I find this whole thing kind of confusing, really...

If I record my wife singing Gaudette and then place a hall reverb over this is this 'cheating'?   

droddey

John T


On your "create good performances out of bad ones", you seem to be the only person on the thread who thinks this is even possible.

I mean create performances that seem perfectly in time and on pitch when they weren't either as performed. How 'bad' they were originally isn't the point, it's how much better they were made to seem than what the person could actually do, without any admission of that fact.
 

This is where your argument falls apart IMO. If a musician needs to drop in to fix something ore re-record a part that wasn't performed either. They 'fixed' it, so what's the difference between fixing it by doing that or fixing it by moving it using a different method? None  as far as I can see. It was still fixed. I'm also fairly certain that anyone who had to fix everything using audiosnap would fairly soon get fed up with and go do something less boring instead.

Wow a can of worms, I have a problem with pitch correction tools, have I used them. Yes but only sparingly a note but I refuse to use it if the vocal is just bad, do it again.

On the other hand vvocal is an excellent production tool, in particular for creating effects and even fake three part harmony.

It's much the same with audio snap, now I'm a little bit mor liberal with audio snap, this is for a particular reason.  As a hybrid musician I know it's impossible to play note perfect with electronic instruments.  I should mention that I can play to a click track and I'm pretty spot on.

Case on point, I set up a three o three 8th note arpegiator sound.  I played along with this synth sound at 90bpm now it was close but not perfect, wacked over the AS and wamo it was perfect.  I was so happy with it.


The other thing about the audio snap is can be used as an effect and a really cool effect.  I did a version of the Beatles track Because.  I recorded it too fast, whacked the audio snaps over it slowed it down and actually added a whole minute to the track and wow the track just sounded better.  It made it really mournful.

What droody is not understanding these tools are production tools, much like varispeed, flanging and yes tape splicing.

What we need to do is use these tools spareingly and differentiate between a live sound and a produced sound.

It is silly to auto tune and audio snap an acoustic guitar and singer, tell them to go away and learn their craft.  Even if your in a band I would say that.  But if you are a producer, composer, engineer, muso like me and not looking at trying to play your music live, then it's fine.

I'm a painter and and I use these production tools as part of my palate.  Imagine if (sorry) droody was The Beatles engineer, I want to sound like the Dali lama on top of a mountain.  Sorry John we can't do that I just you want you sound like John Lennon.  There would be no Tomorrow Never Knows.

Finally after using audio snap palate since version 6, I've mastered it and it works really well.

Peace Ben 

noticed he completely avoided my question because his statements reek of nothing more than "the sky is falling" irrationality. Show us these unskilled musicians who have used audiosnap or something similar to magically give them playing ability. I have worked in the music industry and have known musicians from hobbyists to grammy winners and have yet to see this thing that he is basing his flawed whining on. One actual example. Not a bitter strawman argument but just show me one talentless person who somehow cheated themselves to a good record? Yes, there is plenty of medicore music, but that music is mediocre because of the content and not technology. Not to pick on him, but Justin Bieber is going to sell because little girls find him cute and labels are able to market that. It was the same with Justin Timberlake backstreet boys, and new kids on the block , and Andy Gibb and we can keep going back to the earliest pop idols. Justin Bieber would be a hit if he stood on stage and sang songs over a single chord because that is the way poop works

On occasion ill purposely change the time or the pitch off to be quirky.

And last I checked Ive got balls as big as church bells.

I'm not a drummer. I know that. I'm honest about that. I recorded my drums for my album with a MIDI kit and miced a real set of cymbals. I then spent three months fixing the timing errors in my playing. Audiosnap takes a hell of a lot of painstaking handwork to ensure all the off notes are right. Obviously MIDI quantise was also used.

My performance was terrible. I don't have access to a drummer. I was the only option.

I believe it now sounds great. Sounds natural and not over corrected (correction was typically 50-80% quantise).

But I'm not cheating the system because I'm 100% honest to everyone out there about it. They say to me "you recorded all these parts by yourself?" and I say "yes, but I spent 3 months fixing the timing errors in the drums cause I'm not a drummer."

