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-- Editing your tracks for mixing

Editing your tracks for mixing

OK, so a little bit of production discussion here, but posting here because really it's something that is entirely appicable to us DJs.

Most won't, but some of us will edit our tracks for one reason or another, maybe to extend and intro, cut out some of the middle, or extend an outro. This will be to either make mixing the track easier or more in fitting with the style that we want to achieve.

Case in point:

I am adding to the begining and end of a track to give me more time to mix in and out.

I've used Sony Sound Forge to attempt to accomplish this. To the naked ear (!!) what I've produced sounds great, but when using the final product to mix in and out of I've clearly gone awry. I can liken it to a loop on a CDJ, sounds OK but will go out of time before very long.

Can anyone discuss methodolgy on this topic? I've been totally unmathematical about it - yet I'm sure there is a very logical way of doing this - either with Soundforge or some other piece of software, like Ableton or Fruity Loops.

As I said, production based but entirely appropriate for this forum I feel.

Jarv

Probably not entirely helpful but I usually extend the intros to songs or extend the middle 8's with Ableton and everything seems to hold it's time pretty well. Sorry I can't be any more helpful.

Yeah, do it with Ableton instead.

you can use the bpm and sampling rate to calculate the exact amount of samples each loop would be and then use those perfectly cut chunks to extend it

but i always do this in ableton

Ableton is perfect for what you're trying to do...I do my own edits of tracks all the time because of just how easy and fast it is in ableton.

I've been cutting up more and more tracks lately for various reasons, and I've found that Ableton works best in that situation.

i've used audacity for my edits because i can't justify buying ableton just for making a few edits.
what i usually do for extending the intro for example is this:
find the first beat of the track and find a easily detectable spot on there. zoom in very very close. copy the entire track from that point on.
then i go find the 33rd beat of the track and find the exact same spot on the waveform on it. i then delete the rest of the track from that point on and paste the copied audio there. voil� a seamless loop has been created.
this process is pretty simple all in all, but it does take too much time and i hate editing the intros/outros of tracks just so i can mix them better. i've removed some parts of songs this way too and made some other modifications. i've removed a few stupid vocals for example by pasting the exact same music from some other place in top of the part where the vocal can be heard, works like a charm (if the vocal parts don't have any different music to them than the non vocal parts).
anyway if there's some free/cheap way of doing this easier i'd like to know about it as i don't feel like spending 500� on a program i'd use just for editing tracks a bit.
edit: does anyone know if ableton live lite would be enough for re-editing tracks? it seems to come with many sound cards etc.

i use adobe audition 2.0

it's the best non-commercial or home-based studio production software i've encountered

for commercial or a professional application, there's better progs out there, pro tools for example, which audition 2.0 was modeled after

quote:

Originally posted by skip edit: does anyone know if ableton live lite would be enough for re-editing tracks? it seems to come with many sound cards etc.

the lite version has only restriction that you can use only 4 audio and 4 midi tracks at once...I guess that's much more then enough to make a solid edit...(or even a complete song if you're ok with the hassle of re-exporting and bumping to wave everytime)

but yeah, as far as I know the LE should be enough...but please before you buy something for it, try to verify it somewhere

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Morello i use adobe audition 2.0 it's the best non-commercial or home-based studio production software i've encountered for commercial or a professional application, there's better progs out there, pro tools for example, which audition 2.0 was modeled after

Adobe Audition's actually used in a lot of professional studios, excellent bit of software.


Jarv - Sound Forge is very good for little edits like that, don't feel you have to bend over to Ableton

Best way to go about it is:

1) Find the start of the first beat (try and get it as accurate as you can, so hitting play starts bang on the beat), stick in a marker.

2) Copy and paste everything before the marker to another file - you'll need to put that back in later.

3) Find the start of a beat either 8 or 16 bars into the track, again as accurately as possible and stick in another marker.

4) Select the section between the two markers (i.e. exactly the first 8 or 16 bars) and go Special -> Edit Tempo.

5) Where it says "selection length in beats" enter the number of beats in the section you've selected (32 if you've selected 8 bars, 64 if you've selected 16) then hit OK. From that it'll work out the tempo of the music

6) Go Options -> Status Format -> Measures and Beats. This will change the timeline to show bars and beats as the time base.

7) Go Options -> Auto Snap To Time

8) Do your editing - whenever you make a selection, it'll snap it to whole beats, so your edit will stay in time.

9) Don't forget to add the start section that you threw into another file back on when you've finished.


Obviously this only works for tracks which are a constant tempo all the way through (so digital copies - you're likely to have problems with vinyl rips although you can work around it a bit), if there's any major fluctuations then you'll probably have to get busy with Ableton...

wow that's cool, I didn't know Soundforge can do that!

quote:

Originally posted by BOOsTER the lite version has only restriction that you can use only 4 audio and 4 midi tracks at once...I guess that's much more then enough to make a solid edit...(or even a complete song if you're ok with the hassle of re-exporting and bumping to wave everytime) but yeah, as far as I know the LE should be enough...but please before you buy something for it, try to verify it somewhere

thanks. i'd really like to hear from someone who's it. it just seems that most people who have it already have the full version of ableton. i was thinking of maybe buying the lite version from someone if someone has some an extra one they haven't used. that is if they work without the gear they were sold with. as i really don't need any gear that has live lite bundled with it atm. but i'll have to look into it more. it's just pretty hard to find any info on it anywhere for some reason.

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