Is recording music in parts cheating?

I've done both ways and mostly do a combination approach like this:

You record a take with the whole band to establish the "base" tracks. This is not intended to be "perfect", but to establish the core "feel" or "vibe" of the song. Many or possibly all of these tracks won't be used or only partially used.

Repeat until satisfied. Usually at least a few attempts are required.

This often will be where the final drum tracks come from (depending on the drummer and their ability to overdub to existing tracks).

Once you're done with getting these "scratch" tracks done the overdubs begin. The first step is for everyone to listen thru playback multiple times trying to identify any "issues".

Depending on what the issues are, you may opt to do the following for each instrument:

  • Punch in to fix small sections
  • Overdub an entire section
  • Copy/Paste from another occurrence of the same part
  • Overdub the entire track
In my experience, there's a "core" that you want solid as your foundation. For most bands, that is drums and bass. For my bands (for whatever reason) it's always been drums and my guitar.

For us, we would go thru fix/overdub stuff in this order:
  • Drums
  • Guitar one (me)
  • Bass
  • Guitar two (sometimes simultaneously with guitar one)
  • Lead Vocals
  • Backing Vocals
  • Solos
Then you also may add completely new tracks in that process for things like ear candy (fills, harmonies, acoustics, pads, etc), double tracking, etc.

I would also say that you should try to listen to your tracks in a mix as much as possible. The solo'd takes will usually have warts you don't like but those are often completely inaudible in a mix. Bass in particular usually sounds like canned ass on it's own :)
 
Way back in the day before ProTools and most other DAWs existed, the singer in my band was married to an engineer that worked for a small company called Metalithic Systems.

They were working on a very early DAW called Digital Audio with Wings. It supported (I think) 128 simultaneous playback tracks while the best available at the time was 8.

They were waiting on Windows 95 to be released as it contained the critical audio driver required for their software. I think this was DirectX.

Our band was a guinea pig artist for them and we would go into their offices on the weekend and track to a computer (it was pretty much all tape back then).

The engineer was also a very talented musician with very good ears.

We recorded in a very different way. He would have us play each unique section until it was right, then we would move onto the next section.

We never tried a complete take of any song. We'd go home and when we came back, he would have "assembled" the parts into complete songs and arrangements.

On one particular song, the bass was very prevalent (I wrote the song starting from the bass line) and our bassist just couldn't nail the correct timing after many attempts.

We decided to come back to it next time.

When next we got together, it was perfect. The engineer had sampled the bass into his keyboard and then "played" the parts back in time ;)

It was during this time of learning about DAWs and digital recording that I first had the same kind of thoughts about "cheating".

But if you were to listen to the songs we recorded then, you'd have NO idea they were done this way.

As others have said, it's about the art form...

And the flip side is you'll see which bands are really cheating when it comes to the live performance! My bands could always perform our songs well!
 
I was checking out Cooper Carters Class in his class section on tone matching. I have a tone that's close, but it's missing something. Hopefully it will be right on now for the song I want to record. I have a track with just the guitar/tone I want to feed to the axe fx.

Also, I'm waiting on the bare knuckle holy divers to arrive, They may help!

Ratt - Wanted Man is my current project. I have a good backing track for the song.

 
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While I understand the importance and desire to "get it right", there's something to be said for playing with a band and everyone gelling. It's not necessarily "cheating", that's how music seems to be made these days but Joe Walsh, among others, have a differing opinion.

They don't call it cheating but, in their opinions, music loses its 'mojo' when everyone records their parts individually then combine them into a song. Joe Walsh says that today's music is "too perfect".

To each their own though, at least you're recording music. At the end of the day if you are pleased with the results, that's all that matters.
 
No. Unless your supposed "live album" has so many overdubs and fixes that it isn't representing your actual live performance any more.
 
yes - the Beatles used to do their tunes in one take - all others are a bunch of cheater pantses.

Haha! One of my favourite things about that Get Back film was seeing them bludgeon themselves
to death by doing take after take after take of "Long and Winding Road." You could see how empty
and exhausted they were getting, and yet they kept going. It showed how imperfect they were, and
how hard they had to work to get a performance down, and that sometimes that wasn't even enough.

Heck, even after all those hours in the studio 3 of the performances on the album came from the
live performance on the roof, and not from the legions of takes down in the studio.
 
Haha! One of my favourite things about that Get Back film was seeing them bludgeon themselves
to death by doing take after take after take of "Long and Winding Road." You could see how empty
and exhausted they were getting, and yet they kept going. It showed how imperfect they were, and
how hard they had to work to get a performance down, and that sometimes that wasn't even enough.

Heck, even after all those hours in the studio 3 of the performances on the album came from the
live performance on the roof, and not from the legions of takes down in the studio.
still have not seen it - cancelled Disney a couple of months ago cuz we were not watching it - doh!
 
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. :)
 
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