Putting the bits together....

...and now the Miss Saigon recording for my wife's choir moves into the editing phase. Definitely the least fun part of the entire experience, but a necessary evil in this case. Of course, it would be much better to try and do the whole thing in a single take with minimal editing, but with four parts to cover and quite a bit of unfamiliar music... it just isn't likely or practical to expect that to be possible!

So, I had to break up the medley of pieces into manageable chunks and then record the various 4 part harmonies and other assorted snips and solos. In total about 190 little bits to put together... well, in the end it was 190 takes, of which roughly half I discarded immediately due to misfires or noise. From each section, I was aiming to have 2 or 3 decent takes where I could use one and use the others as back up in case the recording didn't go as well as I had thought it had!

So, the day was filled with doing this editing and splicing together of the various bits and pieces... and being a father at the same time. Thankfully, my girls are pretty easy... and they keep themselves entertained with drawing or reading most of the time, which gives me a couple of clear hours to beaver away at this project.

There were a few moment of less than stellar takes from me... but I have to keep in mind that this is meant to be a practice recording for the choir to sing to... and not a commercial release or anything like that. So, I definitely have to avoid the perfect being the enemy of the good enough... anyway, I hate recordings anyway... the public rarely realises that they are getting a Frankenstein when they buy or listen to it. These days, musicians who actually can play or sing without lots of backstage assistance are far and few between...

The worst of the mishaps where I had to do a little bit of editing trickery was where I had misunderstood what rhythm my wife was playing in the piano part. Meaning that I was aiming for a note a crochet behind where I was supposed to be! This meant that I had to do a bit of a timing shift, to squeeze out a bit of time to make me arrive earlier. Ideally, this needs enough clear space in the sound to do it without an audible artifact... I didn't have enough completely clear space, but I did the best I could considering I'm a musician and not an audio engineer! You can hear the edit if you know what to listen for... but if you are just listening to the song, then you could likely miss it!

There was one other more major mishap... where I completely DIDN'T play a note in all the takes that I had done for a little section! Weird... unfortunately, I don't have the editing skills to add a note where nothing existed in the raw take... so, I just went downstairs and quickly recorded that section again!

So, I'm roughly about halfway through the splicing together of the various parts. I have a deadline of Tuesday, and I think I should be able to get a huge deal done tomorrow if not all of it! The kids are having a playdate at a friend's place tomorrow, so... lots of clear time for me to get this over and done with!

... after all, this is the sort of thing where I can spend about 45 minutes at a time doing the editing and the listening and all of that before my brain turns to mush. So, I need to have a litte break now and then... either BattleTech or Crusader Kings 3 will scratch that itch!

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