MacFurse
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Ahh - old school - what do I do?
I spent the last week tracking two new songs for a new project. The singer/songwriter sent me the songs from iphone recordings. Vocal and guitar. The timing was a bit all over the place, but essentially, the beat consistent, and the key set by the artist. I imported the audio into X3, set the metronome, and went to work. Drums, bass, acoustic guitars, electric and slide guitars. Couple of days work for me. Went great. The songs sounding pretty good. I cut up the original audio, timed it to the project, sent it for 'approval' and got the artist around, to lay down some simple vocal takes, and mixed out a couple of mp3 tracks, to take home for consideration and for practice.
I got the hoped for thumbs up on the material and general feel. Some changes to drum rolls, shortening up of intro/outro, changes to bridges etc. All good. Just basic editing.
What I wasn't prepared for was hearing that the song was too fast. These are country ballads, but more pop/progressive in feel. The BPM was a modest 78, set from the customers own material.
Now, I use midi when I have too, but essentially, all my work is with real guitars. The bass was easy. Audio to Melodyne to Midi, but nothing else is possible. It means starting over.
It was suggested to me a while ago to only ever work in midi, but I just don't want to. Am I being stubborn? Am I too old at the right side of 60? Do you just sigh, except the loss and move on. Guess I will have too.............
I think, under future similiar circumstances, I will do the drums, cut up the artists tracks, and send it back for approval, before fretting a finger. "Welcome to our world" is probably what I'm going to hear lol!!
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mixmkr
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 21:38:10
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I can't tell you how many times I've been down that same road. Infact on the same road now. Your post almost strikes me funny, that it almost duplicates what I've been thru this last week too.
I've learned I don't get too serious with the tracks, until I have that *comfortable* feeling about things. That's why I've totally embraced programs like Superior/EZdrummer, DimPro and even the Groove Synth, if not just for the MIDI bass. Lets you change the tuning too, as you know. There's enough MIDI stuff that satisfies me, that I can get a basic *bed* down with just that. Then the ear candy can be added, tracking real stuff...or as a replacement part. I've grown to like Toontrack basically over real drummers anyway, so it isn't shoving me out of my element.
BTW, don't you love slicing those *impromptu* iPhone tracks, that get a 1/2 beat off between verse phrases? Funny too...I'm just embarking on a country ballad as well. I ripped the original audio off a FaceBook video. HA!!
Good luck. You HAVE to keep this thread going, to see if we're twins!! ;-D (check my computer specs, etc too!!) another HA!!
oh....lastly... I'm 61. Is that the good side?
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MacFurse
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 23:08:25
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Hah! OK - twins it is lol! Except you are indeed older, but you are probably correctly on the right side. I am approaching rapidly however....
I do use all midi for drums. Sorry for the confusion. Now a commited AD2 user, and I must admit, love the ease of use. I like real bass, but have been doing the audio to midi conversion and adding Craig Anderton's 'gibson' bass into the mix as well for something extra on most work lately. In this case, I can just go with the midi conversion and be done with it, but all the guitar work will have to be re-done. Yep, lesson learnt.
Love slicing up the outa time tracks? Well, it's fun when you give it back lol !!!!
You know the 'funny' part though. The vocals off the phone, 20 years ago, could probably have been used, particularly if it was backing vocals. And these ones weren't done with any of the fancy aps and gear you can get. It was just the phone's recorder. Come along way.........
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Anderton
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 23:19:45
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There's an easy solution if you don't need to change tempo too drastically.
It's not totally clear what state the project is in but it sounds like you have the tracks done, and you're ready to mix. Go ahead and mix down to stereo at the current tempo. Then, use time-stretch to lengthen the mix. That will slow down the tempo.
To do this, ctrl+click+drag the end of the click to lengthen it. Try lengthening it to 102% of its original length. This will produce a preview so you can check whether you like the tempo. If not, undo and try again, or simply ctrl+click+drag the end of the click to what seems like it would be the right length and listen.
When you get the tempo right, then bounce to clip. Bouncing takes the clip out of the low-fidelity preview mode, and does offline, high-quality processing. You can get away with at least a 5% change (which makes quite a difference) before the fidelity is affected by the stretching process.
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Anderton
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 23:21:54
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Now, about MIDI. I use MIDI to start the song and determine key and tempo. I'll then record a scratch vocal to make sure it feels right.
At that point, either I leave the MIDI parts (or some of them) if they're good, but will usually replace them with audio.
Think of the MIDI as placeholders while you develop the song that can be kept or discarded as needed.
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BlixYZ
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 23:56:10
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Yeah, i was going to say time stretch it! It's a life saver when the tempo is a little off.
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BlixYZ
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/18 23:59:04
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If you have to stretch it further, take the mix, split it at 8 measure intervals, and turn all clips to loops. Then change the tempo to whatever you want.
