Audio editing equals Better tracks

Audio editing greatly enhances your audio production. After successfully recording your tracks, the next thing to do is dive into editing them. When you've correctly edited your tracks, you'll have a much easier time mixing and producing the final copy of your work.

Editing audio can be a very elaborate, and time consuming effort. Back in the old days, it was a surgical and manual effort. None of the easyness of a mouse and keyboard.

Engineers needed precise and steady hands to cut the tape that was needed for editing. But we don't really need to do that anymore, since digital audio has become so amazing.

Gone are the days when we needed to cut Take 2 of the chorus with Take 10 of the first verse. We don't need razor sharp knives, nor steady surgical hands anymore.

digital audio editing

music tape Now, the only thing we need to do is move regions around in our desired audio editor, cuttin them up however we want. And all without loss in quality! We just need a mouse and an audio recording software.

Things have gotten so much easier that producing music has become a cheap and accessible pastime for anyone wanting to open up their bedroom studio. If you are having trouble with editing audio in your software try out this foolprooof audio editing technique, find the zero point!

Sadly, even some performers and artist have gotten worse since the amount of editing possible is virtually limitless. We can stretch and move and pitch anything to our hearts desires, so much that a bad take can be edited in such a way that is almost becomes unrecognizable.

But it's not all a bad thing. Audio editing is so intuitive that our workflow is much more streamlined, and the production value of our work doesn't get bogged down by our need to edit our takes for long periods of time. We just move on and fix things later, editing together the tracks that sound good, and fix the others with pitch software or quantization.

Free audio editing software

If you just need to be able to edit audio without all the extras that come with expensive recording softare, you should check out the free audio recording software available online. Audacity for instance, is a free open-source audio editor that allows you to edit audio with great ease. Check out this video and article on audio editing with Audacity.

Useful editing

Easy audio editing can be useful in so many ways!

Cleanup! Clean up background noise from instruments that aren't playing. Breaths between sentences can be cut out, making the vocal track cleaner. Hum from guitar amps in part that the guitarist isn't playing can be erased as well. For tips on how to edit audio correctly, check out this article!

Cut & Paste. Cutting and pasting song parts together to try out different compositions. It's easy to move choruses and verses around, therefore streamlining the whole production process

Comping tracks. Comping tracks is when you have many different takes of the same track. By mixing and matching the best takes, phrases of a vocal for instance, you can comp together the perfect track. Check out my tutorial on how to comp tracks together in Logic Pro.

Instead of compression. People use compressors in order to take control of a very dynamic track. They want a certain instrument to stay at a certain level, and thus use compression to take care of it. Compression purist, that don't like using compression would rather edit their audio, boosting the quiet parts in level and lowering the volume of the louder ones. Maybe a guitar part was played a little quieter for a bar until the guitarist got comfortable enough to rock out on his instrument. By only editing that certain bar we omit the need to use dynamic plugins such as compressors. See the mixing page for more on compression.

Doubling tracks. It's easy to double tracks by just copying and pasting. The typical automatic double tracking technique is just copying the same track to a new channel and nudging it a few bars so the waveforms don't line up exactly.

Edit better - Sound better

Being a good and fast audio editor is a great trait to have as an audio engineer. It's maybe not the most exciting job in the audio and music business, but it's a very valuable one.

By being a efficient and competent audio editor you can be sure to get thumbs up for your lightning fast work. Since efficient editing equals cleaner tracks, easier production and better sounding takes, everybody will love you.

For a different take on audio editing, check out The Lazy Mixer's Guide to Automation

Check out some recording software if you are looking for an audio editor

Using an amazing editor? Let us know and share the love!