Now we all make mistakes of course, and sometimes it's just easy to easier to rerecord the entire track again, which is that that track not the whole song, but the whole track. If you just blew this one line or maybe your phrase was distorted, then punching in really comes the rescue. Now on most recorders, you can hit play, set the track to record ready and then press record for a moment or two to momentarily punch in and then hit that play or record again to punch out. It's different on different recordings, but check out this video. Okay, let's do an example of dropping in a lead vocal and we're going to screw up a few times that that's a game and we'll do some quick punching into Can I give you an idea of how quickly you can build a vocal. Again, I'm not the best vocalist, but this is gonna have to do Okay, here we go.

I remember being independent. I remember how to say. Funny nowadays. No one's saying Okay, so we'll go back. I think I screwed up around here. So I'll just hit record, and then record a game to get out of it.

Here we go. ever fail. I was funny now. No one's ever saying I'm amazed. So you can hear has a number of parts that you can just drop in. I mean, if you like you can really get in Ron Silva Of course, you can use the Undo as you go, I'm doing this on propellerhead record, you could easily be doing this on a hardware record or something like that are 16 or something like that.

You can see how we can get in on a really tight punch and it's a principal, we can pretty much do the same thing. Whatever we're using, you might want to check your particular product in terms of what buttons you press, but it normally is record the punch in and then play the punch out. Some might have you hit record. Again to punch out just go ahead and check your manual but the details like I said earlier, the actual method of doing this will vary from Product product, check your manual, or our product specific details or DVDs for details. But we can share some punch in tips we're in. Number one is here is rehearse your punches, most products will have a rehearsal action that will act like it's patching.

Basically, all it's doing is muting the playback between those punch in and punch out point just allows you to hear whether those points are good. Or maybe you're cutting off a pad of good stuff that you need to adjust those guys there. By the way, pretty much every nonlinear recorder out there. That is the ones not recording the tape that much everything right, have an undo function so that if you really blow a punch, you can restore that track immediately back to how it was before that punching. Now one last tip I'll share is a huge one. You know, if you're trying to bought a moving train, you kind of get yourself up to speed so that the transition is nice and smooth.

When you grab on well The same thing goes punches, don't just try to go from zero to 60. You know, basically from not playing to playing your punch in instant, play along, or sing along with that track, so that when the punch point comes in, you're already kind of up to speed, the punch will be much, much more natural. also choose the punch in spot to be one where there is a kind of manageable gap or playing in playing or singing. If it's too tight, the point is the point you want to punch in, tried punching in maybe a few beats or maybe even a measure beforehand. Back in the old type days, it appear you punch in points and you kind of blew it some somehow there was no undo points and then you had to punch back here and if you blew that and you had a punch back here, and it was a great way to do that.

Notice, give yourself a little bit of breathing room. So you know, maybe at the end of the line that you're seeing, that's a good place to punch him. Although with some of these software guys, you can really get in there. You know A single word and undo action really helps you there. Okay, so let's look at alternate tracks or vocal comping. Have you guys seen the specs on some of these recorders where they'll say they have eight tracks, but then they have, say 64 virtual tracks of the tracks.

What the heck is a beat track? And how do we use this? Well, let's take an example. Say one of bosses more popular recorded the br 600. It specification says it says that it has eight tracks. But within each track, you have eight virtual tracks.

So let's explode out the very first track right here. Let's imagine we want to record a male vocal in there, we could call that sidetrack man slash one, right? And then someone comes up with a broad idea. Let's record a female there. So they do that with a female. And then someone says it might even work as an instrumental so you break out your Les Paul, and you record that as well.

We have done all those recordings within the first track, but he's The deal, then when you set up to mix all this down, you have a palette of those three tracks. Anyone can be played back at the same time. But then you can say, you know, when everybody's sitting around, you've got a clear head, say, let's try this out as a male vocal, or let's try as a female bike, or maybe let's try it out as a guitar, you have all those options. So virtual tracks, so these alternate tracks are way to keep ultimates of a track. I mean, it's not the place to place a guitar, then bass and drums, you want them on separate tracks, they need to play back at the same time. But if you have an ultimate idea for a specific track, maybe it was some ultimate lyrics.

Or maybe it was on a guitar solo track where you want to try five different types of solos. Then you could record them on all of these guys. Yeah. So hardware recorders will do that software records can do something a little bit more interesting. Check out this video. Okay, so let's do an example of vocal comping.

