New Song: Black Lake (question about guitar string sqeaks)

On the song Black Lake
http://www.soundclick.com/opaquesounds
there are some squeaks from the guitar as the player slides his hand to reposition for different chords.  Are these squeaks too obvious?  Some say to micro edit then out and others say they're part of the performance and to leave them.  Any thoughts.

I took a listen...at least far enough into the song to hear the squeeks..... and here's my 2 cents.

They will hard to edit out..... since they are so "embedded" into the performance. They could be reduced in several ways. So here's a few options...as I see it.

1. cleaner playing technique. lift the fingers as opposed to sliding from one note to the next.

2. flat wound strings. they are smoother and don't have the ridges on them that cause the squeeks. Yeah I know the flats sound mellower....so take that into consideration.

3. Since you have it recorded..... try some editing.... you can zoom into the squeek...(it sounds like it's on the bass guitar to me..... ) and split the audio into a clip that is only the squeek.....be very precise.... then delete it...if that is too obvious...undo it and simply use process> reduce the levels by 3 db....repeat if necessary.... you can leave the squeek in the tune but reduce the level by a certain db level and make it less obvious.  Since there are not squeeks all over the music, it should not be too hard to do.... once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy and quick.

4. ignore it and simply play.

Just a big +1 to what Guitarhacker said above really.

Try and isolate the sections with the string noise and lower the db a tad. You'll be surprised how effective this can be, although its a bit laborious.

Hi MalboroMan23,

Here I was expecting an acoustic guitar with heavy-gauge bronze strings. It does sound like an electric guitar, but then again it may be acoustic through a virtual amp etc. This is a problem I have to deal with all the time, and the best solution I found was with Izotope Rx. They do have a flash demo demonstrating its capabilities in such a context, "How to deal with finger squeaks". It's impressive.

Just another option for you to consider amongts some very good suggestions above.


Regards,
jc

Thanks for the advice.  I went through and added the volume automation, I didn't realize there were so many of those squeaks.  In the future I will invest in the string spray to try to prevent it and a copy of Izotope Rx since it is certainly faster and possibly cleaner than volume automation.

The "de-squeaked" version is Black Lake 2.  Thanks in advance for any comments.

www.soundclick.com/opaquesounds

Try spraying the strings with Finger Ease. Then record the guitar part over again.

The song is great by the way.