfect
If you are working with a band which you just got the mixing job for had no take in the recording process,things like this help there since you just need to make the client happy but I get your point this wouldnt be my first choice either.
Neither is fretting a note?
Michael Bach -The blue guitar on the wall tunes itself. I'm not kidding.
Michael Bach This is the exact problem with these modern metal bands and producers. They are trashing the whole concept of raw talent and the whole originality of this genre which was started on people not trying to be perfect and polished “the grid.” My band record stuff to a clinic and whatever. If a note or two was rushed , it’s what it is. Why try to sound all robotic and dominated.
Was this filmed in Forrest City in Orlando?
Is it only me or this doesn't seem very wise to do?
Agreed
Ruining the industry i think
Seriously just play the damn part correctly and you wont have to edit what the fuck? I mean i understand it to an extent because i guess my way of "punching in" is technically cheating..or at least it feels like it to me. i recently wrote a song at 200bpm and while i always always make sure i can play what i write i will still track it in parts using reapers "record time selection" feature so that i can get it perfectly clean especially at such a fast tempo. I play each little section until i get it perfect...and because of that i have became a much better musician...but fuck..maybe next time ill just record a few chugs and a couple chords and chop something together haha
This is retardation
What about studying and practicing your instrument so that you can actually play at 190? This makes me sick because I hate EDM for how fake it sounds, and now heavy metal has become that way...And also, why eliminating all the speed up slow downs at all? I mean, that would show the difference between one player and another when you listen to a record, and you may resonate more with one or another. If everything is fake, you will not resonate to a machine I believe...
I play guitar and bass, and I make other drummers play the parts I program. if they speed up, fine! I'll track the guitars on the tempo of the drummer, and also I track the guitars at the right tempo and don't edit anything...Play each part until it sounds good, and it sound natural and still well done...I hope people start to realize that, and produce more "real" records...
A generation obsessed with perfection and looking the part.
haha this is WAY easier on Reaper and you can track to the song instead of just click
any videos you could recommend on how its done in Reaper?
@@orangepapya to your bottom right, there should a small box that indicates the BPM. I think it's set to 120 BPM by default. All you have to do is change it to whatever tempo you want and Reaper shifts all tracks automatically
Balance the audio please
in my book the term "tight" is listed next to the picture of annihilator's never neverland album cover. what you are doing there, quantizing everything is just excessive. imagine dark angel quantizing everything in darkness descends...
Jeff Waters is so tight of a guitar player he doesn't need such drastic quantization but some minor editing is often necessary (excessive editing only hurts and is annoying to do). Dark Angel live at Hammersmith Odeon 1989 is so brutally good despite them being sloppy, because that's what that music is all about, and same applies to Darkness Descends yet Time Does Not Heal is more complex and proficient, certainly better recorded, and Gene Hoglan went to become one of the top drummers of metal. Both rawness and overproducing is good, depending on context.
How do I know what bpm melodies in my head are at, and how much slower do I need to record it?
What the fuck are all those tracks for? I feel like my tracks are empty is that all just drums or what? I have 6 guitar tracks 2 for rhythm 2 for clean tones and 2 for leads and then 2 tracks for bass and one where I do my midi drums am I missing anything
Or... you could learn to play your parts as they should be
Interesting idea.
I'm sure no one will actually try it though...
JB knows how to play it lol
That's not what's being debated here.
This is rediculous. If you have to edit police trim fix etc that much, just track it again or learn the part better. I get the idea of editing to enhance a performance but there has to be a limit. Besides, a perfectly synced part sounds too robotic to me anyway. That is not how humans play. So stop trying to make it sound like a robot played it.
I just finished tracking the guitar for my band's EP, and some riffs had over 100 takes to get it perfect.
This method completely removes the integrity of musicianship from the industry, which at this point, may be the only thing we have left.
God, I hate looking at Pro-Tools
it's very counter intuitive
Does this work on vocals?
Benjamin klein - Get a great, real performance on any instrument or on vocals and you should NEVER need to do this.
A tool like Melodyne would be better for vocals. Also ignore the other guy.
Tracking guitars to a click only should be enough to get super tight takes. If you have to edit runs after that... it’s no longer the artists song. It’s the engineers song. Only thing you should need to edit are mistakes and chugs.
Weird I've been teaching myself how to record my own songs and covers for practice. I figured out how to do this very early. I just thought it would be considered wrong or cheating. Hard to believe it's done by professionals.
