Basic editing techniques/tips/help/etc.

[Toni S.]

This is kinda embarrasing, but I'm basically a noob when it comes to just basic waveform editing and stuff (you know, the basic editing of the gtr/bass/drum/etc tracks after/or during tracking before the real mixing stuff) so anybody care to share any tips about crossfades, punch ins etc. How do you approach these kinds of things? I'm using Cubase btw.

For example, if I have 2 riffs recorded, and now I should put them together, how should I do this? just align them after each other and use crossfades? how do I do that so it sounds good? thse kinds of things I'm talking about, and about editing the tracks in general.

I feel like such a noobzor If anybody owns/knows where to find/or wants to make a video showing all this stuff it would really help!!

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well to put parts together in cubase you can either do what you said or have 2 tracks and mute the unwanted parts. It depends. If it is for a snare for example, since it is only staccato notes and easy to cut I would not add a track but if it is an electric guitar where there are almost no holes in the waveform I would probably put 2 tracks and do the fade in-fade out.

For the editing I use melodyne.

 

[fade_2_black]

You should try and edit tracks where the waveform is on zero - as in, where no compression or rarefaction. If you do this, you wont even need to fade - unless the guitar parts or whatever dont go into each other smoothly. If you cant edit at these points, use a small crossfade so there is no clicking or popping at the point of edit.
As far as punching in is concerned - always make sure you have the musician play from before the section to be recorded - and after if applicable - so that you have the space to work with for fades or extending the section to make it flow better.
Hope this helped at all.

 

[Nebulous]

Much easier to show than explain IMO:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=cubase+editing&aq=f

 

[John_C]

For all the non-physics people

compression and rarefaction: compression is up on a waveform diagram, rarefaction is down (or tbh it could be the other way in practice, depends on the microphone mechanism, but really it doesn't matter)

a sound wave in the air is not a wave like we always get shown on the computer screen

it is actually a wave of pressure, or compression, through the air, which is then plotted as a graph of sound pressure (yaxis) against time (x axis) giving the classic waveform.