I’ve had a question going around in my head that’s been annoying me.

Do recording engineers use MIDI or direct audio when recording?
I mean, How powerful is the direct audio editing for fixing up little mistakes here and there for instance?

Because for instance, with MIDI you an easily fix mistakes or volume of a particular note or bar, but if you are recording direct audio from someone playing guitar or piano or whatever, do they have to play their part over and over and over again until everyone is happy with the perfect take?

So if there is 5 minutes of guitar playing, and 3 minutes into it the guy made a little mistake, do they have to do the whooole thing again? I don’t get it…

I found this, about fixing mistakes in recorded audio
http://www.homebrewaudio.com/quickly-fix-audio-recording-mistakes-by-overdubbing-part-2/

But still, I would imagine it would be pretty tough to make the “fixed” section slot in perfectly and seamlessly with either side of the recording.

Or is it really easy to do that?

danielh - 07 February 2014 05:19 PM

Do recording engineers use MIDI or direct audio when recording?
I mean, How powerful is the direct audio editing for fixing up little mistakes here and there for instance?

Nothing beats a great ‘human’ performance ever.  (unless you need a mechanical type sound of course)

However, the beautiful thing about MIDI is that you can play and record your keyboard part to a MIDI track in your DAW and then refine the performance by editing the MIDI data.  Then, when everything sounds right, you or an engineer can commit that refined performance to an audio track and it’s done.

danielh - 07 February 2014 05:19 PM

but if you are recording direct audio from someone playing guitar or piano or whatever, do they have to play their part over and over and over again until everyone is happy with the perfect take?

So if there is 5 minutes of guitar playing, and 3 minutes into it the guy made a little mistake, do they have to do the whooole thing again? I don’t get it…

There are many tools and processes you can use to fix up real played or sung tracks to a POINT, but you run the risk of destroying them at the same time.  I would personally advise you to avoid any ‘fix it in the mix’ tactics to fix a performance and instead try and get the best possible performances out of your musicians first of all. So yes, if you think they can get it better, use your personal skills and try and get them to play it again.

If a track is good for the first few minutes but not the remaining few minutes, it may be possible to successfully ‘drop in’ and just replace the bad section from a tactically suitable position or a pause in the music that is located a little before the time when things start to go bad.  This of course depends on the complexity of the music and the skill of your engineer.

Another approach is compilation editing, where you get your guitarist to play his/her solo several times and you edit the best parts of each take together using the sophisticated non-linear editing facilities available in today’s DAW’s (like being able to ZOOM to sub-atomic level and make an edit!)

In the old days, multi track recorders had a much smaller amount of tracks e.g, 8, 16, 24 and engineers had to be creative and bounce parts together to make room for new tracks, but with today’s DAWs you can use way more tracks than ever before and have them already set up and ready to go for each new take.

We now also have tools like Melodyne and Auto Tune that have managed to cause quite a bit of controversy, but keep in mind that there is a BIG difference between using Auto Tune to correct a few out of tune or drifting notes in an otherwise outstanding performance that may NEVER be repeated and putting it globally on someone who cannot sing in order to make it appear like they can, or make them sound like a robot vacuum cleaner! (unless you are aiming for that)

It was record it right or record it again in the old days...and you should value that approach the most, but also make good use of what we have today whilst being very careful with it.

Cheers!

PS:

The link you posted was all about fixing up voiceover recordings.  With the amount of silent space between words and sentences in something like that, it is much easier to replace sections of a voiceover than sections of music.  There’s a lot more room to edit in it, generally speaking.

Hey there,
Thank you very much for the reply, it was exactly the response I was after.

Cheers!
Daniel

Excellent response!!!!! I’d only add… MIDI is a musician’s tool. People who record MIDI are musicians
A Recording Engineer, by definition, is an Audio engineer.

MIDI is the work still in progress. Audio is still the most commonly distributed finished product format.

And while many of the terms, functions and routines of MIDI are based on the paradigm of the recording of audio, the important differences are all about, as mentioned: perfecting the performance of the music before committing it to the audio format. Its usefulness is a no-brainer for keyboard players (musicians) tasked with emulating instruments beyond their principal “keyboard” instrument. For example, if you are tasked with “playing” drums, guitars, bass, strings, brass, flutes, etc., etc. via a set of black and white keys, MIDI can be extremely helpful. (When being honest with yourself).

Playing drums, as an example, with two hands on a set of black and white keys is a ridiculous thing when you step outside and really look at it. And attempting to do this, linearly, over an entire 5 or 6 minute composition… Well, let’s just say MIDI allows you to some how accomplish this… And again, if you’re really honest with yourself, it is really easy for most drummers to make your keyboard drum tracks sound lame in less than three measures.... Mostly this is reality.

Today recording engineers had better know about MIDI. Many refuse, they seek to solve every problem in the old school “traditional” method. I myself come from the “DO OVER GENERATION” - where it was all about audio. The term “fix it in the mix” was what you did begrudgingly… You would rather get it right on the original recording.

Today, both MIDI and the methods of audio recording use “fix it in the mix” as their preferred work method. I learned to embrace MIDI on every level, mainly because I was a musician (first) who decided to “learn” about the studio… Not an audiophile who was afraid of it. I saw its benefits immediately.

Look they are tools, you can USE or ABUSE them. In the hands of some they are tools for generating art, in others, well… You know.

I’ll end by saying: beware the builder who only has a hammer, to them every problem looks like a nail.