Vocal Comps.

[WhiskeyJack]

WTF do y'all mean when you say you are comping vocals or doing vocal comps.

Looking at @Tadpui and @rayc. You two seem to use that term a fair bit. Is this a fundamental technique i am missing out on?

Thanks for your diligence in addressing this matter,
Management.

[Greg_L]

From my understanding it's doing multiple takes and piecing together one good take from bits and pieces of the other takes.

[WhiskeyJack]

From my understanding it's doing multiple takes and piecing together one good take from bits and pieces of the other takes.

Oh. Ok cool. thanks.

I suppose i do that but i do it while tracking. Just do it until it sounds right and good then call it a day.

[Armistice]

Comp = compile, I always thought...

[JD01]

I think historically vocal comps would have been someone good doing three takes of a song and choosing the best bits from each one.

I think now it means doing 15 takes of a single line and using the best bits of every syllable you can find to put vaguely passable take together.

[rayc]

I think historically vocal comps would have been someone good doing three takes of a song and choosing the best bits from each one.

I think now it means doing 15 takes of a single line and using the best bits of every syllable you can find to put vaguely passable take together.

I expect that'd be true...with some tuning as well.
I don't bother with that much effort though, (as I'm always hopeful that someone will sing it for me), a couple or three maybe. On The Half Life... I recorded the vocals as "melodic" parts came to me so it was made as a comp. I did record the chorus twice because I wanted a slightly blurred thing.

[Armistice]

I'm always amazed, when I line takes up against each other how different they are in timing... comes of singing songs that haven't been through a live experience and a few hundred repetitions.

[Tadpui]

@Greg_L pretty much nailed it.

Reaper makes it nice and easy to do comps. You've probably noticed the "lanes" that start to pile up on each of your tracks in the timeline as you record, re-record, re-re-record a track. Assuming you don't just delete each take before recording the next one, that is.

Each of those lanes is an individual take for that track. You can click on any of them to make them the active take. If there are splits in the media item, it'll select the active take between splits. So you can split anywhere you want to switch to a different take, and pick and choose which takes you want to be active at which points in the track.

The one drawback to how Reaper handles takes is that it automatically splits all of the takes any time any one take begins or ends. So if you're halfway through the first verse and a fly goes in your mouth and you stop recording to cough it back up, now all takes of that track are split right where you stopped recording. Or maybe each take you stopped recording at slightly different times at the end of the song. Now you end up with a bunch of tiny little split garbage at the end of the track. You can heal the splits, but I always forget.

Anyways, I find it really handy, especially for drums and vocals. Basically the two things I'm least capable of doing an acceptable job all the way through an entire song. I can pick the best bits from each performance (or, at least the bits I didn't totally screw up).

[JD01]

@Greg_L pretty much nailed it.

Reaper makes it nice and easy to do comps. You've probably noticed the "lanes" that start to pile up on each of your tracks in the timeline as you record, re-record, re-re-record a track. Assuming you don't just delete each take before recording the next one, that is.

Each of those lanes is an individual take for that track. You can click on any of them to make them the active take. If there are splits in the media item, it'll select the active take between splits. So you can split anywhere you want to switch to a different take, and pick and choose which takes you want to be active at which points in the track.

The one drawback to how Reaper handles takes is that it automatically splits all of the takes any time any one take begins or ends. So if you're halfway through the first verse and a fly goes in your mouth and you stop recording to cough it back up, now all takes of that track are split right where you stopped recording. Or maybe each take you stopped recording at slightly different times at the end of the song. Now you end up with a bunch of tiny little split garbage at the end of the track. You can heal the splits, but I always forget.

Anyways, I find it really handy, especially for drums and vocals. Basically the two things I'm least capable of doing an acceptable job all the way through an entire song. I can pick the best bits from each performance (or, at least the bits I didn't totally screw up).

I've never known how takes work in Reaper. I always just do a take, listen, decide to bin it, then record another one.

Unlike Armi, if I'm doing multiple takes and keeping them they tend to line up pretty well... it probably takes me a lot more practice than him to start getting usable stuff though.

[vomitHatSteve]

Takes took me a long time to figure out too, but they saved me a ton of effort when I started on them. Previously, I had been recording takes in separate tracks and comping those together with a lot of muting and soloing.

[Greg_L]

I'm not into Reaper's take lanes. It's too cluttered and hard to keep track of for me. I just do a punch-in or wipe it out and do another take. My thing is I'll do something all the way through, keeping mental note of where I might wanna redo something. I might flub a note on bass or vocals or something but I just keep going till the end. Then I'll listen back and figure out if I wanna do a punch in or redo the whole thing.