It's not cheating.. Art isn't a sport. As long as you can play the shit live to the people who are spending money to watch you do it, whatever you do to make your art sound the way you want on a record doesn't matter.
Really cool idea, as an engineer I’m all for it.
How many guitar players run into the issue of the feel being off? The difference of 5 Bpm is quite a lot for some people.
2 Bpm is a lot sometimes. I write everything without a click going or anything and then figure it out after the fact. I find that tracking a part at a slower tempo actually screws me up way more and will take me WAY longer to get a perfect take than if I just do it at the tempo I wrote it at, or even faster if I feel like the part could be faster. Idk, I hate the idea of editing guitars to this degree. Takes away the vibe too much :P
Funnily enough, I only really run into the issue of the feel being off if I can hear everything. When recording, I play the best when everything except me and the click is muted, I don't rush to a click, it all comes out really even, particularly in solos. I'm definitely all for quantising rhythm guitars though, regardless of how good you are, you're not going to be as in time as the grid all the time, it's just not human, and in Modern Metal, everything has to sound superhuman.
Better think in percentage. 190 to 184 is only 3% but 6 BPM diff from 100 BPM to 94 is huge it's 6% so it's double amount of increase compared to 190
6:50 is Eyal sleeping?? XD
LOL
I'm starting a new band and recording it like this, it will be called Zero Feel.
Zero Feel, I really like it. Sounds like flipping a finger to these "blues and feeling" elitists.
have fun never being successful because of your shitty attitude
Feel comes from dynamics in this kind of music
What dynamics?
Sounds like a midi guitar...
Lol so true. Whats the point of recording then "fixing" it if it ends up sounding like fucking shreddage...
As a legally blind engineer, it baffles me how y'all can edit with your eyes.
Relax
I see a lot of comments about guitarists tracking to more than just a click, but honestly I find that I get my best takes when I track to the click alone. I'm very nitpicky with rhythms so I always try to lock rhythms with the click, because the click is never wrong.
Be careful. Nowadays all this technology ends up making the music more about the engineer than the artist.
Been that way for a while my dude. So sad to see.
agree. but it's a level of perfection fans have come to expect. I mean, most pop music fans don't know they're fans of producers not the bands. in a perfect world, they'd be both. and in the case of metal i think that is generally the way it is. fans might not realize it, but producers, engineers, and probably most professional bands, do. production is a massive part of the music. even the stuff we grew up on. It's like the difference between Rust in Peace and Killing is my Business. (aside from Marty Friedman).
Rings of Saturn has entered the chat
Rings and WTR reamp MIDI guitar.
I'm conflicted on this one. As a guitar player who came up listening to guys that didn't edit their tracks and just put in the work this type of editing disturbs me. As a creative, I understand sometimes this type of editing is necessary to get a super technical sound which might be what the band wants the song to sound like. I also believe there are no rules, but I don't understand the need to make everything so machine like. Listen to bands like Decrepit Birth who manages to be super technical and don't feel the need to edit like this. That said, if that's what the band wants, they have the right to do whatever they want, even if the final result is a keyboard sound.
You can also have a couple of beers before recording so you don't have to change the tempo and edit everything later. It's actually how my band records, haha)
Yer but this way you can have a couple dozen MORE beers and it'll still come up great haha.
I think that if you’re recording yourself, you should have some pride and get the takes right.
In a professional setting where a band is being recorded by a legit studio (on studio time) doing something like this makes sense to keep costs down and not waste time
It’s not about pride for me. Just whatever sounds the best to my ears.
@@Forest_V19 apparently I don’t have pride because I edit the shit out of my own stuff 😅
It's called making a production. Stop standing in your own way for the sake of being a purist, that's literally all you're doing is standing in your own way. What do you gain? Do you notice that the professionals who do this for a living have no issue with it? Reality check for you.
i'm guilty of this method but i like to use them sparingly, just enough to not make it obvious
also didn't Metallica use the similar methodology on Puppets albeit with much more limited technology?
I get the haters, but you have to accept that recording in a studio is different than playing live, period. Should you be able to play your parts live? Obviously. Are certain parts, particularly very technical riffs and fast 16ths, going to sound better tracked slower or edited in small chunks? Definitely. It's just a fact.
Conversely, do you lose some of the authentic feel of certain sections when chopped up? For sure. Every move should be intentional. Should you chop up guitar solos and record licks slower? Personally, no. But I'm an elitist snob 😂
End of rant
Did this dude seriously just chop up a guitar track into separate notes and snap them to a grid like midi..
