Questions about guitar/whatever editing

[Ericlingus]

I have started to edit the guitars for a song i'm recording and am stumped on a few things.

First off, when I slice up a track and paste it together I sometimes hear a click or something when it crosses teh part that has been sliced. I thought cross fading takes care of it. In some cases it does but in other cases when I try it, it says no "overlapping events" or something of that effect. How do I get rid of that click noise in that case?
I have another question aswell. When I there are guitar parts with abrupt stops such as a breakdown type riffs how do I edit out the "stopping noise" I tried a gate and it helps but doesn't get rid of it all. How do I cut off the noise at the exact spot without it sounding obvious? It's either I cut off too much or too little.

I hope you guys can understand what I mean. I'd really appreciate your help because i'm stumped.

 

[Metaltastic]

For the pop-elimination, zoom way the fuck in and make sure the waveforms are pretty much lining up where the two audio regions meet (you might have to shift one a ridiculously tiny amount to accomplish this). For the editing, zoom way the fuck in and just experiment with cutting off at certain spots, and noting what the waveform looks like at those spots; eventually you'll get pretty good at eyeballing the general area that you can ditch.

 

[Ericlingus]

oh thanks man. I always thought I had to use crossfading for it. It didn't seem to make sense because sometimes it said I couldn't do it even though it was still making the noise. I'll try it. Although now when i've been reamping I havent heard it. I've been reamping the tracks straight through and not stopping at every slice point. Seems to be doing the trick. Don't know how but it is.

 

[AStacy2]

Also, after your done editing bounce all of the guitar tracks to one track. If you have a really slow computer, sometimes I've seen automatic crossfades still make a little pop or something just because of the calculations your computer has to do in that millisecond where the fade is but when you bounce it to the clip, it won't be there.

 

[Ericlingus]

thanks for the info dude

 

[Ericlingus]

anyone else? I'm having a lot of trouble with trying to edit those abrubt stops on guitars. This seems like a common thing to do on guitars. There must be some methods people use to make it easier.

 

[AStacy2]

If you posted the track and told us what you were trying to do, people could probably help you more.

 

[Mood Bender]

anyone else? I'm having a lot of trouble with trying to edit those abrubt stops on guitars. This seems like a common thing to do on guitars. There must be some methods people use to make it easier.

my suggestion, either use Crossfades or ensure the slice is Zero Crossing for each

in Samplitude Crossfades are automatic and the length is adjustable. I keep it at 5ms.

 

[JeffTD]

I also use the 'auto crossfade' setting in my DAW (Cubase) set to 5ms.

For abrubt stops at the end of a song or guitar part where silence follows, I just grab the fade bar on the side of the waveform and have it fade out at the very very end.

 

[Ericlingus]

thanks a lot guys. I use cubase aswell so i'll check out the automatic crossfade. I was thinking a fade out might work on those abrubt stops. I'll test it out.

 

[colonel kurtz]

have you adjusted the slope of your fades?

if not, change from the equal gain(linear) to equal power(non-linear) fades, and it'll probably help out a lot

 

[Ericlingus]

well I figured out the first part of my question but not the second. I can't seem to edit those abrupt stoped guitars without it sounding unnatural. Anyone else have this problem? I tried zooming way in and cutting the end of it and then fading out the very end of the waveform. Still didn't work very well.

 

[Metaltastic]

Try not cutting as much; leave some ring at the end, but only just enough to make it sound realistic. Just trial and error man, until you get the perfect balance. I never need to use fades, I just find the right spot and cut it right at the zero-crossing of the waveform

 

[Ericlingus]

what do you mean zero crossing? Could you be really really specific? I'm very new to this. I've been recording for about a year but not very often and this is the first serious recording i'm doing. I've never really did much editing before so i'm pretty clueless. I appreciate the help.

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, sorry man, I definitely can relate! The zero crossing is the point when the waveform crosses the middle, and it's the point where there will be absolutely zero "popping" or "clicking" if you cut there. You can see it clearly when you zoom way in, so find the spot you wanna cut at, put the cursor there, then zoom in and select from the closest zero crossing onwards, then delete that selection

 

[MetalWorks]

I found for abrupt endings that the fade outs like the 2nd box on the top left work the best. Especially at the end of a mastered stereo track when fading all instruments together.

It gives the most sound until the point of silence without taking away from the audio. But most fades will work as long as you find where the riff ends and turns to noise. I feel like it allows the riff to still breathe without sucking the life out at the end.

 

[2012]

It sounds like the guitarist just isn't muting very well between riffs.

Play it again!

 

[greyskull]

strip silence

 

[sipherus]

For abrupt stops the recording should definitely be as clean as possible.
I have another question in the same subject: I think that everybody has already recorded a guitar player that is not tight enough. What are you doing in this case... speaking about editing. Do you edit some tracks to tighten them?
I'm supposed to mix a demo for a death metal band. They have recorded everything by themself and they have sent me the clean tracks (4x guitars, 1x bass and midi drum track). The guitars are not that bad, but the doubled tracks are not always really tight.
And do you take care of phase problem when you are editing guitars?