# Guitar Punch In



## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

Hello,

My band and I are going to be working on our new EP shortly and i need some advice.

Our studio engineer told me that today it is industry standards to punch in guitars. what he explained was that the guitar player litteraly plays a bar before punching it in to record.
so basicaly its like recording the entire song, chord by chord, note by note.

this sounds all new to me, i've used the punch in/out before to correct errors but not to record an entire song in that system.

hope someone can shed some light and explain it. is this really an industry standard? 

hope to hear back soon!


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## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

Paul said:


> The problem with standards is that there are too many of them. :smile:
> 
> The punching in bar by bar technique is available, and often used, but is not required. The best tools to use are the tools that help pull the best performance possible out of the musicians. "Best" is an interpretive term. I prefer playing as much as possible in one pass to get a complete performance with which I am pleased. I'll punch in for few notes when reasonable to correct glaring problems.
> 
> ...



Understood... thanks for the reply.
The reason i was asking all this is cuz my engineer doesnt feel like all members of my band are ready for serious recording. he would rather get some session players involved who have a lot of experience recording in different styles etc.

in any case, i'm unsure about what to do.
were not paying for the recording, its being done by someone who believes in what we do and wants to help us.

as for who would own the masters etc.. all music and lyrics are written by me, newer songs now have more band input but i still write 98% of it.


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## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

Paul said:


> Whoever is paying makes the decisions. That doesn't always sit well with artists, but it's called the music business for a reason. Most times a well seasoned session guy can put down in a hour what you or I could do in a day. Time is money, as the bumper sticker says.
> 
> Ownership of the song involves both copyright and music publishing. Ownership of the master recording is a completely separate issue from ownership of the copyright or publishing rights.
> 
> ...


No worries, the masters are all mine, its been determined. i guess i should have mentioned that were all good friends going way back, so it makes a difference.

thanks for all the info and input!


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## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

Paul said:


> If it ain't in writing and signed by all, it ain't detemined. Crapolo recordings of The Beatles before they were famous are worth tens of thousands of dollars now. The chance of you having the long term success of The Beatles is slim, but you need to plan for that. Or at least be aware of the consequences.
> 
> The best way to get rid of a friend is to lend him money.


Noted!

Thanks for the advice!


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

AdamRave said:


> Hello,
> 
> My band and I are going to be working on our new EP shortly and i need some advice.
> 
> ...


So let me get this straight--he's saying they play a measure--quit, then punch in and play another one--or note or chord or short phrase or whatever?

I may have read that incorrectly--but it sounds like you're saying that.

If so, that could be why I find so much recent music devoid of feeling.


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## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

zontar said:


> So let me get this straight--he's saying they play a measure--quit, then punch in and play another one--or note or chord or short phrase or whatever?
> 
> I may have read that incorrectly--but it sounds like you're saying that.
> 
> If so, that could be why I find so much recent music devoid of feeling.


Its insane, i know.. but apperantly this is what is done today by most guitarists at pro studios.


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## Guest (Sep 12, 2008)

AdamRave said:


> Its insane, i know.. but apperantly this is what is done today by most guitarists at pro studios.


I call bull shit. You might go back in and punch in to fix a few spots you don't like but no one tracks like that. And by no one I mean me and everyone I've ever worked with which is my reality and therefore The Truth. :smile:

P.S. What's the studio?


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## Guest (Sep 13, 2008)

Paul said:


> I've done it myself in the analog world tracking a guitar solo across two tracks. I wanted the effect of one tailing out and the other coming in just over top of it. It wasn't meant to sound like dueling guitars. I've also done it working with singers where we punched in and out line by line. Got a great performance out of her too.
> 
> YMMV.


I've watched (painfully) as singers have done things line by line. And I've certainly done multiple takes to blend like that. But track bar by bar? Play a bar. Stop. Play a bar. Stop. No freaking way is that _the standard_. I'll call that very, very much an exception. I'll reserve further ridicule on the professional nature of said engineer and studio until the name is divulged.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Never seen it done that way, ever. I prefer live off the floor, even if everybody is in isolation booths. Go back and fix something, okay, but if you can't play the tune end to end, you need to practice. 

Just my opinion.

Peace, Mooh.


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## AdamRave (Sep 11, 2008)

iaresee said:


> I call bull shit. You might go back in and punch in to fix a few spots you don't like but no one tracks like that. And by no one I mean me and everyone I've ever worked with which is my reality and therefore The Truth. :smile:
> 
> P.S. What's the studio?


you can call bullshit as much as you want..

fact is, its a method used in the industry today.

-white stripes
-3 days grace
-billy talent

reasearch and you'll find out.

as for the studio, its not the studio.. its the person who operates it.
you dont know who he is, trust me.

in any case, thanks!!


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## Guest (Sep 13, 2008)

AdamRave said:


> reasearch and you'll find out.


