Hello All,
Im struggling today with cleaning up my final recording of a song in Song mode on my XS8. The song is recorded linear (of course) and its a lengthy piano solo piece with a lot of change ups in the song. Im trying to tighten up the song so its flows fluently, but I am not a master pianist and I have these noticeable pauses in the song at different parts were either my fingering has to do a radical change up, or Im trying to recall what part is played next. Im playing this by memory, I have the sheet music, but Id much rather play it from memory as I record it. (just more feeling)
Ive tried to record it over and over, but my little snafu’s and pauses will just pop up somewhere new. Ive tried to record it in Pattern mode and Im sure this piece would be a great candidate for that method, but for my own satisfaction of following through on my studies, I prefer Song mode. And of course Pattern mode can have its own set of timing challenges.
I am familiar with the “edit” feature and have tidy-up some small errors. I have “Quantized” the song, but it just quantized my unintentional pauses also. I am familiar with and have tried the “Beat Stretch” job at several different settings and I get some crazy results sometimes and have to undo and reset the perimeters. Its just not clean as I would expect. The pauses can be maybe 1/2 a measure and a lot less. But if I move notes manually, It changes on the back end.
I know if I start messing around and just move the timing of notes sooner in “edit”, it just causes a pause or gap later in a measure. So, what ever I move in the front..... it takes it back in the rear or end of a measure. And I do understand why all that happens.
My goal has always been to “Practice more and Edit Less” when it comes to recording. I feel I do know the song well enough to attempt a recording and I know I am being critical of myself. But I find the pauses are noticeable. And the song is so damn long and Ive played it like a gazillion times already just to get it memorize. Im frustrated but I feel I have a good solid recording of the song right now, and just want to put the finishing touches on it.
Im sure some of us have ran across this at one time or another on a difficult piece. What methods are the rest of you doing to polish your recorded songs if you need to tighten up notes in a measure or two, or three etc....
Thanks,
-Dez

Trying to “fix it in the mix” can sometimes be frustrating, especially when you’re doing so with MIDI data. In some cases, it’s better to commit to audio, and edit that instead. Since you’re dealing with a solo performance, it should be a lot easier than when you have to deal with what effect the editing might have on other instruments in the mix.

Removing unintentional pauses is something in particular that editing of audio is good at. If you want to try the concept, see:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/

I guarantee it’s a whole lot easier than when tape editing blocks, razor blades, and splicing tape were the only available method.  :-)

Without hearing what you have created it’s impossible to know how crucial your gaps and timing discrepancies are. Are you playing to a click? If so, you should at least be recording within, say, conventional time signatures and not… 4.25/4 etc!

If you’re not recording to a click, try it! Clicks can be your friend and you can go in front of and behind the click perfectly fine so long as you don’t actually lose a whole beat and totally forget where you are. If you don’t like playing to “tick-tack-tack-tack” etc try recording a simple drum pattern to play over; just to help you stay on top of things.

You can also just quantize certain bars or sections if you want. Also experiment with different quantize strengths. Note edit can be a bit of a blind alley after awhile but the occasional nudging can be useful, especially if you can nudge a note that’s supposed to be at the beginning of Bar 4’ say, but has actually been played at the end of Bar 3. In situations like this it can be murderous to tighten things up and a small amount of judicious note-editing can work wonders.

Also, try recording at a much slower tempo. This will probably provide greater accuracy and then when you speed the song back up to normal speed you’ll be surprised how tight it’ll feel.

Another thing to try is some ‘comping.’ Record your song on a bunch of different tracks and see if you can copy and paste one really good performance from them.

Don’t be too afraid of Pattern recording, either. A Pattern can be 16 measures, or 32 etc etc, so you’re not strapped into recording your song in 4 bar sections or anything.

5PinDin is quite correct in saying audio can be - somewhat ironically! - a more forgiving medium these days but if you want to remain in MIDI for sound flexibility’s sake, amongst other possible reasons, hopefully the above will give you some things to work on. Aside from just ‘practice more!’ Music ain’t supposed to be easy! Hang in there.