the art of the comp

some of you will know this and some of you won't: most of the singing you hear on your ipod and your radio is not "live". what i mean is, most of what you hear is a collection of the best parts of a handful of takes that have been pieced together for one solid "best of" vocal track. it's called "comping". some people, famously, do stuff live (ryan adams does it quite a bit from what i understand), but most people have their vocals comped and "pro-tooled", meaning they're dissected, pitch corrected and shined up for final presentation. trust me, it's a good thing.

it can be a fairly arduous process, the comp. i had a vocal track comped almost syllable by syllable a few years ago (before singing lessons and before hours & hours & hours of practice & rehearsal...). it took hours, approximately one hour per minute of singing. i wasn't allowed to be in the studio for fear that i'd never ever want to sing again. the last time i was in the studio we did comps phrase by phrase or line by line, i was allowed to help, and it took about an hour per song, a sure sign that things are improving.

last nite i attempted to comp a vocal track, mine, for the first time on my own. the nite before i had recorded vocals for two songs, approximately 7 takes per song to make sure i had plenty of material to work with (good engineers/producers only keep 3-4 "best" takes...more on that later).

here's how the process works and why it left my brain in a big mushy pile inside my head: you take a phrase you've sung, "it's a girl, my Lord in a flatbed ford" for instance (from a shit song, but it's what i've got in my ears while i'm on hold). you listen to the various takes for the best one. it's really pretty simple, you'd think.

sometimes it's obvious which one's best. most of the time it's not. maybe the "or" in "Lord" is a little longer than you'd like. maybe the pitch on take 3 isn't as good as take 2, but the sprit's a little better. it's not just editing, it's critical listening to the nth degree. do you remember the multiple choice tests in high school and college that made you pick the "best" answer and not the "right" answer? well, i had 7 good answers. i had to find the best answer for every phrase in 2 songs. by now, it's probably clear why most sensible producers only keep a few takes, not a half dozen or more. let's say one song has 8 phrases per verse, 4 phrases per prechorus, and 4 for a chorus. it's got 2 verses and the chorus doubles at the end. (i'll wake you up in a second). 7 takes. that's 252 choices. in three and a half minutes. twice.

i'm not complaining, it's fun and it's a challenge. i learned a lot about how i sing and lots about consistency and what makes a good take last nite. hopefully i'll remember that later this week when i do it again.

one thing, though...next time you see a musician, producer or engineer and he (or she) exhaustedly says to you, "man, i just got out of a 8 hour session and i'm worn the crap out," don't think of them as a lazy musician. they've been working hard, just from the neck up...

more updates later if you guys want 'em. is this stuff interesting at all to anyone but me?