James W BlixYZ Recording Studio BlixYZ Records Audient ASP800 thru Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 Mackie Control Universal + C4 Yamaha HS50's plus Matching Sub, Tannoy 501a Blue Baby Bottle, AT 4050, Neumann TLM 103, etc. UA 610, Focusrite/ART/Neve 2CH. Windows 10
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MacFurse
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 00:23:32
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Anderton
There's an easy solution if you don't need to change tempo too drastically.
It's not totally clear what state the project is in but it sounds like you have the tracks done, and you're ready to mix. Go ahead and mix down to stereo at the current tempo. Then, use time-stretch to lengthen the mix. That will slow down the tempo.
To do this, ctrl+click+drag the end of the click to lengthen it. Try lengthening it to 102% of its original length. This will produce a preview so you can check whether you like the tempo. If not, undo and try again, or simply ctrl+click+drag the end of the click to what seems like it would be the right length and listen.
When you get the tempo right, then bounce to clip. Bouncing takes the clip out of the low-fidelity preview mode, and does offline, high-quality processing. You can get away with at least a 5% change (which makes quite a difference) before the fidelity is affected by the stretching process.
No. Not too drastic at all. About 1.5bpm is all. I knew this could be done, but didn't think the quality would remain. Now, I'm excited to get back home and back to work and see how it goes. As for the midi. Yep. Seen some of your earlier posts about this too, so points are taken, and at least for this type of work, a new process for me will have to happen. Thanks guys. Your input, as usual, is invaluable to us hopefuls !!
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Grem
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 00:40:52
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BlixYZ
If you have to stretch it further, take the mix, split it at 8 measure intervals, and turn all clips to loops. Then change the tempo to whatever you want.
Damn! Never thought of this. Will this work on all audio trks? Or just midi?
Grem
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MacFurse
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 00:46:08
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Grem
BlixYZ
If you have to stretch it further, take the mix, split it at 8 measure intervals, and turn all clips to loops. Then change the tempo to whatever you want.
Damn! Never thought of this. Will this work on all audio trks? Or just midi?
If it was midi, you just change the tempo to what ever you want. Stretching only relates to audio. Thanks for this tip BlixYZ. Will keep this one 'filed'.
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Cactus Music
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 01:09:23
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I
post edited by Cactus Music - 2014/07/22 00:13:02
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Anderton
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 01:35:54
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MacFurse
Anderton
There's an easy solution if you don't need to change tempo too drastically...
No. Not too drastic at all. About 1.5bpm is all. I knew this could be done, but didn't think the quality would remain. Now, I'm excited to get back home and back to work and see how it goes.
That's only about 2%. Shouldn't be a problem at all. A few additional points: - Select the correct algorithm prior to bouncing. It should default to Radius Mix but to verify, type A to open AudioSnap and check the Offline algorithm.
- The sound quality won't be good until you do the bounce.
- Stretching handles speeding up much more elegantly than slowing down. When speeding up, material is omitted. When slowing down, material has to be created that doesn't exist.
- This is particularly true for groove clips. A well-acidized 100 BPM clip will stretch down maybe to 90 BPM but up to 150 BPM if edited properly.
- If you want no artifacts from stretching, you can use the "varispeed" techniques I've presented here however that will alter the timbre. At extreme lower pitches, this produces the "darth vader" effect and at extreme higher pitches, the "mickey mouse" effect.
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Sacalait
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Re: Ahh - old school - what do I do?
2014/07/19 18:50:22
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When I do a "sketching session" with my artists we establish THREE things- and these are ETCHED IN STONE before the artist leaves this session!!: Tempo, Key, and Feel! I'm very up front with my artists about this! I enforce to them that once they leave, and I start production, these things will NOT change!
The way I typically get the 'feel' is I drop in a drum track that "feels like the song". I'm a musician for a bunch of years and this is one thing I believe I do well. I get them to play along. (Usually, I tap tempo as they begin playing so I know about where the tempo is before I drop in the drum loop). I'll stop after the first chorus or so and ask them "how does it feel." Frankly, most of the time I'm very close to the tempo. Once we get VERY close we cut a bit of the song. I play it back and ask them about the tempo. If they say "It's good" I'll ask "if there's any way you'd go with the tempo- up a couple BPM or down, which way?" By this time we're pretty much on it. We cut the song, I play it back and ask AGAIN "how does it feel to you?" If they say "I'm good" then I tell them again, "the tempo, key, and this feel isn't going to change, are you good with it?" They either have to say yes or no (and we'd start again) but almost always, it's yes. They split and my gig starts. They come back for a vocal after I'm done producing the track.
So far, after 12 years of producing- full-time, and about 1000 songs, I've yet to have someone to complain! I guess every producer has a process and this is mine. It works. ...thought I'd share it to save you some grief down the road. ...and by the way, I'm pretty much an old-school cat myself.
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