Compiling vocals. Basically, the idea is this, you record a number of vocal takes, you're recording the same material, but you're recording different takes and that way you can, you might go through and say, you know, I like the first part of this take and middle of this taken song. And then you can slice and dice and compile the perfect vocal, I think gonna be the perfect vocal of icing, but we'll give it a try. Okay, so what I've done in propellerhead record is set up a loop between before and the underbar. It's a four bar loop, and I've set it up with a pre count. And basically what will happen is this as I record and every time it loops around, it will record onto the new take it won't overwrite what I've done, and that way we can have all those options to be able to slice and dice.

So here we go. I remember the day are you I was I remember the day. I remember, I could remember the day. I remember. Okay, I'm not sure how many that wasn't maybe three or four. Let me turn that monster on here.

And then we'll double click on this guy here. And you can see that we have three different types here, this one up here, I don't need, I'll select it and delete it. So we have a three right here. That was the first one recorded the second recorder and the third one were recorded. And here's what we can do. Now this will be different depending on which data you're using.

But on this guy here, you just select the razor tool, and then you say, you know what I want the first part of that. Then I want the second part of this and I really like this part here. And then On the last tag that was all good from there, except this part here, and then we play out from there. So you can see in, let me just go back here. You can see in here we have three different types. And we've taken different chunks from each of these texts.

Let's have a listen to how that sounds. I remember the day, you know, so random panda say, isn't that amazing? That's file right there in the middle of I could never fail. It's got the F A and l right there in business independent. So you can see that you can really get down to you know, just individual syllables and get the perfect one was there was no, I remember the day. I remember how to say I could say La vie.

So vocal comping is a great great tool to have, particularly if a vocalist is going away somewhere if you have a guest vocalist coming in, have them record four or five different tags. That way, when they leave, you'll have the option and all those really have that ability to be able to just chop all those pieces up to get the best part stop. A person doesn't get a certain syllable or they're sitting flat, and they might be flat in a certain part of the verse, then you can go through and then find a different take where they are singing right on key, chopping around and you're good to go. Now, up until recently, a lot of home recorders will only say for eight tracks. That meant there was a lot of compromising to be done in terms of getting really a bunch of performances onto a limited number of tracks.

A trick employed way back in the early days of multi tracking is still being used today and that's called a bouncing back in the days The Beatles you could record Set of vocals of john paul and George on tracks 123 and then record the output of those three tracks. on the track boy you could even record Ringo live as you about sing the three tracks down on a track fourth before performances on a track for notice that Ringo is the first generation recording, while john paul and George a second generation in other words, a recording of a recording. Using this method, you could then record drums and bass on tracks wanting to bounce them on a track three along with a live guitar. You could then record a piano on track one bounced out on the track two with a live organ. Finally, record a leaguer town track one for an incredible 10 performances on just these four tracks, none of which are further away than just a second generation recording.

But what are the downsides here of bouncing local one. Some recordings are second generation. So the quality goes down a bit. We also have tracks kind of mash together that will now all come and make the same channel in terms of one pan position one by one EQ, one effects settings. Also, once you record over the tracks that were bounced, they're gone right, you better be happy with those bounce tracks mixed because you can't pull them apart later. Any easier that you then you can unmix a cake right.

But some of those shortcomings have really gone away today with the latest generation of digital recorders. In the old days of tape, you actually had had an empty track to record onto a digital you can actually record four tracks onto track four along with a live track if you wish. So the number of tracks as soon add up. And with the uses of virtual tracks. You actually never need to wipe up your old tracks that you bounced you could just kind of move them onto a virtual track for safekeeping If ever you need them. Also Problem second generation recordings has essentially gone away as the digital bounce is vastly superior to tape bounces, no tape noise or hiss on that second generation bounce that we used to have.

So basically all we need to know in regards to bouncing onto today's most tracks is to mix up a blend of the source tracks, set the destination track to record ready and set it up to bounce my normally when we record only the input is set that record enabled track and the output of all the previously recorded tracks is only sent to headphones or speakers. But in bounce mode, the output of all that tracks is sent to that record enabled track along with the input if you wish there. So keep that in mind. If you're recording some tracks and you hear some other tracks on your new track. You're going what's going on here. Chances are you're in bounce mud, get out of that and everything will be fine.

Here's some bouncing do's and Right, do set your machine to bounce motor route the tracks onto the record ready tracks do bounce to a pair of tracks if you want to preserve the stereo panning positions of your source tracks. Go ahead and do check your levels on your destination tracks, destination tracks or tracks to prevent the source and pay careful attention to the mix the tracks as you can and mix them later. Although with the newer recorders, you can always place the tracks that you bounce onto virtual tracks. For safety's just in case you need. They're isolated them in an ISO format online. So basically use bouncing as a way to get more tracks out of your multitrack but be aware that every time you bounce tracks together, you tend to lose a certain amount of flexibility at mixdown.