For my music, it's about the arrangement, the composition and the song. Audiosnap can't write me a song. It allows me to deliver my message. That's it. If I were to play live, I'd get a good drummer to play. I can't physically play all of the instruments on my songs at once, so I'd have to get someone anyway!

A lot of users get frustrated with AS (and V-Vocal, for similar reasons) because they've been suckered by the marketing hype into assuming it's a one-click automated process.

Amen, brother!!!!  If a marketing department says a computer program is going to do something automatically, you can pretty much be assured that it will automatically do it wrong most of the time.

+1

And everyone just continued with the exact same thing, which is to continue to try to make it into a "if you went an inch, then I can go a hundred miles and it's the same". No one ever seems to get byond this silly position, and it's just not true.

I've pointed out numerous times, if you are have great performances, you save a great performance by fixing one flubbed note, that's a good thing. You are saving 99% of a great take by fixing one small thing with a punch in. You've still put in the work to be able to do great takes and you are capturing magic, and it's better to punch in one or two notes to save a magical take. In the process of really letting it flow you may make the occasional mistake, no matter how good you are.

If you are quantizing and tuning and automating volume and EQ and doing down to the syllable comping, that is NOT the same thing. That's painting by numbers, you are not a painter. If you are honest about not being a painter when you post the song, I have no problem with that. But no one ever is. It's all just thrown up there without any admission of how artificial it is.

When I post a song, I indicate any way in which I processed it, which is usually very minimal. I'm not interested in 'putting out songs', which is what most people seem to be about. I'm interested in getting better. No one gives a crap about your songs, so you might as well spend your time getting better, rather than spending a couple hours recording stuff and a couple days data processing it into a song that you post on a forum where a handful of people say, oh yeh, that's nice.

And that's exactly what seems to be going on most of the time. And it's created a situation in which people who really can do it are just lost in a deluge of artificially created stuff that no one cares about. I have no problem with people expressing themselves with the tools they have at hand. But show us what you really created, not what you were able to do after a couple days of hacking and slashing. If it's not that good, then ok, keep working at it. If you only put up what you actually do, then you have a lot more incentive to get better.

Tell you something else: I *am* interested in what people can do after a couple of days hacking and slashing. Clever engineering and editing is an interesting thing in its own right.

This thread puts me in mind of a single I really like from about five or six years ago, called "Girls In The Back", by a band called White Rose Movement. Now, the thing about that record is, it's built upon bass / drums / guitar / keys recording. But it's quantised up the wazoo, to a bizarrely unreal degree. Live bands simply don't sound like that, no matter how tight they are. Now, I think that's a great record, and I think the machine like artificiality of it is a huge part of the reason why it's great. The argument being put forward in this thread seems to be that it would be more ethically correct for them to have made a *less good* record. I can't get my head around that.

You're supposed to ride the faders and such?

I don't think he's saying you can't EQ, just that you can't automate it. Why this is, I'm not sure.

Bass players get an extra biscuit.

FastBikerBoy

I've pointed out numerous times, if you are have great performances, you save a great performance by fixing one flubbed note, that's a good thing. You are saving 99% of a great take by fixing one small thing with a punch in.

And I've asked the question numerous times what is the difference between fixing one flubbed note with audiosnap/pitch correction and fixing it with a drop in?

Your argument seems to be that the drop in method makes the player a virutuoso and the audiosnap/pitch correction method makes them some sort of untalented, ham fisted cheat. Very strange logic.

i am a huge fan of punch in recording(drop in/drop out)and even drop in and finish.
but i had to chime in and say there is abso lutely no difference between punching and fixing a note or two with autosnap.
 
fixing a whole song?
well thats the difference between a professional and a freshy.
 
let me explain something,when you split a clip and drag its signal to match the bass guitar with kick drum.
there is nothing in the world to make something sound more punchy,more dead on.
in retrospect this is the samething as autosnaping
i learned this trick from william edstrom jr. who is one of the most professional engineers in the business.
 
its what every professional studio is doing now a days.
 
so here we find ourselfs laying between what is moraly right and what sounds professional.
sorry but my customers and myself are looking for the hit records.
and when one is looking for a hit record,one leaves there morals at the door.