I absolutely love speed comping!

I have to admit this is the one area  of X3 that I haven't really explored in depth - I've had cursory attempts at it but never really progressed far, mainly because I thought it seemed too fiddly and besides, I've never really been a "comping" guy, more of a "stop, curse, hit CTRL-Z and hit record again for the 74th time" kind of guy. 
 
But tonight while recording a 32-bar section of quite fast and finicky Telecaster chickin' pickin', I finally realized it was time to delve into it. The problem was that I'm eventually putting the part through a sort of DIY tremolo effect in Guitar Rig (for some reason I find hooking an LFO unit up to a volume pedal seems to sound better than all the dedicated tremolo effects I have). The problem is that unless the timing of my picking is absolutely bang on (and it's fast 16th notes we're talking here), the attack of the notes would poke into the tremolo and ruin the effect. I was doing take after take and no matter how hard I tried to turn myself into a human metronome, there'd always be a few bars where I'd screw up and ruin the passage. 
 
And then it dawned on me - speed comping. Without further ado I watched Eli Krantzberg's Groove3 tutorials on the subject and whipped up 15 takes. I'm speed comping them now, literally bar by bar, picking the most perfect bar out of each take. It sounds great! I can't believe how fast and easy it is. Sure I've heard others gripe about certain aspects of it and I'm sure that now the technique is in my arsenal I'll see room for a few improvements as well. But right now I am totally blown away by the workflow Cakewalk have given us with this. Thanks Cake! 

Great to hear. As you know the forum has been hit hard in the past by posters complaining about X3's comping. It was then and is now a matter of not understanding how to use it.
 
What you did should be an example for all of us. learn about it and then try it.  

sharke
74th time kind of guy. 
 

Way to brag dude!

Although, tbh, I personally do not see a REAL need for comping MIDI. In the case of the OP, if it were MIDI, those odd bars where he was "out" could be simply and quickly edited later. Which really is the case for all work involving recording MIDI.  For me, audio is the only target for the comping tool.

sharke

joden
Although, tbh, I personally do not see a REAL need for comping MIDI. In the case of the OP, if it were MIDI, those odd bars where he was "out" could be simply and quickly edited later. Which really is the case for all work involving recording MIDI.  For me, audio is the only target for the comping tool.

What about when you're improvising a MIDI part and you want to combine the best phrases of multiple takes? It's not just about editing out mistakes. 

That's exactly what I was going to say but you already did.
 
Hey Sharke - have you discovered the joys of "Speed Comping Meets Dim Solo" yet?

Yeah, man. I've been saying it since I figured it out... speedcomping in X3 is the shizwhizzle. The CakeTV entry on speedcomping has pretty much all the info to become a speedcomping master (for those who don't have access to the Groove3 X3 vids which unfortunately I do not) as far as I can tell but it does move very quickly so lots of pausing and note taking is advisable. Because I'm away from the DAW so much lately I still keep my little comping cheatsheet on my desk. After a 20 second review I'm editing and splicing like a champ. So a little more complex than the old methods I'd say at the onset and it takes a bit of remembering (key commands, hotspots, etc...) but once you get into the flow it saves HOURS of painstaking bullpuckery (for me anyway). Also I never EVER liked the way auto crossfades sounded in the past within any of the (admittedly few) DAWs I've worked with so I'd spend forever cropping and creating fades. For some reason the autofades with X3 are perfect almost every darned time. Actually with X2 I couldn't even get any take overlaps to sound good (something was degrading the signal) so I actually created new tracks for any overlapping parts then bounced down which was time consuming and annoying. Not sure what the what that was all about and generally I had some major annoyances editing in X2 that have all been corrected in X3 and then some.
 
As far as using speedcomp with MIDI? I use it there too and it works very well for how I do things. I like to play as much of my MIDI drums live on my padKontrol as I can because it is a heck of a lot easier to get my weirdo beats down that way instead of trying to do the hunt and peck in PRV. The pK sure isn't anything like a real drum kit so there are a lot of dropped/doubled triggers and/or human error. I also like to play around with different ideas and fills so being able to tap out a bunch of versions and then splicing together what sounds cool (and then doing any correction work or fancying up the parts afterward in PRV) is very liberating while writing. I haven't done much keyboard work yet (for multiple reasons) but if I get to live key input I'm sure I'd use speedcomping in the same way. The one problem though is apparently every time you make a split on a MIDI track it creates two full versions of the same file whereas with audio it will draw from the original file. I understand why this is (kind of) but the end result is it ends up turning say 5 takes into 25 if you split it 5 times. I do WAY more takes than 5 and WAY more splits than 5 so it gets very resource intensive and has caused problems. Upping the hard disk read/write buffers fixes it but I figure there must be some smart guy thing the Bakers could do to the software to avoid this.
 
Anyway... blah blah blah.
 
tl;dr... Speedcomping rules... even for MIDI... hope all is well in sharkeland and all the lands of my fellow Cakesters.
 
Cheers.

@gswitz...
 