If your multitrack can record 24 tracks or 32 tracks then chances are you may never need to bounce. If you have any for I tracks bouncing tends to be kind of more Way of Life. Now in the software world, sometimes it's really useful to bounce. let's actually look at an example in the software world. Okay, let's look at bouncing tracks. And I'm going to show you in a software application, because it's just a lot easier to visualize these tracks.

But let's imagine these tracks are within a hardware record and maybe even only having a track record. Okay, what I have here is in blue to lead vocals, and then I have six backing vocals here in yellow. So let's imagine we're on a hardware recorder. And we certainly don't want to burn this amount of tracks. Without vocals, we want to bounce these down. Now, the reason that I did this vocal on a second track right here was that there's a particular phrase here on this track that I just had a hard time seeing perhaps it was very high, just like that, and I need to record a bunch of different times and get it right instead of just doing it over and over here.

I just did on a separate track with the idea that then once I have a good take over here, I can then merge these two guys together. In other words, bounce them together. So certainly to get these two tracks down to just this one track, we'll just bounce them together. But if I bounced them the way they are right now I see a potential problem. Can you see it? What happens before this phrase, and after this phrase?

Well, if I've been recording from this was the moment that I started recording. And then there's probably some headphone bleed, there's probably some air conditioning noise. There's probably just some street rumble. There's a bunch of stuff down there that is also on this track here. If I bounced these guys together, then this jack would jump on top of this junk and we would have double that background noise. Probably not a big deal on these guys here, but it won't be a big deal when you start emerging.

Bouncing together a whole bunch of background backing back was here. So how would you fix that? Of course, you just got to select this guy here. And then you got to scoot that down. If you're on your hardware, you just set your point that you want to copy or you're you're sorry, no, actually, you do it by cutting out. If you're a hybrid recording, you've set your input there, your output point there, and you'd cut it out.

And then you do the same thing at the back here, and you cut it out. Either way you do it, you just want to be left with this area here. And ormally I mean, if you really wanted to be clean, you could do the same thing there and cut out a section right there so that then you could merge those together or bounce those together. So let's imagine we have all these backing vocals and we want to merge them tour bounce those together, what kind of problems might be have to look out for probably the biggest one is if you were to bounce all of these under one track, then you'd lose all the stereo pan. You'd have for all these guys here, if you did want to bounce them all down, then what you do is got your mixer, set up your pants, got all of these guys here and bounce them down to a pair of tracks, and then that resulting pair of tracks, then you'd you'd pan them hard left and hard right in terms of those bounced vocals.

Here's one other thing. Like we said before that there's a bunch of space in between here, I'd probably trim up these guys before we bounce. Otherwise, we're going to build up a Bose noise that the background noise right there is another one you might want to think about if you're going to be doing any auto tuning. Here's what you would do, you would auto tune them for you bounce them, because what happens is that you know currently with auto tune, I mean there are some motor turns around there that will auto tune polyphonically In other words, more than just a one time but most of them are just work really well. Just on single times, in other words, a monophonic instrument, which would be your voice. So out already, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, and then and only then would I bounce them down because if you bounce these guys down and want to do any auto tuning afterwards, you're really kind of going to be stuck.

And certainly if you're going to be doing a lot of this bouncing, you might want to leave a copy of these original tracks as selectees. Now we touched on the fact that most of these multi tracks, once we made the leap from tape to digital, we gave us an incredible amount of freedom. In terms of manipulating our tracks, we can cut out mistakes and move tracks or even portions of tracks around and copy one section to the other with the ease of what we've gotten used to with say a word processor and changing paragraphs around. Imagine a song like this. If we have a recording that we can drop in and we can chop a piece out, we can slide sections around and make as many copies As you'd want, and basically it all comes down to the three terms that we'll need to get familiar with now our selection source and destination, the source is where the Edit is going to come from.

The selection is the range of measures that we're going to edit, and then respond to decide where the destination is going to be. Typical edits are copying where the original material stays put, and a copy goes to the destination overriding whatever was there. Copy and insert does exactly the same thing. Only the copied material is inserted in the destination track, sliding out the remainder of that destination track. A mood edit moves the source material to the destination, leaving the source area blank. And moving insert does the same thing on the inserting the move material sliding out the remainder of that destination track it slides out but to make waste of that so it's basically a way to fix mistakes and change your life.

Instruments around after the fact remember that undo is your body so you can be comprehensive trying it as knowing you can always undo if you make a mistake and lose something. If you have it, it's best to use a waveform display to zoom in and see exactly what you're editing around and keep in mind that we're really clean edits try to make your selections on the point where the waveform crosses the line. This is basically called a zero crossing yet, if you make it edits right there, it'll make really clean it edits without annoying clicks or pops. Now if you record to a click track, it makes things so much easier in the editing department. Not only will your tracks be in time and will keep you in time but your recorders clock will be synced to your song. That means that you can immediately move to measure 38 for example, and that your edits can be made very very easily.

