#25

I almost always work like this:

  • Compose and practice with my instruments in a performance oriented way
  • Record multi-track (up to 24 tracks) live, like recording a band playing together in a studio
  • Listen listen listen
  • If anything feels like it’s missing, do some basic overdubs or additional parts
  • If anything need to be removed or edited, do some edits
  • Mix (eq, panning, levels, compression, effects)
  • Outputs stereo mix
  • Master (either myself or someone else)

There are rare times when I’m just playing around and record straight to stereo because I don’t want to reconfigure and loose what I’m playing.

5 Likes
#26

I work with a modular and do everything in one pass, multi tracked, mixed after the fact. When my modular was smaller, I recorded in multiple passes, but somehow doing everything at once makes (to my ears) the music more fluent and organic.

This is my latest on youtube, done this way:

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#27

I like building castles in the air, so I like to layer tracks. The things that I don’t do this for tend to get finished faster, but I’m not as terrified by possibility as I have been in the past.

I think @andrewhuang mentioned in one of his videos that he tries to limit himself to something like four or five takes of any given part, and then from there he has to work with what he got. I found that holding onto that as a rule made me more productive and less scared of imperfection.

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#28
  1. film music and stuff for other people is always multi-tracked. this is born of of necessity, people ask for stems, changes etc.
  2. personal art music is always one take. i think this comes from my jazz/improvised music background.
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#29

I was doing things one stereo mix live one take. Started having issues with minor things like too much bass so I started multi tracking live takes. Now I can’t finish anything so I’m thinking I’m going to start trying to finish things in stereo again.

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#30

I often hear something really great but it’s a fleeting moment where the randomness was really working. It’s hard to grab those and not always possible to recreate them.

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#31

I hate the idea that you need to stick to a 1st take because of a special moment when most of the times to me, it’s just a crutch to avoid working further in an idea, almost like a way to convince myself that’s the best I can get when most of the times, extra work would make it 100x better.

Always do 4 takes of whatever I’m recording be it a single element or a whole piece and then edit hell out of it.
When doing jazz sessions, the sentiment for everybody was usually 5 takes is one too many so I just transposed that to my solo recordings.
It keeps stuff spontaneous without falling into OCD perfection territory but also leaving some room to sculpt around the best moments of those multiple takes.

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#32

I didn’t read “single take” as “first take” … I usually record multitrack in a single take performance, but I might do it 3 to 5 times and choose the best one.

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#33

Further, if you’re locked to tempo, it’s relatively casual to gather the best parts from several takes, skip past long stretches of parameter tweaking, structure a piece from disparate jams, etc.

Editing a performance doesn’t strictly require layers.

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#34

I meant it in the same way, because personally, unless it is something extremely short, I tend to gravitate to different moments in different performances of a piece so I’d go crazy if I didn’t use the parts I love the most.

I think it would actually be easier to just do a 1st take than to resist the urge to edit different versions together.

#35

I tend not to edit that much… I generally do a take, listen, do a full new take, listen, etc until I’m happy with one as a whole. But my music is very improvisational, so editing together takes is usually not going to happen.

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#36

Sometimes I interrupt a take when I realize I could have developed a section better, or if I tried something and it didn’t work, or pushed something too hard or too fast.

But probably more than 90% of the time, I end up keeping the first full take that I finish, don’t keep the partial takes, or record another take and piece together the best bits. Most of what I do isn’t very performance-oriented, or focused on exact nuances of musical gestures, and to me the spontaneity is more important.

I don’t want to fall into the trap of making changes just because I’ve been listening to the same thing for the past 3 hours and anything different sounds “better” :grin:

3 Likes
#37

Sometimes I take my half-takes or other recordings I didn’t use and make samples out of them :slight_smile:

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#38

To me that’s the number one difficulty in making art, balancing my judgment between enjoying something because it’s new and fresh or because it’s balanced and well composed/performed.

