I understand the principle of comping several vocal takes (for example) into one final one but what are the mechanics of this.
Say, for example I have 3 takes of the lead vocal on 3 different tracks.
Do I have to painstakingly mute the bits I don’t want off of each of those tracks or is there an easy way of marking the bits I do want and dragging them on to a clean track, but with them still remaining in exactly the same position on the timeline?
I can see how it would be easy to use say the verse from track one and the chorus from track 3, but I may want to jump from line to line or even substutute one word from a different track which is more tricky.
Thanks for any advice.
Here’s how I do it;
Let’s say you have three tracks. Listen to the first phrase of all three tracks and pick the best one. Say you like track 1 best. Drag the left edge of the timeline (the curser goes to a double arrow when it hits the little square) of tracks 2 and 3 to the right, past the phrase but stop before the next phrase.
Now listen to the second phrase of all three tracks. Say you like this phrase on track 2 best. Go to track one and highlight a short section of the track to the right of the first phrase. I’m not at my DAW right now so I I’m not sure of the exact menu choice on the next step but you’ll find it. Go to the Edit menu and choose Non-Destructive. That will give you another menu that lets you split the track at the beginning of the selection. Now the track will be split and you can pull the track timeline to the right to remove the part you don’t want.
After doing this you will end up with little chunks of vocal on three different tracks. Shrink the timelines around the phrases to make sure that you remove extraneous noise like coughing. Make sure that the tracks don’t overlap.
Now you will comp the tracks. Go from left to right. You can combine all the chunks into the first vocal track. Select a chunk by clicking it once. Go to the menu bar and select the 4 way arrow thingy. Hold down the shift key - this will keep the track from moving left or right. Click on the chunk and drag it up to the first track. Repeat with all the other sections.
Hope that made sense.