Here’s how my project looks like. There are two tracks of rhythm guitar (red) that will finally work as a stereo group. It’s double to make the guitar part sound fuller and heavier. Both tracks are playing exactly the same part but the trick is that it cannot be done by copy-paste. It has to come from more than one take. Otherwise, some negative effects of comb filtering would appear.
To get perfect double guitar track, we need to perform comping and some other timing treatments.
The tighter your timing is, the better advantage you can get by doubling anything.
- It will sound great
- Nobody will tell there are two guitars
- It will be easier when it comes to mixing!
Before we start comping, I need to record some new takes - right in the place of already existing items. Items are those squares that in other DAWs you’d call regions. Takes are just any records of performance. There can be numerous takes in one item. I just set cursor at 0:00 by hitting home key, make sure if my guitar track is armed and I hit record.
The second guitar track (L GTR) sounds fairly good so there will be no need for heavy surgery – I will just choose some sounds that I like better and then use whole comp as rhythm template for the upper track.
Now we need to decide, how to slice the audio. You can use moments of silence (possibly just rests) to perform clean and safe cuts. It’s good to avoid slicing audio during any sound when it’s not necessary. But I think that the most important is to take phrasing into account, so you don’t lose the natural flow of the original performance.
To slice audio, set cursor anywhere and having the track (and take) selected, press the S button. Before we start, make sure you have auto-crossfade feature enabled. That’s useful for avoiding nasty pops and other side effects of editing audio.
I decided to slice my track regardless of the rests, because the phrases in this riff repeat every bar. Now I listen to both versions and compare. You can switch between the takes by switching the T button. (you can just click on a take to set it active)
Now you can glue the comps so they will be stored in a single file. Use the right mouse button and drag selection over all the items on L GTR track and then press G (glue). We are done with this one and now we will edit the second track so they both fit perfect together. This will be a bit more difficult. Let’s get those three takes nice and large. Save some space for L GTR track so we can use it as reference. Buttons marked with yellow arrow are useful to set the screen look. Mouse roller is great for zooming the horizontal line quickly.
Almost every timing shift that you can see on the screen is audible to some extent. Even if not audible in a rhythmical way, a mass of minor timing shifts can get your mix sound muddy.
Let’s disable the snap-to-grid feature by clicking one of buttons in the left-hand upper corner. This is to make more precise slicing possible as the rest are often not on bar lines.
This sound on the left, was perfectly finished during every take but only the first one was attacked on time. So I slice the guitar part on the rests and change active take … just for this one chord!
Apart from good hearing, you can make a great use of your visual perception of where exactly are similar moments in different takes. You can develop this skill just by working with comps and slicing. Let’s get back to the guitar. Here comes the trouble. Below, in this moment marked with time selection, none of tracks has good timing.
We’ll need to fit one of the takes to work with the lower track (L GTR). We will need to slice this take in-sound. I figured out that there are two chords (look on the left). Anyway, the lowest take (cyan) looks like an unstable chord. The halves of wave shape aren’t even similar and this makes any changes harder to hide (we’ll be probably better off if we slice a sound of rather constant amplitude, tone and timbre)
I took a look at the first take of the upper track (R GTR). I slice (S) this item at three points: during the rest before the first chord, at the point right before the attack of the second chord and during the rest after release. Now focus on your reference track (L GTR) and set markers for attack of 1st chord, attack of 2nd chord and release. To make a marker, set your cursor anywhere and press M. We need those lines to set audio on a perfect time point.
It should finally look like here on the right.
Now we will shift the takes inside items so they appear in the speakers just on time. Note that this affects only a take, not the whole item. That’s really good because it doesn’t mess up whole item and you can still switch between takes.
Select the first take, press ALT key and hold it down. Click on the waveshape and move it horizontally set attack of the first chord to the marker. It turns out that release fits perfect too. If it didn’t, another slicing would be necessary.
As a side effect of this treatment, some sound that was next (or earlier) may appear in your item. Here, the attack of the second chord is about to be played twice - we need to fix that. Just click between the items and move the slice so it’t between two “constant” waveshapes.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Working with takes and comps in Reaper is mostly just about getting used to this procedure and finding ways to make it quicker, to hear more and to see more on the waveforms. There are a couple of other interesting features related to comping that would improve your workflow.
I hope that you found my lesson useful because that’s the real reason for making it. Let me know what you think. Your feedback will be appreciated! Have a nice day.
Now we need to decide, how to slice the audio. You can use moments of silence (possibly just rests) to perform clean and safe cuts. It’s good to avoid slicing audio during any sound when it’s not necessary. But I think that the most important is to take phrasing into account, so you don’t lose the natural flow of the original performance.
To slice audio, set cursor anywhere and having the track (and take) selected, press the S button. Before we start, make sure you have auto-crossfade feature enabled. That’s useful for avoiding nasty pops and other side effects of editing audio.
I decided to slice my track regardless of the rests, because the phrases in this riff repeat every bar. Now I listen to both versions and compare. You can switch between the takes by switching the T button. (you can just click on a take to set it active)
Now you can glue the comps so they will be stored in a single file. Use the right mouse button and drag selection over all the items on L GTR track and then press G (glue). We are done with this one and now we will edit the second track so they both fit perfect together. This will be a bit more difficult. Let’s get those three takes nice and large. Save some space for L GTR track so we can use it as reference. Buttons marked with yellow arrow are useful to set the screen look. Mouse roller is great for zooming the horizontal line quickly.
Let’s disable the snap-to-grid feature by clicking one of buttons in the left-hand upper corner. This is to make more precise slicing possible as the rest are often not on bar lines.
This sound on the left, was perfectly finished during every take but only the first one was attacked on time. So I slice the guitar part on the rests and change active take … just for this one chord!
Apart from good hearing, you can make a great use of your visual perception of where exactly are similar moments in different takes. You can develop this skill just by working with comps and slicing. Let’s get back to the guitar. Here comes the trouble. Below, in this moment marked with time selection, none of tracks has good timing.
I took a look at the first take of the upper track (R GTR). I slice (S) this item at three points: during the rest before the first chord, at the point right before the attack of the second chord and during the rest after release. Now focus on your reference track (L GTR) and set markers for attack of 1st chord, attack of 2nd chord and release. To make a marker, set your cursor anywhere and press M. We need those lines to set audio on a perfect time point.
It should finally look like here on the right.
Now we will shift the takes inside items so they appear in the speakers just on time. Note that this affects only a take, not the whole item. That’s really good because it doesn’t mess up whole item and you can still switch between takes.
Select the first take, press ALT key and hold it down. Click on the waveshape and move it horizontally set attack of the first chord to the marker. It turns out that release fits perfect too. If it didn’t, another slicing would be necessary.
As a side effect of this treatment, some sound that was next (or earlier) may appear in your item. Here, the attack of the second chord is about to be played twice - we need to fix that. Just click between the items and move the slice so it’t between two “constant” waveshapes.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Working with takes and comps in Reaper is mostly just about getting used to this procedure and finding ways to make it quicker, to hear more and to see more on the waveforms. There are a couple of other interesting features related to comping that would improve your workflow.
I hope that you found my lesson useful because that’s the real reason for making it. Let me know what you think. Your feedback will be appreciated! Have a nice day.
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