jpetersen
So what happens if you get sent tracks from a collaborator of a song that has a chorus repeated identically 3 times and you want to comp the best of these with a view of doubling or tripling them?

If you only have three tracks there isn't enough source material to bother comping a three part section. You've got three tracks so you just use the three tracks.
 
Comping them would not make sense.
 
You COULD use three tracks to spiffy up TWO tracks though. Like if there are any flubs anywhere in any of the tracks they could be replaced by the same point on either of the other two.
 
Just as long as you don't have the exact same source audio playing at once you're golden.
 
That's not to say there aren't OTHER tricks that can be done on IDENTICAL tracks. The simplest being the Haas effect but you can also clone a track and use Audiosnap or similar tools to scatter the transients a litte and/or pitch software to vary the pitch a little, etc.
 
Really though this is why I record as many takes as my body will allow (preferably in one sitting after rehearsing the part for a day or so). Then I have an enormous pool to work with and can mix and match to my hearts content.

gmp
The way I just did it was to first select then hold shift and control wile dragging. Is that how you did it?

Yes, exactly right.
 

gmp
So when you create 2 new audio tracks A + B, do you mean these are 2 actual audio tracks

Also yes, although I might not keep them as separate audio tracks as I work further on the project. They are really placeholder tracks. I think I got into the habit of using them as destinations because drag-copy clips into open take lanes wasn't reliable.
 

Hey Beepster thank you for your in depth description. This is what I was wanting to see, someone who has explored and implemented the new comp features. I think what JPetersen was asking what if you have someone that sang the song 5 times through and you have 3 choruses that are identical, yet you have all these different performances.
 
What I do right now is as I’m editing verse 1 I have a very good idea on what the strongest performances are by the time I’m done with Verse 1 and typically #1 and #2 aren’t as good as #3,4,5.
 
So if I have 3 choruses I may copy performances 3,4,5 in chorus 2 and paste them under chorus 1’s 5 performances and go to chorus 3 and do the same I can then choose not to listen to chorus 1’s #1 and #2 since they’re not as good, so then I have 9 performances that are strong to choose from.
 
 I usually add harmony vocals to the choruses so unless the singer did some variations I’ll have every chorus cloned and end up exactly the same. This way the backup vocals only have to sing one chorus also. So with this new comping system, can we copy chorus 2 and 3 and put them in track lanes under chorus 1?

Beepster
If you only have three tracks there isn't enough source material to bother comping a three part section. You've got three tracks so you just use the three tracks.
 
Comping them would not make sense.
 
You COULD use three tracks to spiffy up TWO tracks though.
...

What I have are 3 tracks of a song sung by the same vocalist. Inside the song, the chorus is sung 3 times and has the same melody and words each time, thus I have in total 9 choruses available to choose from to create a doubled or tripled vocal.
 
I guess from what you say Comping is not intended for this?
 
Edit: Oh! I see gmp is doing something similar to what I am trying...

Ah... yeah. I didn't get that part.
 
Well you can still kind of use the Comp features but mainly just to split things out and make notes as I described. If you can create one full comp out of all the takes do so.
 
Otherwise it's just a matter of selecting one of the good Chorus sections (so select the clip) then paste it into a new take lane at the spot where you want to replace a bad Chorus. So Take 2 of Chorus 1 Track 1 could be copied to the Chorus 2 spot on the timeline in Track 2. Line it up to the other tracks of course so it's in sync.
 
Then you just promote that newly pasted clip instead of any of the others. Again just promote it by clicking on the bottom half of the clip with the Smart Tool (if it isn't already audible). However this may not automatically mute the other currently active take in that section so just select that unwanted section/clip and hit K to mute it (otherwise bothe will play back at the same time).
 
The other thing that can sometimes happen when pasting in material like this is it will screw up your splits. Like the new clip will be a little longer or shorter than the splits you already have which can cause slivers or overlaps (where two clips are fully audible for more than just an X-Fade).
 
