Third Take

I did something last night I never thought I’d do - I copied the lead vocal from the first chorus to the second chorus. In some genres, this is the normal, expected practice and a mandatory skill for the engineer. Other circles put emphasis on vague notions of authenticity and integrity, and duplicating a performance is seen as fakery. I usually relate to this more idealistic school of thought, but last night I broke my own rules.

The situation was this: after several weeks of listening to the vocals, we decided we didn’t like the second chorus. It was the last thing we had tracked that night, and the singer’s voice was on the way out. Compared to the rest of the track, it was a little too raspy.

The singer wanted to track it again, but I knew from past experience that it would be very hard to get a take that would fit with the previous recording. Slight differences in equipment settings, mic placement, and the singer’s own voice produce results that are noticeably different. I’ve been down that road before, and it usually ends in frustration and re-recording the entire track.

Before we settled in for such a session, I decided to try the copy/paste approach. After all, we comp takes, use pitch correction, timing correction (AudioSnap), and other modern studio trickery. We have a perfectly acceptible first chorus, why not see if it will work the second time around? If the other tools haven’t undermined our artistic integrity, then this won’t hurt; if they have, then our credibility’s already gone and there’s no point worrying about it.

I copied the first chorus into a new track layer and lined it up under the chorus we wanted to replace. On playback, it started out well, but drifted slightly out of synch as the song continued. Even though we recorded to a click, slight variations in the instrument performances made the second chorus minutely different from the first. The vocals didn’t line up.

I switched to the scissor tool and made some surgical cuts between phrases. Slightly shifting these phrases to the left or right locked them in. Like magic, we had our second chorus.

It was surprising how good it sounded. It sounded real, and it was real - it was the real singer singing the real chorus, and before anyone hears it, it will be EQ’d, compressed, tuned, and otherwise polished like the rest of the record. I still plan on avoiding the copy/paste maneuver if I can, but I’m no longer scared of it. Sometimes it is the right answer.