Are you an artifact junkie?

I usually don’t go looking for them. I was really bored today so I went back to a recent song and started looking around a bit. I isolated the bass track and there they were. I’ve never played the bass track, for example, to listen for problems. I couldn’t believe the junk I found. From fret buzz, to off notes that I must have stretched. couldn’t believe it. Then to the vocal track. Besides the lip smacking, i found the breath before the word was really loud. I have to go back and check the guitar tracks now. I can hear a difference in clarity already. All this time I never checked. I could have been rich by now.

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Yes, it’s in there, warts and all. Be judicious with music tracks though, not everything can be heard “in the mix”. You’d be shocked to hear how much odd noises and flubbed notes are in the individual tracks of pro recordings! It only really matters if it can be heard in the final recording, or if it bothers you so much that you feel it needs to be fixed.

Vocals are probably the worst offender, because our articulators (lips, tongue, teeth, palate) and vocal chords and breath (not to mention resonators of sinuses and body) are capable of so many nuances. And these are mostly unconscious from our daily speech patterns as they apply to singing. Leaving breaths in or taking them out can be an artistic choice, as some performances with emotion and pulse can benefit from real human subtleties. Other times they can be horribly distracting. You can edit stuff out, or just “fade in” (or fade out as the case may be) to reduce the volume of these. You can cut out all spots with no vocals too (excepting these nether zones), just so you don’t have to worry about extraneous sounds getting in there.

Ha, hindsight is 20/20! :grin:

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Another example would be McCartney’s F-Bomb in “Hey Jude”. They never bothered to edit that out either :rofl:

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That F-bomb is so offensive I may never listen to the Beatles again. I believe in strict morality, some things just cannot be said through song!

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@feaker
O yeah… the trouble is, once you start noticing that stuff it can become seemingly endless. Usually my best vocal takes are where I literally throw a song together playing keyboard at the same time. This means I don’t have a good microphone position for the vocals coz I’m playing as well and there are clunks recorded from the keyboard and foot pedals. I have become quite tricksy at covering up these sonic whoopsie daisies…
But the seemingly endless editing can be um uninteresting… :roll_eyes:
:kiwi_fruit:

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Are you a Soundgarden fan? One artifact that annoys me is the squeaky drum pedal, that is PRESENT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE ALBUM Louder Than Love. Most noticeable in “Ugly Truth” and “Big Dumb Sex”. I can usually ignore it, but why is it there? I mean, did they decide to do an album long tribute to John Bonham’s squeaky drum pedal in “Since I’ve Been Loving You”? It’s still my favorite SG album, so maybe there’s another reason you’re not quite as popular as Sheena Easton. I’d list her as a primary point of comparison to you. I can imagine you getting down to “Sugar Walls” in a novelty chipmunk suit.

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Wow. yes. Never listened for that before. This is one they “LET” me sing in the band back in the day. I remember having to take a deep breath to get out the lyrics. It was exhausting. ha ha It was in the key of “C”

sincerely

Paul