17 Cleaning up the Takes Video Lecture | Tracktion 5 Tutorial: Master Music Editing - Video & Sound Editing

now that we've recorded a few tracks
we're going to do a little cleanup work
using the editing tools we learned a few
videos ago and just taking a look at
this I've got kind of the ragged ends of
these takes well I can quickly adjust
those let's just make sure it's snap is
turned on down here we have snap we
could enable snapping we can also enable
snap down here and really all we need to
do is just grab this and bring it back
so that we've got all these in line I
just want to make it look like we've got
nice clean even takes everything's the
same link so that's the first cleanup
item now the next thing is we've got a
little timing discrepancy here between
the way I played the bass line and the
way I play these two guitar parts so I'm
going to move the bass line up by
grabbing from near the title area and
move it up here and then I can position
the cursor by just sort of grabbing and
dragging here and i can always ooh min
by kind of grabbing above the cursor and
pulling down the down arrow key will
also help me zoom in and now I can get a
better idea of how these things aren't
quite lined up the best way I think to
do this is just to go in here and we can
use these tracks here you can see the
guitar parts these aren't quite lined up
sometimes that sounds good I might do a
little cleanup on those two as well but
the main thing here is that these notes
particularly are late so I'll use guitar
one as my reference now I'm going to
turn snap off because what i want to do
is put a cut right here on this part
with snap off so now I'm going to turn
snap off q does that or I can click down
here that way I can position it right at
the edge of this i'm going to use this
waveform here it's also lined up pretty
well with beat two of bar eight here and
so i'll go right here and i'll use the
forward slash and i'm going to do the
same thing right here on this note and
hit the forward slash so i'm going to
cut it right there so i want to make a
slip at it but I don't need both of
these selected so I'll just click this
one event here and then this solid color
box as you remember is the slip edit
tool so I'm just going to slide within
the frame there this note back to where
up to the beginning of that clip so I've
got a little bit of extra here so I'll
just trim this back and then I could
just grab this clip and move it back
here until it's lined up you can see
I've got the automatic crossfade turned
on so that will cross fade right in
let's just listen to how that sounds so
it goes bump bump which it really
probably shouldn't do so we'll trim this
back to where it just goes bum do a
little fade out and then those hang out
a little bit longer maybe it needs to be
replayed another thing we could do in
this particular case is just stretch it
click on it right here and we have time
stretching we can put this into elastic
tonal and then hold down option if
you're on a Mac or alt if you're on a PC
and then pull from the hollow arrow here
and then that will actually stretch it
so you can stretch it out to match like
that just move that back slightly more
so that gives us a basic ending set up
for that now I'm going to go back to the
beginning of the song I'm going to show
you how to do some adjustment if we want
to lock the feel of the baseline in with
the drums now you might do retakes you
might do a lot of different things but
if you're composing and your kind of
working out a song you might wind up in
this mode where you've played something
in and you just want to tweak it to
experiment so I like to do this kind of
as I layer things up you might want to
get them all layered up and do this
later but i just wanted to show you some
of these editing techniques in the
context of tracking and overdubbing i
personally like to keep things kind of
clean and organized so they don't have a
lot of this editing to do after the fact
when i'm finished tracking so i'm going
to hit home to go back to the beginning
and i'm just going to take a look at
this baseline now one thing I don't
really like about the playing is that
I've got some notes here that don't
really lock in with the kick you can see
here's the kick so it goes bump bump
here
I'm going to mute the guitar parts off
so we can isolate the kick along with
the base you can easily see the kit
because you can see the way the waveform
looks here is more open you can see that
this is a lower frequency so in general
i like to you know kind of lock these in
together we can lock in both the timing
and we can even decide which notes we
allow to play so I'm going to do that
over the first bar here just to kind of
show you what I mean give you some ideas
of things you might want to do when
you're editing or working out a baseline
and it also gives you some of the ideas
of how flexible traction is when it
comes to this so the way I like to do
this is with snap off I'll go back and
then put the cursor I've got this
selected this is the baseline I'm going
to drag the cursor to line up with the
transient or the front edge of this kick
now you can see if I look down then
that's nicely lined up but I'm going to
split it there anyway because I want to
move this part back so I click to select
just this one clip and now I can slip
edit this back and then i can just fade
in right here and trim up the back end
just a little bit and now i should have
that nicely locked in with that part so
there's bump bump now see this note here
doesn't have a corresponding kick so I
want to try taking it out all I need to
do to do that is put the cursor at the
end here and then use this arrow and
just bring this back if I want to lock
the timing end right here I'll select
down here put the cursor right here i'm
using this to line it up to that kick
I'll use the forward slash to put a
split in we'll just trim this back
slightly that actually trimmed the both
of them I didn't really need to do that
