The Light of Day

My take on “takes”
KeithHandy posted in Producing, So You Want..., Tools on November 25th, 2007

From Dictionary.com:

take /teɪk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[teyk] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, took, tak·en, tak·ing, noun
–noun

Definitions 103 and 105 are basically the same. I would meld them into: a single instance of continuous, uninterrupted recording and/or filming of a performance. (Does punching in a single bar count as a “take”? No, I don’t think we would use that word in that case. The idea of “punching in” is a little antiquated now anyway.)

In recording music, keeping track of takes is something we tend to do more in the early stages than later on. If we’re recording basic tracks, for example, we’re laying the foundation for the whole song, so take selection is critical. If we’re just putting down a fairly simple overdub, we might just keep erasing and redoing it until we like it. Common wisdom might tell us to preserve everything, but the more we preserve, the more work it will be to sort through it all. If we’re afraid that we’re going to play the ultimate performance, think it sucked, delete it, and never realize that it was pure genius, then we have a rather crippling and irrational fear that we need to get over. The quality of our performance might vary, but not by that much. Our subjective opinions of our own work will also vary, but again, not by that much.

I don’t know about other bands in general, but the Beatles’ takes were apparently numbered like this: if the song got off to a false start, that was still given a number. If a more clear dividing line needed to be drawn between a new set of takes and an older set of takes, the engineer would skip to a round number, so “take 103″ doesn’t necessarily mean it was recorded 103 times. If a song was mixed down to another reel for adding additional overdubs, that new mix would get its own take number (this probably helped to avoid confusion between reels containing the original tracks and reels containing reduction mixes).

Since I am a really poorly disciplined musician, I don’t do this thing other people do called “practicing”. (I’m not proud of this, nor do I recommend this.) So when I start doing takes for a part, that’s essentially my practice. The software that I’m using now, I’ve had for maybe a year and a half now, and it was fairly recently that I actually started to use its “loop” feature to do multiple takes. It makes it dirt simple; you just drag the yellow markers to the beginning and end of what you want to record (or hit “i” to mark the “in” point and “o” to mark the “out” point) and make sure that “loop” is lit up in the lower right.

Once you start recording, it will just keep going through that section over and over until you stop, and it keeps everything you do on one clip. A clip with multiple takes on it has a little “+” sign in the corner, and to listen to, say, take 8, you just click on the “+” and select “take 8″ from the drop-down menu. If you want to make a composite, you can split the clip up into smaller clips, and choose which take to use for each section. Since this can all be done on one track, it’s not making a mess on your screen!

First I pick the take that I like best overall. Then I listen for “trouble spots”. If it’s just a timing error on one note, I may fix that note by snipping it out and dragging it to the left or right. If it’s a more substantial goof-up, I snip to the left and right of the bad part, and try out all the other takes for just that part. There’s usually a decent one. After doing this, the left and right edges of every clip can still be dragged in either direction while the audio stays in the same place (like making a hole wider or narrower to reveal more or less of what’s behind it). I adjust the edges until the point where it switches from one take to another sounds as seamless as possible. When I’m sure that I’m happy with my composite, I “render” that track, so it’s in a single file, and the software has less junk to keep track of.

This is certainly more flexible and less nerve-wracking than doing punch-ins (see next paragraph), but the trade-off is that it winds up being a little more time-consuming, especially if you think every take you record deserves an equal chance for consideration (I’m guilty of comparing and contrasting every take, instead of just going with the first one I hear that sounds decent).

The old way, using tape, was to start playing the tape from a little before the part you want to fix, perform along with it to get into the groove, switch the machine from “play” to “record” in an inconspicuous spot (i.e. hopefully not in the middle of a note) while you’re still performing, then switch it back from “record” to “play” in an equally inconspicuous spot, then regain your composure and hope you did everything right. Most home recording devices allowed you to use a foot switch to control the punching in and out; in a pro studio, the engineer handled that. Each time you botched a punch-in, you had to start slightly earlier and end slightly later, to cover up the previous bad punch.

Invariably, there would still be noticeable glitches on the track at the punch points when listening to the track in isolation, but a realistic goal would be for it to be unnoticeable in context. Now that we have more exact and leisurely control of edit points, we take the extra time — or waste the extra time, rather — to better mask those seams. In a way, though, when we listen to an old recording from the 60s or 70s, and can hear little edits and punches, isn’t that part of the vintage charm? I certainly think so. But somehow, given the choice between a seamless edit and a glitchy edit, the challenge to make it seamless is more compelling; besides, bad digital edits just aren’t as charming as bad analog edits.

Were there a point to this post I would sum it up here. Instead, here’s yet another session video:

Sorry about the attention-hogging, bright red, disheveled bedspread. I’ll take more time to either make that or hide it next time. When I realize I’m about to put something down and want to get it on video, I generally set up rather hurriedly for it.