Category: Education

Comping during recording (with Logic)

When recording something that requires a lot of takes, like a lead vocal part, you’ll want to do what’s called “comping” to really get good results.

What does “comping” mean?
This is where you can make a composite take of multiple takes in a recording. Ever see a photographer take multiple shots and say they’ll just photoshop in the good smiles into one shot? That’s kind of what comping does for a vocal part.

Isn’t that kind of like cheating?
Absolutely.

But…
So anyway, let me move on and show you how to do comping in Logic!

How to comp in Logic
One thing that I’ve always been afraid of, due to how the tape metaphor often plays out in recording software, is recording over what I’m getting. I would hate to lose the perfect take by recording over it. However, to comp you must allow yourself to record over your parts.

In Logic’s arrangement view, it assumes you’ll want to comp, so when you record over a part, it simply replaces the old sound with the new sound but keeps it “underneath”. You can actually fan these takes out with the little arrow on the top left of the region. Here’s where the fun part begins.

Once the takes are all fanned out, you can just drag over the parts you want, and that will now be the “active part” of the composite take. For instance, let’s say the singer nails the first word of the chorus, but on the second take the rest of it was better. I can drag over that first word on the first take, and then drag over the rest of the second take and those two ideal parts now make up the final sound on the track. When I’m done, I can close the takes with the same little triangle and forget all about that part for now.

This makes doing multiple takes super easy, and can make your vocals sound a LOT more professional!

Monitoring Digitally II: video examples

Here’s a little example of the kinds of delay you might experience with a digital interface, and how to get rid of it.


Monitoring in the LHS studio

Since the Alesis interfaces are more complex, they have that monitoring program – most smaller interfaces don’t have any such program or advanced routing (but they do have the “computer vs. source knob”).

I hope you find this helpful! The tricky part is remembering to do this when you have 16 mics hooked up and are trying to record drums and guitar at the same time during a session. The tendency is to just listen to it through your DAW program, but if you want good monitoring, the players need to be listening to the source knob.

Again, you can probably guess this if you play guitar, that any software effects won’t get heard this way.

You have to explain the trade offs to the guitarists, and make sure everyone is comfy with the arrangement before recording (or else people get all touchy and clammed up about playing, which makes for a really bad session).

Pro Tools Essentials


Last Year
I reviewed Pro Tools Essentials and basically killed it. It is harder to use, and at the same time more limiting than GarageBand. It also locks you to a particular piece of M-Audio gear, which is lame.

But…
This year I’m buying it for our lab.

Whaaa??
OK it’s more like this: we are upgrading our computers to Mac Minis. These don’t have mics like the old eMacs we had (yes, eMacs). So I needed a not-junky mic, but didn’t want the price or cable clutter of an interface at each station. So I chose the M-Audio Pro Tools Vocal Studio, which bundles a fairly nice USB mic (M-Audio Producer) with Pro Tools Esentials.

Will I use it?
Of course I will. Level 2 can now learn mixing and mastering using the right tool for the job. While I personally prefer Logic, PTE will give a similar learning experience at a fraction of the cost.

A good review
To contrast with my scathing mini review, here’s a pretty fair review of all the PTE bundles:

AV Review looks at all three PTE bundles

I’ll update with some in depth looks once the new gear is up and running.

Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology

I just got back from installing a lab/recording studio at a crazy, crazy high school in Georgia. The recording studio was installed by a studio specialist, and he did an especially nice job.

This school teaches Music Technology RIGHT, and it’s inspiring to see it done this well both in equipment and in instruction.

Check out their site, and their super-cool teacher Mr. Michael Appelbaum at their Music Tech dept. website.

Tutorial: Creating a Breakbeat-style song in Ableton Live

The Breakbeat style
is a form of electronic music that gained popularity in the mid 1990s. It’s main characteristics include liberal use of a sampled beat which was usually derived from the drum solo of a 70’s funk song. This beat is cut into many permutations, and is combined with a wide array of other samples, guitar clips, and original synth parts. This lesson plan includes some examples for listening at the end.