I'm not opposed to the idea of comping but I can't be assed to sit through a bunch of different takes to piece together one good one.

[JD01]

When I'm comping I try to keep it to singing whole verses or at least distinct lines. I don't like making cuts and glues mid-sentence.

[Armistice]

I probably do more comping than most - I'm singing tunes I've only just written and which are still evolving in terms of vocal melody, so they're not exactly in my vocal muscle memory. Can be a bit pitchy in different spots. I'll normally do about 6 takes and comp from that.

I try to get whole lines, indeed verses if I can, but it doesn't always work out that way, and what I find is that 75% of it usually comes from a single, later, take...

[JD01]

I probably do more comping than most - I'm singing tunes I've only just written and which are still evolving in terms of vocal melody, so they're not exactly in my vocal muscle memory.

I do this too. But 'cos I get so little time to work on music I often end up returning to songs weeks or even months later after which I'm really familiar with them 'cos I've listened to the mixes in the car a load of times and stuff. Sometimes I think that I've gotta resing a few badly delivered/pitchy lines and then end up re-tracking the whole thing really quite quickly, much more clearly and confidently.

[Armistice]

I probably do more comping than most - I'm singing tunes I've only just written and which are still evolving in terms of vocal melody, so they're not exactly in my vocal muscle memory.

I do this too. But 'cos I get so little time to work on music I often end up returning to songs weeks or even months later after which I'm really familiar with them 'cos I've listened to the mixes in the car a load of times and stuff. Sometimes I think that I've gotta resing a few badly delivered/pitchy lines and then end up re-tracking the whole thing really quite quickly, much more clearly and confidently.

Yeah, I've gone back a few times, and thrown out a whole bunch of takes because I've decided it sounds better with a different style of voice - louder, softer, closer - whatever - or major variations in melody. I can whip the rest of the tune up reasonably quickly... vocals can take forever.

[JD01]

I can whip the rest of the tune up reasonably quickly... vocals can take forever.

This is exactly how it is for me.

[vomitHatSteve]

I find is that 75% of it usually comes from a single, later, take...

That's usually my experience. The last take I keep is one that I'm pretty happy with, and the other takes are used to fill in the occasional less stellar phrase.
I also usually get better at the part by the last take (between getting a better handle on the lyrics and melody, warming up, etc)

[WhiskeyJack]

Truthfully i use this feature in reaper more for tracking guitar solos if i am going to be 100% honest with you guys. Like a few others i'll just do vocals over and over until i am happy with it, watching the takes stack up on each other and then just blow them out once i am done. I can count on four fingers the amount of times i have gone back into those weeds to pour through previous takes looking for a better vocal take. 99.8% of the time i keep the last vocal takes in the lanes.

Guitar solos for me though is where this feature shines. Because I so suck so bad at that sort of finger dexterity I'll just not even think about the solo, playing it right or whatever I'll just play through on loop 5 times. I won't even try or care or think about it as that is when i really buckle under pressure. After those 5 rapid fire looped recording's I'll sit and listen to each, see what can be salvaged and quilted together ensuring that each take flows and sounds great and is in tune with the other. then i will go back and punch in what I flubbed or just start over if there is an obvious tuning issue. As long as it is a full measure or meter or whatever. I don't punch in single notes, that's dumb and i have more self respect for myself than that.

that and i the one time i tried to punch in a single note of a solo is was damn near impossible to my ears to make it sound natural. I'm just not that consistent.

[musicturtle]

Comping to me is the modern version of the old punch-in method.

When recording to tape, many would punch-in over and over in the same spot to get a difficult part down on tape, not a whole phrase or verse, but possibly a note that was just too hard to get perfect in the normal course of performance.

With today's technology, the punch in really isn't needed anymore as you can re-record parts over and over before choosing the best one.

Of course nowadays you can mix and match in ways you never could with tape, but there were always ways to cheat the system.

George Martin changed the voltage to a tape machine to match pitch/tempo in different takes of "Strawberry Fields" to create a comped vocal. "Strawberry Fields" also took 55 hours of studio time to complete

[Tadpui]

I find is that 75% of it usually comes from a single, later, take...

That's usually my experience. The last take I keep is one that I'm pretty happy with, and the other takes are used to fill in the occasional less stellar phrase.
I also usually get better at the part by the last take (between getting a better handle on the lyrics and melody, warming up, etc)

Same here.