Well, I thought I should start carrying the laptop around so I could post where we are with the CD - Stepin Up by Shannon Kennedy.
I have the first track edited. Editing is the basic process of going thru the live performance and fixing any performance errors. If there are any wrong notes or wrong chords - I find a section of the song without the mistake and copy paste in the good take. If the bass missed a note, I do the same.
Aside from notes is the moment that things are not together. I might find the bass and kick off a little and move a note (edit) to make the section tighter.
This process is very tedious. It takes a section at a time of music, listening thru with just a few tracks for problems, and then in context of all the tracks together, to be able to make a decision as to whether edits are needed and how to approach them.
Sometimes a little off is cool. Perfect is not Human, and in all actuality, it's impossible and feels lame. Computers can be perfect but lack all sense of emotion and feel. I know some people who edit the life out of real players, making it sound perfect and dead. I only look to improve the feel. I listen first. When something sounds off, I'll listen again 2 or 3 times. Then open the screen view pretty wide to see where things are laying in the actual wave patterns. Funny thing about the visual is, the parts can sound great together and feel right, even with the wave patterns starting at different times.
That is the process. I try to fix errors first. Then touch on any big timing things and save a light edit. Then I go thru and match track pairs, editing timing when off, and touch on gain issues (to loud or soft) and possible arranging issues like pulling out a part for a section (Example - the bass out of the first ending). These later things could also be addressed during the mix, but I think ideas need to be acted on if you keep hearing that way.
Once these edits are finished and saved as separate files, I need to compare them as entire takes. I bounce all the tracks to audio and save each as a wave file. Then import the audio into new session so I can have all 3 takes as stereo tracks in the same session. I then can go section by section thru each of the versions and confirm the feel versus cool factor. Since I am not really that aggressive when editing, I usually like the final edit, but usually find a few things that need to be fine tuned at this stage.
Soooooo,
Double Shot, the proposed first track at this time is edited and ready for a very big name guest to track next week. I will avoid a name for now, until we have him on the track and paid. Shannon and this 'guy' will share the melody and solo sections.
Once the final sax parts are in, this will be ready for the mixing and mastering guy.
But for now, I have 1 track edited and sounding great.
We also have another #1, name guest, working on permissions to be on another track next week. Of course, that is my next edit job, to make sure it too is ready to record the guests.
That's it for now.
...Now if I only had 18 hours a day to knock this out. This past week was the busiest work week I've seen in months and it always comes when every hour should be spent doing a project like this.
Peace out....
