What are people’s thoughts on workflow for comping a take?
It seems to me there’s (at least) a couple of ways of doing it: layering everything in the track and using stacked mode, muting unneeded bits; or using different playlists and then copy/pasting to a comping playlist. What pros and cons are there for different methods?
I can see that stacking could make things a lot easier, having all the takes visible together, but I wonder whether it works better where you ‘drop in’ to correct a few places over a full take but maybe is a bit more cumbersome where the takes are all all-the-way-through?
In the past (a long time ago), I always did it by copy/pasting the bits to a new comp playlist. I recall copy/pasting being a bit of a pain and rather timeconsuming and maybe there’s no reason to do it that way anymore. I think layering has improved considerably since I last needed to do any comping and also I’ve only recently discovered stacked mode
I think the method may be different depending on which material you have and which way it’s recorded.
When I do the tracking, I usually make a new track for each take, then I punch in new bits on the best track and consolidate it if punched. Layers in one track are great, but I like one take per track best.
Then I usually make a new track and copy its best parts, that’s what I prefer. It’s terrific that Ardour has these different ways of doing it, and the best method is the one that works for you or me IMO.
Recently I switched to loop recording - stacked on a single track. This is especially useful when I track my own voice. Later on I review the results, cut and edit on the same track. Once I’m happy I consolidate the region and delete the unused parts.
I hadn’t thought of putting them on individual tracks: it’d certainly be easy to do comparisons that way, especially using exclusive solo to listen critically in isolation for any mistakes or imperfections.
I don’t think it’d work for me though, the session I’m embarking on is going to have about 100 tracks as it is and that would probably double if I added in all the guitar takes I’ll need to do
I’ve thought of some things I want to try with the guitar part so I’m going to do a test run and while I’m doing that I think I’ll give the layered/stacked approach a try and see how it goes.
It’s always overdubbing one instrument at a time for me, though with guitar that might be two different mics on the speaker to different tracks, or DI and mic to separate tracks for one take of bass.
Presumably if the tracks are in the same group (and the right group settings checked), changes to the regions in one (dragging region ends, splitting etc) will occur on the regions in the other grouped track as well?
Just started watching the vid and I’ve already learnt something with the “new playlist for rec-armed tracks” thing. I never think to look at Mixbus videos when looking for info, but have now subscribed as it’s obviously a useful resource for Ardour users as well (for the most part, differences aside) – thanks!
