BEYOND Confused.

[John Q]

I have seven takes of a vocal. I'm trying to cut them together to make one finished product and then mix them in with the backing track. I'm using Cool Edit 2.0. I've read the manual AND I bought "Home Recording For Dummies" and I STILL don't understand anything. I guess I need "Home Recording For Dumber Than Dummies" because I'm totally lost. I feel like my feet are in cement. I simply can't move.

I don't even know how I feel anymore.

 

[Beat_Maker88]

I have seven takes of a vocal. I'm trying to cut them together to make one finished product and then mix them in with the backing track. I'm using Cool Edit 2.0. I've read the manual AND I bought "Home Recording For Dummies" and I STILL don't understand anything. I guess I need "Home Recording For Dumber Than Dummies" because I'm totally lost. I feel like my feet are in cement. I simply can't move.

I don't even know how I feel anymore.

go into the multitrack, put the instrumental on the first layer,and move all your vocals in sync with the beat, simple.

beat
vocal 1
vocal 2
vocal 3
Vocal 4

its easy if you do this right, then remove the beat, then mixdown all your acapellas,then reopen it, then its 1 file,ALOT easier to move around.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Could you rephrase your existential breakdown in the form of a question?

 

[John Q]

How do I take multiple takes of a song and cut them together into one take?

The problem I'm having with all this reading I'm doing from various articles and books is that it's written as if I already know what I'm doing. Jargon and techniques are thrown about. It's like someone that knows nothing about golf and wants to play and telling them to take it back inside the target line, supinate the left wrist at the top and come through with a shallow angle, pronating through impact to a full follow through. Nothing to it, right?

Sorry. I've had problems from day one with this stuff. It's been a month and I've accomplished nothing. I still can't get the mic to work properly let alone edit.

 

[legionserial]

Put your intrumental on track one of the multi track.

I would think (if I understand your question correctly) that there are a couple of ways to do this.

You could put each vocal take on a separate track, lined up with the instrumental, and snip off the bits you don't want from each vocal take.

Or (the method I often use) you could put all the vocal takes onto one track, snip off the bits you don't want, leaving a little tiny overlap between each one, and crossfade. I'm not familiar with cool edit, I use cubase. In that you would basically highlight the 2 tracks you want, and via menus, choose the crossfade option. this will ensure a smooth transition between each take.

As I say, I don't know Cool Edit very well, but if you search 'crossfade' in the help section, it should tell you how to do it.

 

[eeb]

The editing in cool edit/audition is the whole reason why i won't switch to another program... once you get the hang of this you'll know what i mean..

the great thing is the envelope tool...

1. go into multi-track view like was suggested earlier
2. import the song
3. import the vocal takes

Now this is what i do..

I listen to a couple lines at a time...
mute all the vocal takes except one.
listen to the first section you want to edit (you can take it part by part.. if you want to get really surgical you can even do syllables if you wanted.. for you i wouldn't recommend it because it'll be much harder to do and unless you're recording britney spears why the hell would you do this haha)

After listening to all the vocal takes for the one part seperately (with the music of course) decide which take you'd like to keep.

When you decide you have to mute that part on all the other takes.. this is where that envelop tool comes in..

you likely won't have to enable it.. it's usually always on...

on the top of the actual wav file you may notice a green line with 2 white boxes on either end. This is the volume of the wav itself (seperate from the actual volume of the track)

you can click anywhere on this green line... when you do you'll notice another white box appears.. you can drag these boxes all the way to the bottom of the wave.. muting that section... so click the green line at the top of the wav where you want to start muting and again where you want to end muting.. bring the end all the way down and you'll notice that the line looks like a V.. click anywhere on that "v" and make another white box.. drag that all the way to the bottom and over to where you want to start muting.. that track is now muted only at the spot you want...

do the same for all the other tracks you want muted and for all the parts you have edited....

when you're done you'll have parts on all the takes you're keeping (or maybe a couple... sometimes i won't use a whole take) it'll look like a mess... but don't worry.
select all the waves you're using and click on the edit button... click "bounce to empty track" then "selected wav's mono"

now you have one file with all your edits...
mute all your other files and listen to the final track.. if everything's fine you can now delete the old tracks..

you're done!


hope that helps

it takes some practice.. but what's great about cool edit is it's very visual for editing.. keep an eye on what you're doing.. make sure your cuts line up