but i'll select this one let me select
this one and just trim it back i'll
select this one use the solid box to get
that transient of the base right lined
up with the kick use home
[Music]
yeah I don't know maybe it was better
before we can easily go back to it by
just clicking undo a few times to get to
where we've got that back let's just
listen to it again maybe if I just get
this one where it's just solidly lined
up and I think what I'll do is reduce
this one in volume a little bit so we'll
put the split back in i'll click that
one I'll just stick tip gain down
slightly on that one and then I'm going
to really tweak the timing of this one
again so we'll go right here put it in a
split and I'll select that clip slip
edit this back will slip this note back
a little bit and then this one here we
want to make sure that it's nicely
locked in so I'll just put a split
anywhere in here so we'll select that
one clip we could just drag the entire
clip until it looks like it pretty much
lines up this one here that timing is
also just slightly suspect so same thing
here I'll just go right in here put in
the split shorten that up a little bit
and I'm going to adjust this until words
right lined up like that now let's
listen to what we've got
[Music]
all right that might work lets just hear
it along with the guitars all right that
actually sounds pretty good so I'm going
to move along to a few more timing
tweaks to the baseline and then when I'm
done I'll come back and show you how to
render this into one solid clip alright
so I've been moving along doing the
edits here and I'm not quite ready to
render it actually the part is pretty
good after we got past the first couple
bars but here's one where I just want to
show you an example of some of the ways
to make this edit and go faster as you
drag the cursor and you line it up with
the beat like right here I'm going to
line it up with this drum part I'm not
even going to let go of the mouse button
and I could put a split on this clip by
just hitting the forward slash key and I
can just keep doing that I don't have to
ever let go of that and then I can just
split all of these out if I want to I'll
put this one on the beat this one right
on that beat and another one here now
one of the things that you might do or
be tempted to do is start editing one of
these like I want to slip at it maybe
this one right here well I start
grabbing it and you'll see well the
whole thing moves because they're all
selected so first of all you can undo
that with command Z or ctrl Z on a PC
but if you want to you can select any of
them by just clicking on a specific clip
or you could select none of them by
using the select none command I have
that map to the Escape key so if I hit
the Escape key clears all those
selections and then I'm ready to do my
editing so right here I'm going to just
drag this back to get that off the beat
I'll do a little slip at it right here
to find the beginning of that baseline
I'll just leave it lined up it falls a
little bit late that's the way the
drummer played it so I'm just going to
lock this in with a drummer not with the
bar and same thing here we'll just slip
this back a little bit this is a great
thing about tractions we got slip
editing as a tool right on the clip
header so we don't have to go digging
through chain
changing tools or holding down key
commands or anything like that you can
just do this one handed right here is
where I guess the timing should be so
I'll just drag this to line up with that
you can drag this back a little bit here
I can do a little adjustment with a slip
edit then drag this back and so on let's
just finish this cleanup listen to that
second segment right now you hear a
little click so when you do this kind of
editing when you split stuff up that's
continuing to play you might get a
little click like that well you can
usually solve that by putting a little
fade at the end of those might need a
fade at the beginning but we'll put
fades little fades at the end see if
that goes away yeah that took that out
[Music]
that takes us to the end of this song
section so I'm going to zoom completely
out I can use f5 for that just to take
me to the extent so in order to render
this to one solid clip all we need to do
is select everything on that line
there's a couple ways to do it one is to
select the first clip hold down shift
while selecting the last one I think
that's a really good way to do it or
I'll hit escape to select none we could
hold down alt or option you get this
plus selecting tool just drag over
everything that you want I think I
showed you this before hit escape there
you can also use a right-click menu
right here and select all clips in this
track does the same thing and then down
here under render clips you select
render clips render the selected clips
and replace them that gives you an
intermediate dialog box but for most
cases you can just hit render now we
have a single clip now following a
render often the clips will come out in
stereo or looking like stare it's really
a dual mono file and if you really don't
like that it's pretty easy to convert it
back to looking like a model file and
the way you do that is down here first
you click on the clip you can convert
any stereo clipped amount of doing this
you click on the clip and then use view
source here and under here you have the
option to edit the audio file and do
basic editing operations and one of
those basic editing operations is make
mono and just use average of all
channels you can use the left channel on
the right channel only it really doesn't
matter it will give you the same result
I'll just use the left channel only and
render it and it's just saying it's
permanent which is fine go ahead and do
that and now we've got our single
baseline
[Music]
alright so we did a little cleanup we've
got something a little more solid as we
move into the next section we're going
to do some loop recording and some
comping thanks for watching