In those cases you just need "swipe" again in the lower portion of the clip and readjust the splits and fades. Usually you'll have to do one long swipe that extends way beyond the original boundaries them slide the splits back in to where they should be. It's a little hard to explain. I've been thinking about making a vid of how I comp and some of these littel quirks/how to get around them. Someday. I've got some other ideas queued up first though.
 
Cheers.

@Beepster: Thanks.

So I guess the bottom line is that if you have a vocal track with 3 track lanes, you can't create 6 more blank track lanes for  a total of 9 lanes and then copy and paste chorus performances into those blank track lanes to create a 9 lane chorus. I suppose you can go to the beginning of the song and hit record for 1 sec and stop. Do this a few times to create some extra lanes. Is that easy to do even after you’ve edited verse 1?

gmp
So I guess the bottom line is that if you have a vocal track with 3 track lanes, you can't create 6 more blank track lanes for  a total of 9 lanes and then copy and paste chorus performances into those blank track lanes to create a 9 lane chorus. I suppose you can go to the beginning of the song and hit record for 1 sec and stop. Do this a few times to create some extra lanes. Is that easy to do even after you’ve edited verse 1?

Oh... no just click the + button on one of the take lanes to insert a new lane then drag whatever you want into it.
 
Then you can comp as I described earlier to replace a bad part.
 
However, and this is what I though you guys are going for, you don't create "harmonies" or "gang" vocals this way. You don't want multiple clips playing in the same track at the same time. Only one at a time.
 
You CAN do that but the results are undesirable and you have absolutely NO control over levels and effects on each Take unless you use Clip Automation and/or the Clip FX Bin.
 
To create such multilayered harmonies you'd use multiple tracks, get your mix of all the tracks just right and THEN if you wanted to dump that all down to a single clip use the old "Bounce to Track" option (then mute, archive/hide or delete the originals so they aren't playing as well).
 
Again I may be missing the point but that's how I'd do a multiple part harmony. Well I would just leave the harmony in their own tracks instead of bouncing to track (and have all those tracks going to a bus) but if you want to combine them in a single clip then I'd use that method to get the best balnce BEFORE smooshing everything into one clip.
 
Multiple takes playing at once in a single track just sucks in my experience. The only time you want overlap is during the X-Fades but that's not really two clips playing at once (at least not at full volume).
 
 
Ya?
 
PS: I actually stumbled across a kind of cool technique while comping solos for a client a while back that BREAKS the usual rule of not have identical clips playing at the same time.
 
Essentially it was a doubled guitar solo. Two distinct performances. I cobbled together my composites but at one very specific section I used the same clip for both... which then made the two tracks (which were panned left and right) momentarily become "mono" in the bus. It sounded really cool and musical so I left it.
 
This technique is usually done using a trick/technique called "Mono-izer" or something similar where you use a plugin or automate an interleave button/effect/etc to dump a stereo mix down to mono momentarily.
 
In this case just the act of two tracks playing the exact same thing at the exact same time produced a similar affect and focused the solo straight up the center of the stereo field... then busted back out for proper "doubled" stereo spread.
 
Sorry if that's crazy and confusing... but I thought it was cool.
 
Cheers.

Thanks Beepster! That's good that we can click the + button to add a lane.
 
You're right I'd never use take lanes and comping to do backup vocals, only lead vocals. After going through the 9 chorus vocals in the lanes, many times I clone the fixed vocal result to the other choruses.  Later I'd add harmonies, but use regular tracks not take lanes and since all the choruses are identical with the lead vocal, the harmonies can also be cloned

Cool.
 
Of course you can use Melodyne to create actual harmonies and stagger the timing a bit too to create entirely "new"  takes out of the existing material.
 
Like take one of your perfected comps, create a Melodyne Region FX Clip then move the "blobs" around to 3rds and 5ths and whatever to create actual harmonies of the main vocal track. You can then use the time adjustment tools to scatter the transients a little to emulate a more natural feel (because a backup singer won't sing those harmonies EXACTLY at the same time as the lead so the variations add some realism).
 
All sorts of crazy stuff can be done. Pretty cool... but make sure to render after you make your changes (to get rid of artifacts) and always keep a copy of the original in case you need to go back.
 
Cheers!