matching up tracks on a computer???

[swollenrod]

My question is, how the hell do I layer tracks accurately? Keep in mind Im using sound forge and cakewalk. With the analog 4 track you can just play along with the tape. It seems with software programs I cant get the track I'm recording to start simultaniously with the track I want to play along with. This leaves gaps that i have to painstakingly edit out... any suggestions?

 

[drstawl]

This should work in CW; I know it does in Vegas Pro and a whole bunch of folks on this board will swear that this also works fine in n-track and Cool Edit Pro.
Are you lining up tracks after the fact or using prerecorded tracks to play a new track against? As a very useful "crutch" for the latter method, try recording several measures of click track in front of a track you're using to play against. That way you have an idea of where it's going to start when you lay down the next track. You can always erase the click track later.

 

[crazy horse]

Here's a few tips...

1. Lay down a (scratch?) drum track first and record subsequent tracks while playing that back. Or use an external metronome, drum machine click track, etc. This ensures that all your files are recorded at the same speed.

2. With very little practice, you can use your software to visually locate and zoom in on the first part the sound and Select the portion of the wave before it. Then Cut that away and bam, you're cooking!. It's also is important to match the lengths of your Wavs when you are mixing multiple parts together.

3. I use a calculator to devide up the length of my ,say, initial 2 measure drum line (usually just kick and snare) into lenths of 1 beat, 2 beats, 1 measure, 4 measures, etc. and create a chart in a Wordpad document. Then when I want to add a new sound, I know at a glance exactly how long to make it.

4. If your working with final tracks, as opposed to creating from scratch, Cakewalk has methods of stretching or compressing track lengths to match eachother. Tip #1 will allow you to match up their start times.

Hope I helped some.

p.s. If you start getting weird clicks in your file as you mix wavs together, you'll need to find out how to Fade In/Out the ends of each seperate wav track (even the tiniest sample) and possibly how to D.C. Offset.

later

 

[Dragon]

Yeah, what he said. With Cakewalk, just double-click on the particular tracks you're working on, get into the "blue screen" (where you see the audio waveforms on a blue background), zoom in a bit, and you can just slide the track back and forth until it's lined up. The first time you do this, it's like being on acid (not a reference to the Sonic Foundry program of the same name).