Yes, yes, YES!!! The one thing I think many people have been ignoring is the Group Clips In Folders recording option. This makes multitrack editing SOOOOO much easier. It needs to be set BEFORE tracking. I'd personally like to see a feature where clips recorded at the same time can be bulk grouped retroactively (it would just be a matter of snagging the timestamp or whatever of the files) but for those who are not aware of this NEW in X3 feature and record multiple tracks at the same time (like band rehearsals, full band sessions, live gigs, multimic inputs like acoustic guitar or drum configs, etc...) this is an extreme useful feature! Just right click the Record button (or go into Recording Preferences) and you'll find the setting there.
 
AWESOME!!
 
i'll shut up now... lulz.
 

@Craig: Speed comping meets dim solo?  Can you turn on dim solo during speed comping to hear the clips you are comping in context of the entire song?  Wow, I will have to try that, I've been wondering if there was a way to do that.
 
John

Beepster
 
Sorry... I said I'd shut up but I'll blather just a bit more. Just wanted to explain why I do it the way I do.
 
As a guitar player and live drummer (and being a weirdo) I kind of like doing full takes of the song or large passages of the song at the same time. Using MPC devices and keyboards is all new to me (as is MIDI in general) so being able to zone out and just get into whatever groove I'm into at that particular moment is very satisfying to me artistically and I find produces more creative results. So as I'm writing I treat the previous takes I've done as my backing band and/or as variations I would introduce over time at my minimal rehearsal time in the past. Just going apeballs for a while then listening back and comping it all together helps me find what works well without having to be particularly proficient in instruments I am not necessarily proficient at (I'm a guitar player first, then a bass player and distantly after that a drummer. Keyboards/piano? Hell noes... lol). It's awesome I can create stuff this way IMO and the speedcomping with MIDI has been extremely helpful in this regard. Jamming out and picking out the best of the best then rerecording it all once I find the composition's heart is just amazing to me. Even then some performances of the final takes speak to me more than others so I end up with ultra takes and that simply makes my pants tighter. Lovin' the new workflow.
 
Layers blew my mind when I first used them but their limitations became apparent very quickly to me. Then came Take Lanes and I fell in love with those but they kept doing stupid crap that annoyed me to no end. X3 lanes + speedcomping are making me a very happy Beepwad.
 
Okay... should be doing other stuff. See you all later... unless I go OCD and blather some more. Whatevs. Cheers.

 
All good. It is always nice (and informative) to read about other methods and views. I am like you in that I prefer to do "full" one go recordings. I even try to do the keys parts AND vocals at the same time, as it is how I do it live, so why not when recording. I am a huge fan of the "old" style of recording where the band would record the whole song together in the same room....even if it took multiple takes - I dunno, it just sounds better to me - keeps it more real! Anyway I digress...
 
I love comping for audio, for that it is brilliant, for me - using it for MIDI is not so critical. That's all I am saying.

I thought DIM Solo was automatically enabled when comping. It actually annoys me (and I've posted a request thread months ago to get a fader option for DIM solo instead of of the current three radio button options or at least a 0db option so nothing is being turned down while comping). What am I missing? Currently I have to turn down the bus or track of whatever I am working on while comping or turn up the backing material.
 
But yeah... more DIM Solo volume options please. :-)

Beepster
I thought DIM Solo was automatically enabled when comping.

 
I have to enable it manually. Not sure if there's a preference or something?
 

I've posted a request thread months ago to get a fader option for DIM solo instead of of the current three radio button options

 
I'd like that too.

I don't get to use Speedcomping much because of the way we record vocals here. Once the vocalists caught wind of how we can record them, comping is done during tracking manually and their voices are saved for the next song. 
 
I am curious, though, for anyone who uses Speedcomping, have you had any luck comping guitar solos without splicing artifacts? I've not managed to prevent those in Speed comping. Thanks!

Unfortunately, it is the way a lot of songs are done now...I could drop some names of Very Famous Singers who almost do it syllable by syllable. I agree that the more you can leave intact, the more the vocal can tell a "story." However, what I like best about comping is that you can take the process however far you want. I'll often drop in a word that had a more even vibrato, better expressiveness, better phrasing, etc. That way the phrase maintains its overall integrity, but has that little extra something. 

"Unfortunately, it is the way a lot of songs are done now..."
 
Especially by those of us who are not "professionals" or know what we're doing or driven by a Nazi coach or have all day/night to "get it right"... and so on.

brconflict
I don't get to use Speedcomping much because of the way we record vocals here. Once the vocalists caught wind of how we can record them, comping is done during tracking manually and their voices are saved for the next song. 
 
I am curious, though, for anyone who uses Speedcomping, have you had any luck comping guitar solos without splicing artifacts? I've not managed to prevent those in Speed comping. Thanks!

Both the crossfade and exact split points can be click dragged at the time. However I find "manual comping" more suitable to guitar solos or any material where there are no obvious breaks in the material like there is in vocal phrases.
 
Although "manual comping" is a bit of a misnomer because I find that as quick, if not quicker, than "speed comping" on that sort of material. It's horses for courses.