Here’s a video version of the lesson that follows:

Step one: Crate Digging
The first thing any good breakbeat artist would do is go digging for samples. I have my students pick 2-3 songs from which they will take the solo drum breaks. I provide a large selection of funk tracks from my personal library. One place to start when finding these might be a CD from the popular funk collection “Ultimate Breaks and Beats,” which was compiled mainly for the purpose of finding good drum breaks to sample for early hip-hop music. A nice side effect of this part of the lesson is that students get what might be their only direct contact with funk music of that era.

Step two: Isolating and retooling the beats
Using Ableton Live, drag one of the tracks into a clip slot. I’m going to use an Amy Winehouse track with a great drum intro for my break. Live tries to figure out the correct beats per minute, but isn’t always right. We’ll have to use Ableton Live’s beat markers to demarcate four bars of this beat. You can take the time to mark the beginning as measure one, but it really doesn’t matter which measure numbers the beat starts with. I’ve turned on “Loop” and set the loop length to four bars.

After you have the loop running well, take the global tempo of the song (in the upper left corner) and crank it up to the 170s or 180s. This is a standard tempo range for this style of music. Also, in the Clip Panel, take the transposition (Transp) to +3 or +4, and boost the volume. Adding an effect like a compressor or limiter might be good too.

By now, your funk drum break should sound much more techno-like.

Step three: Divide the beat into distinct levels of complexity, and different effects on an A/B

Ableton Live’s session view uses a column-style for different instrument tracks, each of which is divided into rows called “scenes”. I like to think of each scene as a different section of the song, and I usually arrange from top to bottom in order of complexity.

Duplicate the drum track you already made, and set the first track to A and the second track to B. I have my students use the MIDI button in the upper right to assign the Mod wheel on their keyboards to the crossfader (located underneath the rightmost “master” track). This will allow easy switching between these two tracks for varied drum beats.

I like one of the drum tracks to sound fat and boomy, and the other to sound dry, chopped, and gated. Some fat and boomy effects include: delay, compressor, or reverb. Some dry sounding effects include: hi-pass filter, gate, beat repeat, bitcrusher, and flanger.

Now it is the students’ job to come up with some interesting variations for each track. I require at least three different reworkings of the clip per track whether it is a re-chopped version of the clip or a version of the clip with effects on it.

Step four: Add guitar licks
Now that the drums are pumpin’, let’s find a good guitar lick. I recommend finding some really obscure isolated guitar part, and juicing it with effects into a third track. The main idea is to get the guitar to sound more like a synth part by the time you’re done with it. I like using grungy sounding licks from bands like Nirvana, The White Stripes, or any other heavy guitar lick you can find.

I would suggest two tracks of guitar; one for a repeating rhythm, and another for interesting “one-shots”

Step five: Add synth bass and supporting kick bass
Tracks five and six will be for synthetic instruments, mainly a bass or pad for underlying harmonic structure, and an electronic kit to provide extra punch and drive to the drum track.

I let students be more individual with this part, as the basic song works already for performance and these are really the sounds that will define their taste for this song.

One neat trick for getting a great sounding techno bass is to have one track with a dry kick drum part, and another track with an extremely low bass note effected with a limiter to take the volume level up. This will get that club-style thumping sound so familiar in all kinds of electronic music.

Step six: Season to taste and perform

Ableton Live can be used as a sequencer, but for this project I find it more exciting and effective to have the students perform their songs. Hit the global record button at the top, and start live-triggering your clips. Use the crossfader we assigned to the Mod wheel to flip between A and B drum parts, and go through the different sections of your song.

I tell students during this phase of the project to be doubly sure that none of the level meters are peaking to red, and if they can’t hear them after turning them down, to add a compressor to the master track or simply spend a little time mixing the levels of all the tracks to a comfortable listening level.

I set a time requirement of about 2-3 minutes for this project, and most students will have gotten through all of their material and ideas by that time.

It’s also not a bad idea to listen to some Breakbeat artists while doing this project. I’d suggest Roni Size/Reprazent, The Prodigy (older stuff), Photek, and the Breakbeat Massive series.

Voila!
You have successfully recreated the Breakbeat style, and are ready to bust out the glowsticks and rave until the sun comes up. Please add any thoughts/comments below.