Both should contain spontaneity but the former can get me stuck in a labyrinth of constantly adding elements after I lose the initial excitement over the piece while the latter can give me false sense of quality or enjoyment due to the usual long hours spent working on it.

Finding a process is harder than finishing the actual works in my opinion. Once you find it, just stick to it and you should be able to sleep well at night :wink:

2 Likes
#39

Before getting into modular, and the desire to make experimental/ambient electronic based music, I recorded the ‘traditional’ rock band way. I’d get a mostly live takes from drums, bass and some guitars, and then overdub everything else to my heart’s content. What happened is that it would take me forever to finish stuff, because I was the one overdubbing and mixing, and I would go through these periods of self-doubt and put the project aside when I thought stuff wasn’t sounding right. By the time I ended up finishing (if I actually finished it), I’d be so sick of it the tunes, and maybe even had moved onto new stuff. This long form way of working works for bands/artists that have budgets and fanbases, because inevitably the songs get new life in them when people hear them for the first time and you tour on them. I never had the luxury of having my own music get to that level, so it started to become disheartening to put all that energy into a recording.

Enter the modular synth and me having a baby… by nature of the instrument and by necessity I needed to do something immediate. So, I set rules for myself that there would be no overdubbing allowed. I essentially make a patch, record it direct to stereo, and mix it live the best I can live. It forces me to be in the moment. If the track gets released, mistakes are sometimes edited out and sometimes left in, depending on how I’m feeling. The only other thing I do is adjust fades, and sometimes, I’ll shorten a piece if I feel like it gets boring in parts. Then I “master” it too.

I’m thinking I may bring some over dubbing at some point soon, because I want to start adding other instruments back into the mix. I do play guitar/lap steel along with modular, but I’ve managed to do that live as well. I’d like to record that better though with overdubbing.

3 Likes
#40

I like to improvise, and showing the results of the particular moment I was recording seems more honest for me than presenting some sort of Frankenstein edit job. Plus I can’t really stay emotionally connected to material that I second guess in that way. I might occasionally overdub another layer on something that is too sparse or replace / enhance something that didn’t get recorded properly or didn’t mesh with the overall effect, but beyond that it starts to feel like a job.

1 Like
#41

Live to stereo, usually just one take unless there are technical issues.

#42

I have only really ever recorded modular straight to a single stereo track. I hope to eventually get to where @emenel is, because sometimes—not always—I like a track well enough to want to be able to go in and polish it up a bit. That’s my thinking, anyways. I remain super apprehensive that if I start down this path, I’ll start spending way too much time in my DAW, which is definitely not what I want. I don’t want to keep being drawn into @Foxhood’s labyrinth.

The approach I’ve been contemplating is to always record everything multitrack—just in case—but continue to try to get it all right the first time. I already use a WMD Performance Mixer, so that should easy (if expensive) to set up. But how do I resist the temptation to monkey around with the individual tracks when it’s not worth it? If it seems worth it, is it better to jump in there immediately, or wait a while until you’re able to be more “objective” about the track?

#43

I’d argue that you should always give some distance before you immediately start arranging or mixing single elements.

Also, I personally can’t edit and mix a project without a preconceived concept I need to achieve or else I fell like I’m just chopping and mixing stuff for no apparent reason and get lost in the sounds instead of the idea.

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#44

I always separate my music making from my music mixing/editing/production. The mindset and activities are so different, and I definitely need space from the music to think about mixing it… I always usually want to mix in the context of where the music is going (album, project etc).

I tend to record all the pieces that I want for a project, then mix the whole thing at once… more like working with a band in the studio, something I’ve done for years and is probably where this habit comes from. Composing, practicing, tracking, mixing, and mastering are all separate activities for me and require different mindsets, approaches, and techniques.

Treat this as a habit. Sometimes people think of their behaviours and habits as inevitable, that if you start down that path you will have no choice. That’s not true… if you want to find a balance then treat it as a practice, practice self awareness and correction so that you develop habits that support your creativity.

4 Likes