While the editing stage of a production is not an explicitly important part of my project in terms of the objectives I set, I did research the methods and techniques used by John Leckie and Rich Costey in order to take further influence from them in my work. I largely found that neither are particularly keen on editing to ‘fake’ a performance.

“The performance is 99.9 percent of what people hear. It doesn’t matter what mic you use or what reverb you use or all that stuff.” – John Leckie

While this refers to the production process as a whole, rather than editing, he does make clear that he likes to capture a performance which won’t need much work afterwards. The editing stage is a hugely important one when crafting music and this is one that Leckie feels should be fixed before it even needs fixing. This was a key thought of mine while recording the guitars, bass, drums and vocals.

“Costey was keen to guard against too much editing. He typically treats Pro Tools as if it were a tape machine, not because of a retro mindset but simply in order to enhance the music by way of a more human touch, and he’d therefore utilise as much as possible of a single take before editing in parts only where this was absolutely necessary. The same applied to overdubs — he’d use as much as possible of complete takes, and never once was a performance flown into another section of a song.”

“I made that mistake years ago,” Costey admits, “and what ends up happening is that the record has a real thin veneer to it, almost like a genetically engineered tomato that looks perfect but has absolutely no flavour.”

This quote is one that I used throughout the editing process as inspiration. The large majority of the guitar, bass, and drums in my EP were recorded as full takes, rather than sequentially and I hope that this will show when the process is complete. The fact that Costey sees Pro Tools as a tape machine shows that he tries not to edit and therefore I used a similar mindset. While there are no particularly noticable flaws as a result of this in my work, the performances on show are not flawless and are clearly human, which is something that both Costey and Leckie were keen to emphasise when recording the four albums I am researching. Editing on the vocals however, has been more necessary, due to the fact that my vocalist recorded all of the tracks in one session and therefore became tired towards the end. Editing on the vocals has mainly been for the timing however there was also some slight tuning that needed to be done.

All in all, while the editing process isn’t one that I have flagged in any of my learning outcomes, I feel that is was important to replicate the stances of both Leckie and Costey in order to pay homage to their work that I have been researching.

http://www.musewiki.org/Rich_Costey:_Recording_Muse’s_Absolution_(200312_Sound_on_Sound_article)

http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=45068&hilit=john%20leckie#p418866