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Hi

I am new to the field of recording. When doing a professional song recording, what is the method that everyone would adopt. My requirement is to do like this, please correct me if i am wrong.
Suppose if the song contains a Prelude+Chorus+interlude+Verse+interlude.
I would like to record the Prelude first and interlude first, then i want to fit in the prelude and interlude in the place as in the above sequence. Is that all u do?
It that possible?. This is to save time, by recording the same music again and again.
Please guide and lead me.

Thanks
Sam

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pr0gr4m Thu, 04/02/2009 - 01:42

I'm not sure this belongs in the DAW Pro Audio forum. This should be moved over to the "Pro" Recording Forum. Anyway...

Your method is not wrong. There is no wrong. The method you use is convenient and seems like a good thing to do because the parts are probably very similar. But I'll bet that many engineers would rather record a song from beginning to end. You see, a song can have life, a beginning, middle and end. Each section of a song can have it's own vibe and energy and one section can draw energy from the previous section and pass it's own energy on to the next.

Although the first interlude may be similar to the prelude, by recording it on its own instead of recording the whole song at once, the vibe coming into it isn't coming from the chorus. It's coming from nothing. Now that may not be an issue with certain styles of music...dance, electronic, etc. Or if you are a one man band, it would definitely make things easy. But if you are recording a good ol' fashioned rock and roll tune, recording like that could suck the life out of the song.

At least record the song through from beginning to end, then go back and do overdubs for the sections if needed.

Recording to many people is about capturing a performance. Performances can change from day to day, even hour to hour. Recording a song in sections the way you describe can cause each section to have different performance values. Then when you put them all together, they may not sound good. If you record the whole song at once, you are getting one cohesive performance. Sure it might change within the duration of the song, but it would be natural and sound better than just splicing different sections together.

In the end, it depends on the material, the artist and whatever works best for you.