SMOKE AND MIRRORS, PART 1

Last night we recorded the penultimate tracks for the Strikes Again! demo/EP/record thingy. That is, we have the vocals for every song except one, "Hell Disaster," which won't be recorded so much as birthed like an Alien breaking through the Sternum of the Studio.

We spent a bit of time comping the vocals. For those who haven't spent time making modern music with machinery*, this means we recorded several takes of each vocal and edited together final takes from bits and piece of each. In the old days this would require putting takes on different tracks, learning where the good parts are, and playing back the song while whipping the various faders up and down as you record the output of these tracks onto another track. The result is a "comp" or composite track.

Nowadays digital audio software lets you put various takes on a single track and select which you want to hear. So we listen to take 7, for instance, and mark down which lines are good. Same with take 8, 9, 10.... 25, 26, 27.... etc. At the end we create another take and copy in the lines we like. Sometimes lines don't quite match each other, or the edits between them need to be "massaged" a bit, and this is where the fun comes in.

Occasionally an edit will just be too clean. Last night we had recorded two lines - which would end up back to back - as separate bits. When we cut them together something just didn't feel right. We thought perhaps the second line was coming in too quickly, but then realized that the problem was a little deeper. Listening back you'd subconsciously realize that the space between the lines was too clean, that it couldn't really be sung that way live - there needed to be a breath or some kind of slurring of the words between the lines.

We simply went to an earlier take, where we hadn't recorded the lines separately, took the little section where the first line ended and the next began, and edited it in. It was less than a second of audio but it sold the edit.

This kind of problem solving is a blast to me. I love creating the illusion that nothing was created, that it all happened exactly as you're hearing it. It's like special effects in film (or just old fashioned good acting) where you don't question the reality, you just accept it.

I enjoy this kind of thing so much that a few years ago I suggested the name "Smoke and Mirrors" for the studio. It stuck.

* Rush reference