Hands free trigger

  • Thread starter Thread starter 56tweed
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56tweed

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Greetings, still pretty new here.

I'm a long time guitarist and I'm in the process of jumping into recording again. My current setup is a Focusrite Scarlet 2i4 into Sonar X3 Studio. I'm primarily recording guitar, bass and vocals. One of the things I've never been really able to figure out is how to easy trigger or punch in without clicking the option in the software. I would love to use some kind of foot switch for this. I've done some searches here and on the Internet and the best I can come up with is "some" interfaces support the keyboard expression pedals. My interface does not support this though. As part of my searches, I assumed that this is one of the things a midi-controller can do, but I have a very basic understanding of midi, and have no direct experience there yet.

What are my options? What are people doing for this?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Some people will just track multiple takes and comp together a track so there's no need to punch in.

Some people will retrack the entire track if they're not happy with a section. Depending upon the instrument, I'll usually do this. It can be quicker than dicking around with punching in and out.

On bass, I'll punch in, but won't punch out. Whoops, I made a mistake, STOP. Set up a separate track and cut to somewhere before the error where there's a logical pause, and complete the track from there. Comp together. No punch out required. Or if I discover it in hindsight, I might see if a copy / paste solution will work from another section of the tune. Or, I just get the bass out again.

It shouldn't be that hard. Click the mouse, give yourself a couple of bars to get the feel, and off you go, then play on past the point you're concerned about so you can get a good transition. Move on.

Now that, strictly speaking, isn't "punching in and out" - because you just don't have to any more.
 
The PreSonus Faderport has a jack for a footswitch to stop/start playback/recording. I haven't tried a footswitch myself, but I use the Faderport for lots of transport and fader control. I think it's a pretty handy little gadget.

Besides that, you can probably set a time selection and change your record mode to only record that time selection. Or set up a pre-roll of a few bars to give yourself time to get positioned after clicking "go".
 
Thanks for the feedback, I guess it just seemed really inefficient so I figured there had to be an option. Sonar does allow me to queue things up and then set a punch in/out point but I haven't used it much. If there are no other solutions I will just deal with that.
 
Yeah, just play it a couple times and don't fuck up in the same place twice. ;)

This is 2015. Drive space is cheap.


Edit - There are ways to do what you're asking. Frankly, with modern DAWs I think it's pretty easy to use any MIDI controller to do anything you want. IDK any specific models to look for, but a simple foot thingy with a couple switches should do it. Then it's a matter of plugging it in and figuring it out.
 
whilst it's quite old technology now... I use a frontier alphatrack and have a very simple dirt cheap on/off switch connected to it, when I press 'on' with the footswitch it begins recording, no more mouse clicks and messing around.
 
In X3 you can set record mode to play in a loop anywhere on the track and it will do as many passes as necessary to get a clean take and will put every take in it's own lane of the selected track.

That seems way easier to me than manually punching in and out via MIDI.
 
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Wow, that is definitely a helpful feature. I hadn't used that, so I'll give it a go!
 
I can't seem to find a Youtube tutorial that explains comping from start to finish. But there are a couple that show how to accomplish a comp once you record the track.

I think you have to enable "take lanes" to show the separate passes, and you also have to choose in preferences how the takes are handles i.e. sound on sound or replace. I'm still on X2 and X3 has some more advanced features for loop recording. I can't believe there aren't more tutorials explaining this function from start to finish.

 
56tweed said:
Thanks for the feedback, I guess it just seemed really inefficient so I figured there had to be an option. Sonar does allow me to queue things up and then set a punch in/out point but I haven't used it much. If there are no other solutions I will just deal with that.
Click to expand...

I think this is your best bet. Set the markers, start playing before the marker so you are already in sync, then when the point comes up, the punch in should flow and sound pretty natural, keep playing until it is out (play through).

As others have stated, you could just make another track and start recording a bit before and after and when you like it, just drop over the original track where you need it. Or, keep both tracks, fade original at the mistake, bring the level up on the other in the problem area. Really a lot fo different ways to do it in the digital world. You just need to think of it as "not tape" :)
 
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