Ok so I don’t know if there’s a tool that does this (I couldn’t find one) or if I’m overlooking something simple or if it’s just not an implemented feature yet, but I’m looking for better ways to do “takes.” There are 2 things I’m looking for:
In other DAWs like Cubase, or Logic (Logic and Garageband has the best implementation of this I’ve seen), you can like section off part of your song to do live takes, and it will play that section over and over, and you can do multiple takes and then choose the one you want to keep, and delete the others if you wish.
I don’t necessarily care about keeping multiple takes, but it’s kind of difficult to get a good recording of something (especially guitar, but midi instruments input too) because if you don’t get what you want on first try, you have to stop the track, delete your bad take, and start again. This just breaks my rhythm. I like to play the same part over and over and like by the second or third time I have a really good take I like because I was able to get into the beat of the song.
Even if I practice part to perfection, just the act of taking my hands from instrument to keyboard and mouse (to delete old take and start recording) and back to instrument makes me screw up several times in a row, which is annoying because I’m pretty sure I could get it perfectly right the 2nd time through.
With regards to live instrument recording, (for me it’s going to be mostly guitar and bass guitar) it seems like there ought to be a better way than creating a new instrument for every piece I record. I figured out how to just record the different parts as multiple samples on the same instrument number and assign them to different notes, but that seems like a weird way to do it (although completely functional and way better than creating a new instrument for each part). This isn’t a huge deal and definitely doesn’t bother me as much as my problem with takes, but I was just wondering what everyone else does.
I would probably do the recording in Cubase and import the files to Renoise. Trackers like Renoise are primarily made for programming electronic music, DAWs like Cubase will always be better at recording since that what they’re made for.
There is a checkbox on the sample page that puts each of your takes in a new sample. I think I’m a strange minority who doesn’t mind recording straight into the Renoise sampler, but I’m comfortable with it. It makes working a phrase at a time easy. Playing the same section repeatedly and copying the best takes out of the monolithic sample is how I do “jams” and “doubles.”
I have no problem with filling a project with instruments named “guitar rhythm verse” or “solo.” />
I set up pattern loop in Renoise and hit Record in Audacity. I keep on playing until I get it right. Then in Audacity I just cut all the bad stuff, export as wav, select empty instrument slot in Renoise and click the wav in Disk Browser. Of course I could use Renoise sample editor also directly, but I use different device for recording in Audacity and have used to editing in that.
This is not as clumsy as it may sound like. I’ve used rewired Reaper for recording before, but I feel the process is somehow simpler this way.
Hmm that does seem promising, definitely going to check it out when I get home (3 more hours).
Yeah I was actually seriously considering doing that. Just a matter of getting the right starting point to start your crop so it lines up. Still sol for midi instruments but it seems a good solution for live audio instruments. The clone pattern tool seems cool though, I’ll see how that goes.
Ok for future reference for anyone else looking for the same solutions as me:
The Auto Clone tool works perfectly. It’s a little weird at first but once you figure it out it’s perfect. Set it to delete unused clone at record stop. What it will do when you start recording is it will create a clone of the patterns you have selected to repeat. It can be one pattern at a time, or multiple patterns in a row. Once it plays through the selection once, it loops back around and instead of just writing on top of previously recorded notes it will create a new clone to record on. You can keep recording as you need and you end up with 1. the original pattern selection and 2. all the clones you recorded onto. You then can select at will which version to keep, or if you like one part of a version you can copy paste however you wish, before finally deleting the clones you don’t need.
As for live audio instrument recording, I’m leaning towards the audacity method as probably the easiest: Open audacity and go to generate>click track. Match the tempo and beats per measure. For the number of bars put in some multiple of how many bars you’re going to be recording for, for example if it’s 4 bars, and you want 10 tries, use 40 bars. Then mute the track, this is just to have a visual guideline for highlighting after you record. You can generate the click track before or after you record, so if you don’t know how many takes you want to do you can just record, then if you got what you want in 5 takes you can generate 5 takes worth of bars. Crop, export, import into renoise as a sample etc. etc.
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