📑 Sections (5)

4. Comping and editing

Building the best version from several takes, editing timing without sounding like a machine, and when to stop editing and move on to the mix.

Comping comes from “compiling”: building a final take from the best parts of several. It’s normal on any record, and done well it doesn’t show. It’s also the easiest place to lose an afternoon, so it pays to do it with a method and a limit.

The method

From big to small

  1. Listen to each take once with the band playing, without touching anything.
  2. Choose the best full take as the base.
  3. Replace only what fails, phrase by phrase, from other layers.
  4. Make a short fade at each join and check it by listening.
  5. Consolidate the track and keep the layers in a copy of the session.

Recording with Record Takes to Layers leaves each pass as a layer of the same track, ready for this.

Where to cut

  • In a silence or a breath, if there is one.
  • Right before an attack: a pick, a hit or a strong consonant hides the cut.
  • Never in the middle of a sustained note, unless you adjust the fade carefully.

Timing: how much to correct

Moving everything to the grid is fast and usually a mistake. Small differences are also what gives a band its drive.

  • Correct what’s distracting: a note clearly ahead, a bass hit that doesn’t land with the kick.
  • In metal, tighter: fast, doubled rhythm parts tolerate less difference, because it sounds like a smear.
  • Vocals and solos, freer: singing or playing slightly behind the beat is part of the character.
  • Bass and kick first: it’s the pair where a mismatch shows most.
🟠 Better to set it now· in recording

Editing before mixing keeps compressors from highlighting mistakes and keeps you from redoing adjustments. But over-editing has a cost too: a take corrected down to the last detail tends to lose its life.

How to edit by instrument

  • Programmed drums: corrected in the MIDI, for free. Notes and velocities stay editable.
  • Guitar and bass DI: cut and move events. Since it’s the DI, the amp sim keeps working over the edit.
  • Vocals: see editing and the final take.
  • Silences: cut the noises between parts. An amp sim with lots of gain makes them very obvious.

When to stop

Give it a time limit before you start. And apply this test: listen to the whole song without looking at the screen. If nothing pulls you out of the song, you’re done. What you only notice with the waveform zoomed in, no one else will notice.

Common mistakes

What NOT to chase yet

Quick path: comping

Quick path

  1. Give it a time limit.
  2. Listen to each take with the band.
  3. Choose the best full take as the base.
  4. Replace only what fails, cutting before an attack.
  5. A short fade at each join.
  6. Correct the timing only where it's distracting, starting with bass and kick.
  7. Listen to the song without looking at the screen.
  8. Consolidate and keep a copy with the layers.

Expected result

Expected result

Final tracks that are clean, tight and alive, which sound like a band playing. If you listen to the song straight through and nothing pulls you out of it, the recording is closed. Next up is mixing the song.