In the early days, when making a record, record companies relied on the concerted efforts of trained artists.

Regardless of whether you were hired as a musician, singer, songwriter, lyricist, arranger or recording engineer, you had in all likelihood studied your craft in university and were familiar with its conventions and rules: even composers of mere jingles and sync tunes had studied Bach and Mozart; lyricists had studied English literature. The orchestras involved in the recording of a Frank Sinatra record were as a rule made up of such virtuoso musicians that not more than three takes of any given song were usually required. Sinatra himself always felt that if he did not get it in three, there was little chance of him getting it at all that day.

A Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald vocal performance is always a single take recording, a fact that is bound to strike us, in our age of unlimited disc space, as almost miraculous.

Nowadays, a producer will record the singer performing the song seven or eight times. He will then sift through these takes and compile one vocal performance from the best bits, often having to tune up certain words or, indeed, phrases that the singer failed to sing in pitch, despite his eight attempts.