Here's a comping session in progress, showing how you can use colours to keep track of progress. You may get an audible click or unmusical transition between one item and the next, in which case check that the main toolbar's Auto‑fade is active and overlap the items to see if a crossfade might improve things. Once you're sure you've got the best take for a given fragment, I'd advise using the Actions for 'Set To Custom Color' and 'Lock To Active Take' to remind yourself that you've made the decision, and to prevent changing take inadvertently as you continue work. If the individual takes within your imploded vocal items aren't showing up, make sure you've ticked Show All Takes In Lanes in the options menu.Clicking any of the other takes within any given item will highlight that one for playback instead.Īt its simplest, the comping process should then just be a matter of splitting the glued multi‑take item where necessary (the 'Split Item Under Mouse Cursor' Action is great for this) and selecting the desired take for each fragment. It can make your vocal recording session easier if you define your song sections as Regions in advance, because then you can use the Time Selection Auto Punch recording mode to handle your drop‑ins automatically. If you now choose Show All Takes In Lanes from the main Options menu and zoom in vertically, you'll see all the takes side by side, with the top one highlighted to indicate that it's the one you'll hear playing back.This will transfer all the takes into a single track, creating one or more multi‑take Items. Right‑click on the selected Items and, from the Take submenu, select Implode Items Across Tracks Into Takes.Select all the vocal‑track Items and then 'Glue' Items.Once the tracking session is complete, each of your take tracks will probably contain lots of little overlapping audio items, and it makes things tidier and easier to manage if you consolidate these before editing begins. That said, Reaper's multi‑take Items are still useful, because they store all the 'also rans' just in case you discover during editing that you've failed to catch an important phrase suitably in the 'A‑list' takes. Reaper allows you to record multiple take files within a single track using multi‑take items but for comping purposes I prefer to record each take on a separate track, so that it's obvious which bits are keepers and which aren't. If not, go over it and try to get something more useful. Furthermore, you should make sure that each take is actually worth keeping. ![]() However, for lead vocals I'd suggest no fewer than five, and I normally do eight. To consolidate a number of different vocal takes on separate tracks into the takes of a single item for comping, use Implode Items Across Takes Into Tracks.Once you've got the Regions defined, you can hold Control (Command on a Mac) and double‑click the relevant coloured Region bar to recreate a corresponding time selection, and then use the Time Selection Auto‑punch recording mode to handle the recording duties for you: you can access this easily by right‑clicking on the transport's Record button.Ī good little rule of thumb for comping is that if it's worth doing at all, then it's worth comping from at least three takes. Select Create Region From Selection from the menu.It helps when working on sections if you define each of these as Regions first: ![]() It's easier to comp a part that has been worked on in sections, because the singer's vocal tone will be more consistent between the takes. If you warm them up on the easy bits before approaching the tougher material, you'll usually get more usable material per session. However, try to avoid tiring the singer with the most physically demanding sections at the start of the session. You could do several complete run‑throughs of the song, or you could record all the takes for each song section before moving on to the next. How you generate the raw vocal takes is up to you. For lead vocals, I'd go so far as to say that less than one performance in a thousand will be gripping enough to warrant appearing unedited in the master mix, so I'm going to focus on vocal comping. It takes time, but that time is amply repaid in terms of the subjective improvement in the final performance. ![]() Comping is a vital part of making commercial‑standard recordings, yet I'm frequently surprised at how little attention it appears to receive from some SOS readers. Take a razor blade to your vocal tracks and learn the art of comping in Reaper.įrom the first moment someone took a razor blade to a piece of tape music, producers have been using audio editing to put together supernaturally good performances from the best bits of several different recording takes: a process referred to as 'comping'.
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