Retrospective recording, sometimes called “capture recording”, is a music production feature that listens to incoming audio or MIDI signals in the background, even when you haven’t manually enabled recording.

It works like this, your DAW or third party tool uses a rolling buffer which is continuously recording in the background, if you play something great or come across a happy accident while playing around in or outside of the DAW, you can press a capture command after the fact and the DAW or tool will pull up what you just played from the rolling buffer, allowing you to drop it onto a track as a real MIDI region or Audio clip.

Using retrospective recording creates a new kind of workflow and solves an age-old issue with recording music; you’ve just played the best take of your life and it wasn’t recording. Sometimes called “red light fever”, many artists find the knowledge of active recording anxiety inducing, often causing performers to make mistakes or fall short of their best.

That’s where retrospective recording comes in. Always recording, always on, always in the background. The idea is that you don’t even think about the recording process until after you’ve played in your best take.

 

The Current State of Retrospective Recording

Each DAW differs on how much retrospective recording is integrated into the software, with most but not all offering retrospective MIDI recording, and almost none offering retrospective audio recording.

MIDI retrospective recording is the most commonly seen at a native level,  it’s cheap to implement and MIDI data is very small so most DAWs can buffer a few minutes of MIDI input with little to no CPU cost. Audio retrospective recording on the other hand, is far more demanding on your CPU, requiring continuous writing of audio to memory in the background.

In some DAWs you might be able to work around the problem using a punch-in mode but that still requires a deliberate action as well as requiring your playhead to be moving making it unlike true retrospective recording which is simply always on in the background.

Here’s how to do Retrospective Recording in any DAW, using Audiokids Scraper.

 

How to do Retrospective Recording of Audio in your DAW

Step 1 – Insert Scraper

Once you’ve got Scraper installed, insert it into your DAW as a plugin on a track where you want continuous capture, this could be a MIDI track, an audio track, an effects bus or even your full master channel.

One important thing to remember here is that Scraper will record audio directly from wherever it’s placed in the signal chain, meaning if it’s placed before any effects it will record the audio pre-fx.

Once the plugin has loaded, it’s ready to start capture, you don’t need to hit record on the track itself or configure any routing.

 

Step 2 – Configure the Buffer

Next you can configure the buffer settings for Scraper. Open Scraper’s settings panel and set the circular buffer length which can be set anywhere between 1 and 30 minutes.

The circular buffer length represents how far back you can retrospectively record. Once it’s full, the oldest audio is overwritten.

 

Step 3 – Choose a Record Mode

Next you can choose a record mode on the main panel.

Record only during playback means Scraper only captures while the DAW playhead is rolling.

Record Continuously captures at all times, even when the DAW is stopped, ideal for unplanned moments during rehearsals or happy accidents when tweaking settings between takes.

 

Step 4 – Let It Run

Before you run into the DAW and start making sounds, hit the record button to start scrapers recording.

Now you’re ready to just keep working normally, whether you’re jamming in the studio, rehearsing with a band or tweaking live sound design patches, Scraper will keep recording into the buffer in the background, you don’t need to think about it until you want to grab something.

 

Step 5 – Select What You Want Retrospectively

Once something great has happened, head back over to Scraper to select your favourite parts.

Start by opening Scrapers Waveform display which should now have a healthy waveform of your recorded audio. Then use click and drag to select your desired section. You can also double-click to select between the last play/stop points or triple click to select the whole buffer altogether.

Here you can zoom horizontally or vertically and use the scrollbar to navigate for precise selection. Additionally, the timecode overlay shows the exact original DAW position for every waveform so you can easily line it up with your track after exporting.

Finally, you can use the grab last button if you just want to quickly grab the last bit of audio recorded, perfect for quickfire sound design sessions. You can change the grab last buffer size in the settings menu.

 

Step 6 – Export

Now you’ve made a selection, simply drag and drop the file onto your timeline or into your file system.

If you’re working in Pro Tools, Scraper automatically saves an export alongside your session.

 

Step 7 – Spot to Source?

Scraper also features an additional Spot to Source or Spot to Cursor feature specifically for Pro Tools.

Spot to Source places exported audio at its original DAW timeline position (where it was recorded). Spot to Cursor places audio at the current Pro Tools edit cursor or timeline selection position.

 

Conclusion

And that’s it, retrospective recording audio with Scraper is really that simple. Whether you want to catch every intimate moment during a recording session, quickly drag and drop cuts from sound design sessions or simply resample your tracks, Scraper’s got your back.

Now you know how to retrospectively record audio in any DAW, head over to the Scraper page to grab a copy and start your retrospective recording journey.