It’s like I always say, “they’ll never know.”
This is great, so glad someone made a video about this. I've always had a worry that people will be like "well why do you need to slow it down if you can play it cleanly." Well very simply, when you're playing a song with LITERALLY thousands of notes, to get the take perfect is usually a game of "lets do this over and over and over until I get a take with every. single. note. correct" when in reality you KNOW damn well you can nail it every time live. But then in tracking (where an insane level of perfection is necessary) you run into that issue. Where yeah you can nail it live, but maybe one or 2 notes eery run is kiiiinda screwy. Because think about that, just by math alone you'd need to have a 100% "shooting average" (basketball analogy) even if you had 99.5% accuracy, you'd be missing MANY notes and it would ruin it. I think it's common knowledge, that nobody is perfect. However, we still expect perfect recordings. In Logic Pro, you can just use the various speed option to slow it down just a few bpm, like literally 5% or less. This way it gives you the little bit of extra time to REALLY nail every single note (because if you're playing slow enough to nail every note you're not pushing yourself and it sounds boring. It don't need to be crazy, people just need to be able to tell you're pushing yourself to your max or a bit past it. Tracking clean at that speed is possible, but it's a LOT more sensible to slow it down the slightest bit to allow some room for perfection. I usually don't need to actually go into slip editing like he does here unless the part was tracked at full speed, usually when you track just a bit slower, there's about zero editing necessary. So you can retain the feel of the guitarist (which always gets killed slip editing, its honestly the whole point) and at the same time get a full speed damn near perfect take. I think we put wayyyy too much worry into feeling like we're good enough to track it. The way I see it, recording is to capture what you can do live and a good mix doesn't change the way it sounds, but makes it sound the way it SHOULD and how it sounds when being played. So if you can nail it in a live setting, who cares what you need to do to get it tracked and sounding similar. That's just the game, taking something that can only be experienced live and package it for the rest of the world in a way that feels the same. We aren't here to keep it all just like the source, if that were true none of us would have a job haha. So can they nail it live? Yes? sweet, stop worrying about extra tracking techniques not being "legit." It's holding us all back. (at the same time, don't straight up fake your performances haha that's awful too) But hell yeah, this is one of the most important videos you guys have done to date, in my humble opinion.
Just play it right in the first place. If it sounds rushed or out of time, do it again.
I'm pretty sure the guys can actually play this a 100% live. But uuh no? I mean, record will sound awkwardly tight and all, but there's like insanely tight records where none of this was applied.
Seems like the whole recording process is taylored around a specific editing technique, yeah, set it up so you get the tightest recording possible, but this seems to be the most tedious way anyone can produce guitar. Even playing at a slower tempo and speed the di up, and reamp the amp would feel better than this haha
a little bit controversial here, but considering the face of metal themselves, Metallica, did the same principle even on their earlier albums like RTL and MoP.
and James is just a plain beast on rhythm playing.
This method works and has profits for weak guitarists, but kills natural "rhythm flow". This is why present metal albums sounds like techno-metal. Too much editing, too less real skills.
This should be a last resort. Not in some sort of bullshit 'auto tune is ruining the industry' way, it just seems so inefficient. The whole idea that 'sometimes guitar players actually play the right tempo and you don't even need to edit if you record at -5 bpm' is just unfathomably wrong. Also, you could get the exact same results (better, probably) just fucking slip editing a take than using this workflow. I understand that pick attack can be lost when you tab to transient to edit guitars, so instead of using all this nudging and such, JUST SLIP EDIT. It's so easy. You have total control of your crossfades, transients, etc. I hope new guys don't read into 'Wow!! Try tracking guitars this way!' because it's going to be a huge time sink.
ruclips.net/video/j0lSpNtjPM8/видео.html
So glad somebody understands.
Just curious about most metal bands, if a near perfect sounding metal guitar VST came out would you use it instead of a real guitar for recording? I mean you can't be the precision of a 128th MIDI note! What's the next step for this? Just learn your parts! It comes across better in the final product.
I always find myself rushing a bit. But I think this approach would make the guitar sound a bit unnatural. 🤔
Maybe tracking at 188-189 bpm for a song intended to be at 190 bpm and then dragging the whole track to align to a 190 bpm grid would be a better thing to do instead of all that splitting. 🤔
This channel, just fuxxxking awesome!
Record it at the intended tempo. This is just dumb. The only time stretching you should be doing on guitars is to unalign them so they sound wide and huge.
