Is recording music in parts cheating?

I would say it is only cheating if you represent it to be a full live take! My personal preference is to ensure that I get a great take beginning to end. I did a song in 2021 where I wanted to do slide guitar. I had never played slide guitar before, so it was up hill in a blizzard on black ice from the get go! After I got down the basics of slide playing, I spent many many hours (718 takes) to get my solo for that song. I could have EASILY built a good solo from the first 10 takes, but I feel like, if I can't play it well from beginning to end, maybe I should not be recording it! I also could have eventually produced a better solo I am sure, but 718 is where I gave up ;~)) This is not for everyone, and using other methods are certainly not wrong, but that is my hang up, and I am sticking to it!!
 
Duuuuuuuuuuuuude!!!

They did 30+ takes of "The Long and Winding Road," and John played the Fender VI on it,
and by about take 18 he was literally lying on his back playing the bass. :)
o boy - can't wait to see 30 takes of Long and Winding Road ... not! - i'd've
preferred 5 hours
of Wings studio hyjynx but I guess they are not so iconic. I read here recently that Disney is bad, very very bad - so will have to wait
for it to play on the CBC Local movie of the month.
 
The biggest hangup/stumbling block for many burgeoning musicians is moving from parts to
passages to entire performances. It's how we grow. We learn one note or chord, and then we learn
to play two in sequence, and so on. I feel like if we don't push ourselves to grow enough to perform
a piece of music in its entirety we shortchange ourselves in the long run.

I don't think there is a single thing wrong with being wherever we are at on the journey from parts to
passages to whole performances. Even pros (as mentioned by others) often break things down into
simpler sections and pieces, so they can build it back up again.
 
Most of the music we love was done live in a room. It’s not cheating but a different way. Way more sterile to comp it but budgets and equipment limits usually keep people from doing it that way.
 
Cheating ? Look around, do you see any Music Police ?

The only thing I ever say is cheating is when someone posts a video of them shredding out some extremely complex fast solo but they actually played it at half speed then sped up the recording. The only reason I say that's cheating is I can't play it at the half speed it was really done in.
 
A lot of bands were doing that back in the day... isn't Strawberry Fields Forever spliced from two very different takes and then speed corrected?
Yes. Two takes in different keys and tempos, IIRC, and happened to work ok when the tape decks were vari-speeded to make the pitches match with a small tempo change being the only artifact....
 
No I wouldn't say it was cheating - it's that thing where you can play the part perfectly but as soon as you hit the record button your fingers become a mess :tearsofjoy: - also I think when you record things in isolation you tend to notice the imperfections more compared to the band in a room scenario.
I only have a finite amount of time to record so I'll play a verse and if it meets the more acceptance level i'll copy and paste etc.
 
Yes. Two takes in different keys and tempos, IIRC, and happened to work ok when the tape decks were vari-speeded to make the pitches match with a small tempo change being the only artifact....


Strawberry Fields is so interesting because there was never any intention of playing it live. It’s the first recording the Beatles did after the gave up touring.

In that context there can’t be any “cheating” with that song. They are not trying to pretend it is live. The studio itself is now another instrument to play with.
 
No, I wrote a pretty crazy song with an oboe Medieval Theme that goes into a pretty heavy part. There is no way I could have accomplished that by myself. The great thing is that it came out seamless. You wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't know how it was recorded.
 
No.

But, if it's a song your band can actually play, I honestly believe that it's counter-productive. At least at first.
 
Back
Top Bottom