If you wish to copy the vocals from say the first chorus the second, it makes things so much easier when you can just display Find the point as from say, measure 33 to 41 run some arbitrary time measurement like you know, one minute 18 seconds and 12 brands lock your performance to your record is built in clock and lock becomes a whole lot easier. When you start to edit, check this example. So let's imagine this is what I recorded. I had the lead vocal here in blue, all of these are backing vocals, I have six backing vocals, you can see this antennas, altos and Sopranos, and to my it's as good as it's gonna get with my vocals. This is what it sounds like. Now, given it took me quite a while to do all of these vocals here, why the heck would I then go to the other chorus in most of these songs is quite often sections that are repeated.

So for example, we have this section Hear, which is the beginning of sorry, this section right here is the beginning of the chorus just like the sky was here is that verses through here, and then everything picks up exactly where we were before the lead vocal goes into the chorus. Why would I waste all that time putting all of these backing vocals and recording them all in there, when you know what they're all done over here. We do this in a word processor all the time we need to copy and paste something or we need to do is just select them. Let me just drag over these guys here. And I'll copy that. Then I'll place the pointer at the exact time that I want to place this copy area in and that is the beginning of the next course right there we go and Napier I'd normally do this with keyboard shortcuts that I do just using the menu so you can see it, paste that in better being better.

Boom, they're placed right there. And then now that'll work out despite the course it goes another course beyond that, and all I would do is just scoot across and deal with that it was over here. All of that worked out really well. Particularly, here's the reasons why it works that easily and that quickly, if your chance if your audio chunks are snapped to the nearest measure, and in this particular door, reason record, you can snap all these pieces to the nearest bar or eighth note or whatever. It would put this the the bar, let me just turn that up, neck and grab these guys and they can just kind of scoot all around the place, anywhere you like. And then of course this timing will be out.

But if we put this to the nearest bar, then bang, these chunks will just go exactly to the nearest bar. It's actually all messed up now because I did Let me turn that off. Enemies put that position two here. Beat one. And anyway, you get the idea, right? Do I really have to do this?

I guess I have to. So I'll do that. Okay, so now it's exactly at that point. And as long as I have that snap by, then these pieces will just, they'll just go exactly to the right measure. And that makes it so easy just to grab these guys and just drag them out the next one and the next one, if you're ever going to use sec portions of this, maybe there's there's just the last half of this can be used at some ad libs at the end. Then you could describe these guys and do that.

Grab these guys, or just copy them and then maybe paste them here and move it across and then all of these guys are We're just going to be I don't know, maybe you just use the last part of them and you can scoot them around but with that snap on boy it makes things so quick to be able to move Burke was around so quite often at the birth at the first chorus we back here at the first course I spent all of my time getting my vocals as good as they can as they can be, and then just copy and paste them all around the song. So like I said, That's as good as I can get them don't write me nationalists told me that I suck. This is as good as I can make my vocals. But you can see that editing makes background vocals really quick and really easy.

So in terms of this section, what are the points to remember, well get a clean signal, use quality cables. Also make sure that the connections are really good, so you don't get any crackling on the cables. Get a strong signal to maximize the signal to noise ratio. Or in other words, bring the recording level up as high as you can without inducing distortion. And maybe make some test recordings to see how hard you can hit your particular recorders tracks without clipping. And always check your recordings with headphones to really zero in on how clean those recordings up.

Now if you're using headphones, then isolate start using microphones isolate the best vibrations to the core can be reduced by using a shock map plosives can be reduced by a pop filter. Low Frequency rumble can be reduced by low cut filters on the micron and mixed reflections can be reduced by treating the acoustic space with blankets and reflection filters. Stay away from the center of the room as a reporter minimize those standing waves which will give you prompts. You can use punches to fix certain parts on your tracks other than the manual way of just pressing record and play on those record enabled tracks. Use a punch in pedal for hands free punching using new towers like that, or a punch for a completely hands free and put free one that we can use virtual ordinate tracks to place ultimate performances or give us some options when we mix, even use them as safety tracks to kind of hide away performances that we might need later on.

We also learned that comping or compiling vocals Wow, it was an awesome way to compile only the best parts of several vocal text. And when used with a loop recording method, man we can get flawless performances. We also learnt we can bounce tracks together in order to maximize the number of available tracks. And with digital technology. Many of the drawbacks that tape bass bouncing used to have have really been alleviated. And finally nonlinear editing.

Why allows us to slice and dice app of course is so that we can fix mistakes and also rearrange application It says with absolute ease.