Just play the part at least 2 times not copy and paste. Then pan them hard left and right and your good to go. No need to unalign them.
"Guitar playing"
They actually do play it really well live. This also helps them practice to get tighter when they do play it live at full-speed. It's ABR. A lot of great artists do this just to optimize the record-version of the song.
cause obviously they didn't play guitar on that record.
"Optimize"
They sound like computers
Doesn't sound good to me
removes the human element of music
Quantised and edited performances sound less unique and honest
My comment was a sarcastic stab at the editing done to the guitars likening the guitar takes to computerised takes
because thats what they have become
genuine performances get turned into super on the dot waveforms
If they can play it tight on stage in worse conditions why not do it right in the studio
Obviously they did but the engineer/ mixer whatever decided that wasnt good enough
I know what you're saying, but that's still just your biased opinion and belief. A lot of people like how tight and clear it sounds, and a person still played it with they're hands and actually wrote the music from their feelings and emotional expressions, so the musical writing and material is still there. It's just about record production. They don't edit guitars or mime it live. You should probably let go of strongly held opinions and beliefs like that, you could see things from other perspectives and angels and have a bigger view on everything.
You would be amazed at how much music is edited like this. Nobody is perfect and some performances are just straight shit and most times there is a time constraint that will force this to happen. Is what is and IMO an album should sound as perfect as possible anyway.
I have been given guitar tracks that may as well have been recorded without a click (and maybe they were lol) so the only thing you can do is have them re-track it for you or hard edit like this if the track is workable.
This is just ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, it's an useful technique and I see it being useful with a bad guitar player. But to be honest, if the performer isn't comfortable with a higher tempo, what's the hecking point of editing a slower performance to a faster tempo then???, wouldn't it be more appropiated and honest to just release the goddam song in the bpm the performes are able to play it? idk I believe it's ok to not be the fastest in the game 🤣 there's no need to fake it.
Yeah let's not even give the guitarist a chance and assume they can't play tight before even tracking anything...
To me, this is the kind of thing you don't tell people that you do.
Looks like standard shit. Timing has to be right. Perfection is always the goal.
Hitting hard isn't always the best choice. Articulating and dynamics are important.
Yeah don’t bother “nailing the take” and let’s remove the human element of music. Oh you kids lol
Sab but true, quantizing guitars is also a common practice
Christ almighty I’m not sure
Everyone hating on this technique has to realize producers have been using similar hacks for decades. Master of Puppets was recorded at a slower speed and sped up. That's why it sounds so tight. If the results sound good, what's the problem?
Uuuhhhh no. What guitarist does their final takes just to a click? The drummer should play to a click and everyone else should track to the drums AND the click. Then everyone should redo their takes until they're tight. This is a horrible way of doing things.
SkreamerOfficial yep spot on. Im baffled what this dude is doing? You should never change the tempos of the songs for recording then speed them up - this is really "bedroom studio" thinking
yeah, that's the way i generally track too, but i get where he's coming from. sometimes i get a glorious scratch track on guitar that i really want to use that was played to a click.
and we're assuming that everybody has all the time in the world, which we sometimes don't. especially not if there's a label involved, or an upcoming tour schedule, not to mention people's family stuff. in a pinch, this could be a great technique for recording a technical metal album quickly and retaining the human feel and attack of it. i think it's a great tool to have in a professional engineer's toolbox.
I mostly record myself, so i'm not generally rushed (though sometimes i am). but this would be very useful when being contracted by someone, and i need to fit their schedule and style of music. recording everything only once by recording to a click could save so much time if it was necessary. the world doesn't always cooperate!
i think this technique is rather brilliant, and probably wildly useful in the real world of professional music production.
Yeah it's sad that a guitarist feels like not practicing enough.
Dude what are you doing? You're creating your own problems. The drummer should track to the click. Then everyone tracks to the drum tracks. No guitarist should be having any holes or gaps.
Guess its about the end result and not the process now.
Shame to see true musicianship die like this.
The musicianship did not necessarily die. It was murdered by a slip editing jackball
Or, maybe, just hear me out... You could NOT and keep the raw feel that metal and rock are known for? This ain't pop music.
Ableton, so much easier
not even metal picking. The part they're editing is just sloppy hammer-ons.
I got an idea. just individually record every note on the guitar and then patch all the notes together to create a song that is totally in time to the grid. Real dumb.
I see how this would be useful if you're mixing a track that someone else recorded and have no other option, but for Christ's sake if you can't play your parts you're not ready to record them.