Thankfully this forum supports HTML and you can back up your claims by providing references via hypertext links...


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## Spikezone (Feb 2, 2006)

iaresee said:


> I call bull shit. You might go back in and punch in to fix a few spots you don't like but no one tracks like that.


 I would agree here!
-Mikey


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

i can see punching in to fix a part- youd play it from a few bars, or even the whole song through, but then hit record only at the desired area, so that it sounds natural. but to piece a whole thing together like this sounds like a huge waste of time and money. maybe aerosmith does it..........



> you can call bullshit as much as you want..
> 
> fact is, its a method used in the industry today.
> 
> ...


the white stripes? you figure that guy builds his songs piece by piece by punching in? have you listened to them? there is almost no difference between the playing on the studio albums and the live performances. thats total garage rawness man. i bet they record and mix a song an hour lol. i love it, but painstakingly crafted peice by peice it is not, and if it is, then things are far worse than i thought.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Opinion alert!

I work very hard to teach musicians to learn to play their parts from beginning to end without mistakes and with the ability to cover mistakes if necessary. You can't punch in on the fly, live, or for that matter in front of your teacher, student, or band, and sound like a seasoned pro. Imho, obviously, and ymmv. I've heard lots of recordings that were overly "constructed" (nice term, Paul, thanks), but they lack the balls, vibe, soul, spirit, and realism to be convincing. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

It's harder, by the way, to "construct" with acoustic instruments in front of mics than with everything plugged in, simply due to "leftover" reverb, and the constantly changing mic positioning. (Fwiw, I hate recordings with wildly different reverb on different instruments...talk about making the instruments sound like they weren't recorded in the same place.)

Obviously I prefer a live off the floor kind of recording process. It preserves the flow of ideas when soloing, exploits one's own adrenaline, has more feeling, and (in my experience) takes less time. 

Sure, punch in for small corrections, to get a new idea inserted, or take a choice between many takes at a solo, but that's as far as I go with it.

When my students hear themselves screw up a piece (I record them) they know they're not good enough yet.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2008)

Mooh said:


> Fwiw, I hate recordings with wildly different reverb on different instruments...talk about making the instruments sound like they weren't recorded in the same place.


That is a big pet peeve of mine as well. I'll give a song a pass if they use a wildly different reverb for special emphasis (a cavernous piano for example). But when I record I like to set up one reverb and buss everything to it in varying amounts so they're all in the same "room".


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## Schenkerguy (Jul 12, 2008)

Well one vote here for recording with that method.. I've been doing home recording for nearly 30 years, and I think my guitar tracks are fairly well regarded, I do a lot of online collaborating etc..

I want everything to be quite perfect, so I'll take say the first verse and l loop it, maybe a 20 or 30 second part and play it over and over til I get it just right. Sometimes I get it right away, but sometimes it can be 10 or 20 takes. I'm very adept at joining the sections with crossfades etc so you can't hear any edits. The intonation on a guitar is never perfect, so if I'm doing something on the 2nd fret and it jumps to the 14th, I might punch in the second part after re-tuning.

You always have to keep playing the song from an earlier point to make sure it flows, as you can get caught up in one part and it won't match. I get compliments on a lead solo but people don't realize it took 3 hours to do and there are 10 edits.. 

You can hear a couple of examples on my page..
www.myspace.com/garysgeetartunes


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

_It don't take me no three days to record no album.
_
---John Lee Hooker


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## Apostrophe (') (Dec 30, 2007)

I gotta admit, I started doing it a few months ago in my recording software. I usually just record a randomly picked song as quickly as possible, without a sniff of practice. I'll try to record a part straight through, but if it starts giving me trouble, (which is most of the time, lol) I'll break it into verses, choruses, bridges, solos, etc. Very rarely does it get bad enough that I'm recording a single measure at a time.

...

That's an awesome shot of Hooker!


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## ssdeluxe (Mar 29, 2007)

ahh.....there's a gr8t thread in here somewhere .........

gr8t comments: and I applaude the folks who appreciate people who can actually "play" the song, and make it "alive".

this "punching bar by bar" does happen. But I suspect you can tell which tunes today subscribe to this. Personally, I think that there is the death of music, music as an "alive" expression. (imho of course)

my last pnt I'd like to make is: Black velvet, constructed bar by bar or not, has gr8t songs and incredible vocal performances: and that's the most important thing, it delivers the emotion, it could have been recorded on cassette and still be amazing.

imho, the bar by bar approach of certain "loathe-some" music has a common thread of: "the songs are not that gr8t and neither are the performances"......and to some extent, the excessive compression and "hyper eq'ing" just complete's the tri-fecta of $hit in = louder $hit out.

its nice to read people are still passionate about the "humanity" of making music, being in this biz...its a struggle everyday to get to the "real" stuff.


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