Lately I’ve been recording a band that has been having trouble with the more difficult parts of their songs. The usual methods for getting a good take aren’t enough so I have had to use a sneaky trick just so we can move on and not waste hours recording the same 8 bars over and over.
Usually when I record I like to do a few takes of the whole song, from those takes we decide if there is anything worth keeping, if not then we get rid of it all and start working section by section. We’ll record a bunch of takes until we think we’ve got a good one. I’ll then use elastic audio to get things even tighter.
If the musician can’t get through the part straight through then we’ll either record half the part at a time or we’ll piece together a composite take using the best parts of all the previous takes.
When that still isn’t good enough I have a really dirty trick that I hate to have to resort to, but it keeps things moving and we stop wasting time.
It might be possible to do this trick with other programs, but I’ll explain how to do it in Pro Tools.
In pro tools tracks can use either a Ticks or Samples timebase. You can change this on each track by clicking on the little icon at the bottom that looks like a clock for samples, or a green metronome for ticks.
In samples mode any region on a track remains at it’s sample position if you change the tempo.
In ticks mode, if you make a tempo change, the regions will move and maintain their bar:beat position, not their Minutes:seconds position.
With MIDI a tempo change will make the recorded notes play faster or slower than they were originally performed. With Elastic Audio enabled tracks in Ticks mode, the audio will timestretch along with tempo changes, without changing pitch.
Sooooo… means that the impossibly fast picking part at 160 bpm is now ridiculously easy to play at 80 bpm.
Set all your tracks to ticks, enable elastic audio in polyphonic mode. Insert a tempo change to whatever is easy to play at. Record the part with the metronome. Now set the tempo back to the proper speed. What you just played will now be at the correct tempo. Anyone should be able to get through the part in a couple takes.
The only problem with this method is it can sound fake and too perfect. It sometimes sounds stretched depending on the part. If you record only a little slower it won’t be so obvious that you cheated.
This is a last resort method, and unfortunately I’ve had to pull this trick out several times in the past week after trying everything else.
Hopefully you find this useful, may you never have to use it.
Also Interesting:
Nice tip, Jon. I was familiar with doing this on an HD rig with vari-speed, but this is an awesome tip for all of us LE users.
I recently discovered another trick that wouldn’t take quite as much time to set up. Hold down Shift when you press Record to engage half-speed recording. Obviously, this only lets you record at half-speed, so you can’t select the slower tempo. However, in some cases it might work really well. I’ve not done it in a time-sensitive tracking session, but it’s worth keeping in mind.
thanks Joe
The problem with proper half speed recording or with Vari-speed in general, the pitch changes along with the tempo change. When you play back your half speed recording, it will be way too high pitched for the song.
Ok, so, play back the take recorded half the speed at full speed, the tone is twice what it should. Record it an octave lower ! Played back it will be in tune !
same thing can be used in Ableton live, if the sample is “warped” to the master tempo, when I change the tempo the sample,loop or whatever “follows” the tempo.