Red bull
I am a professional producer and studio musician.. I would NEVER give this advice to ANYONE in the studio.. First of all.. Any music that's gridded to shit takes out the human element of groove.. Drums, guitars ect. And if you can't play your part at tempo.. Then you didn't practice enough. Or the tempo is too fast for the song.. This seems like fighting uphill underwater.. to track someone 10 or 5 bpm slower just so you can "grid" them into a faster tempo seems ridiculous honestly.. Get your parts correct.. Get good with the click or drummer.. Problem solved.
As a guitarist Id be embarrassed if me or someone else had to chop up my riffs note by note and patch them back together to make them sound okay.
Either get better as a musician or stop writing stuff beyond your ability.
well.....when you on a metronome and you don't play in time, due to many factors.....back then, tape would be cut and glued....now it's the same concept by digital......don't be so arrogant.
@@emilianosg8385 yeah idiot, they would splice takes of entire riffs together, not going note by note and moving them by fractions of a second and editing out the sound of pick scraping the string and your fingers sliding across the fretboard. Ive been in the studio before and i record guitar and bass daily so don't act like your some fountain of knowledge. people that talk like you are people that are okay with not practicing your craft and saying "eh we'll fix it post, its okay if your playing sucks"
@@ryanschindler923 Exactly, now you can choose.....and I hate it when idiots call me idiot......Private Ryan....maker of the mighty elevators that are boosting your ego.....
@@emilianosg8385 Well it takes one to know one!!!! .......wait a minute.......
@@ryanschindler923 Don't you have some glass to go play with or something?
Guitarists.
Do. Not. Do this.
And that's how you kill music!
yeah i feel like this technique is like last resort, pain in the ass, bullshit "mixing". not to mention time consuming like a mother. nope not for me sorry
Really?!?!?!?!?! This is the worst piece of advice to anybody who wants to actually become a better guitar player and/or wants become a good producer and run a session successfully
You forget that this is ONE producer who chooses to handle it this way.
Whatever gets the job done. I guess
complete BS.
How about you just play in time lol
So in other words, these guitar tracks aren’t even real? I can understand doing this in the demo stages of pre production on your album. But to use this as a main studio tool? Absolutely not. You should be good enough to go in and record the parts at tempo and clean. If you can’t, you need to practice until you can. I’m a player as well as an engineer, and it’s not very difficult to just practice and play it right. And why does everything HAVE to be perfect on the grid to the smallest millisecond? I can understand some slight time alignment if something is slightly off. But even at that point, if your not playing tight, then ya do it again. Otherwise it isn’t even real.
Or you just get a good performance to begin with and avoid this FAKE guitar tracking technique
Or you could just play it correctly at the proper bpm. Rings of Saturn got so much shit for this
PRO TOOLS SUCKS
Lazy. Do what you want, the way you want, but Metal is becoming as fake as pop music. Recording is simple.
Learn your parts. Play them, and let they be. Mistakes and all. Don't want mistakes? Then don't make them, or fix the mistakes. Don't cut, copy and paste, cause while that's making music, it's cheating and it shines through live. I've seen Ring of Saturn live a few times, and man, does it show that they cheat in the studio. Great players, but editing (aka cheating) in the studio, comes across live. Speeding up and all this shit, is pretty lame, but hey, it's 2018, and it's just the way things are, and will be, until people get sick of this fake crap, and start going back to pure recording.
Zed Chuva dang that sux. I wasn't gon a see RoS without Lucas anyway but can't play they're own crap too?
That's why you see this kind of shi#@ bands playing live and then you go to a Meshuggah show.
End of story.
meshuggah edits their stuff as well
@@DennisMartenssonOfficial yes but they can play 99,9% of their parts instead of just editing everything
this is why music is so fucking boring today!
Weak computer nerd metal. Shame on you guys.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH
I'm sorry but that's not ok with me. this should be music played by humans. Some imperfections are what makes music alive and interesting, as apposed to today's lifeless , mechanical one.
Meanwhile you have real artists like Lucas Mann being defamed and slandered for this sort of trash and he actually plays his parts. Why can't they play mediocre metalcore garbage ? Lmao
this is one of the takes of all time
I guess everyone has their limit for what is "acceptable". The guitarists in ABR are already really tight players, this editing is just to bring it from 99% to 100%. Guys like Lucas Mann literally record it note-by-note, or record it at half the BPM and then speeds it up. There's a difference. : D