As you can imagine, all these editing features give us amazing control over the final product. And that the fact that we have these features has actually changed the way in which rec, we record. In that we often will record many takes, or many versions of a single performance, and then choose the best pieces from all of them. And create a compiled version around comtrack that includes the best pieces from all those different takes. Now many DAWs have a take feature built right into them so that if I record over and over on a single track. It remembers all those different recordings and saves them as different takes of that same performance. In addition many DAWS have added com features to make it easy to kind of quickly choose the best features from all of them and apply cross fades and make it sound seamless. Even if your DAW doesn't include those though you could always just create many tracks, name them similarly but maybe put the take name after them. And record multiple versions of the performance and edit in between. It's a great process to get used to because you really can get a high quality performance if you can get all those best pieces. I'd like you to take a moment to go to your DAW and see what the best way would be to create a comp track or a compile track within your DAW. I'd like to take some time to show you how all these editing techniques can be used together to create a perfect comp track, or compiled track, from a series of imperfect performances. I had played bass to a drum groove earlier in the course, in this lesson, and I did two takes at it. They're both good, but imperfect in different ways, and I'm going to take pieces of both to create a perfect performance. The first thing I'll need is a new track to build the compile onto. And we'll create a new mono track because the previous ones aren't mono and I'll set the input to none. It a great idea to get in the habit of setting the input to none on tracks that you're not actively recording into. This will save CP resources and also avoid the chance of accidental feedback later. In reviewing the material, I found that I like the first measure for my first performance, and the second measure for my second performance. I have my grid set to bar. So that way as I cut, I know it'll be right on bar length, and will make editing much easier. I'll switch over to a scissor tool and I'll divide the region or separate the region right at the downbeat of measure two and I'm going to copy this to the new track. Now you'll notice I held a modifier key while dragging, which copy and pasted. Now I like the second measure for my second paste track and I'll use a different method this time. There are actually many ways you can select in a DAW. Sometimes you're selecting regions with that Arrow tool, other times you're selecting a range of time like I've done here. You notice I haven't selected the entire region. I've selected just measure two in the second track. And by using a selection tool that's designed just for selecting a range of time. You can find that you can select just a portion inside of a region. So, many DAWs really differentiate between selecting tracks, between selecting regions, and selecting ranges of time. It's good to know the different selection tools in your DAW and how they function. Let's see how this comp track is turning out. [MUSIC]. So I like both performances but there's a click, a slight click at the transition between the two clips. We can solve that in a variety of ways but no matter how we're going to solve it we want to zoom way in and see what's going on. So I'll switch to a zoom tool. I'm going to zoom in on a very small portion of time, and see what's going on. So right here is my transition. And it looks like it's pretty close. There must just be a little bit of information kind of away from zero right at the transition, which is giving us that click. I think the solution for this is a cross fade. And I'll switch to my cross fade tool here. And it'll just make a very, very small fade. With fades, the shorter is almost always better. You just want a quick, kind of imperceptible, fade. Let's hear how it sounds. [MUSIC] That little fade got rid of the click entirely, I can zoom back out now, and continue on with my comp. Now I actually liked bars 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 from the first take. So I'll grab those now. Again, option drag. And I like the last bit from There you go. So you see having my grid set to bar, really handy, because that way I know all those edits are happening right on a down beat. And I can move through this process quite quickly. Let's listen. [MUSIC]. That edit sounds good. [MUSIC] There was a click at the beginning of that one. [MUSIC] And there was a click at this one also. So we have two small clicks to deal with. There's also one note I don't love in there lets hear it. That right there. [MUSIC] There's a really big click in my performance. I might want to grab this measure from this over here. Let's try that out. Try measure four here. Let's try the whole thing now. [MUSIC] I like the performance now. I'm happy with it. I just need those cross-fades. Let's hear it. [MUSIC]. And I have a perfect performance built from two previous performances, a really nice comp. The one last thing I might want to do here, is merge these so I can use them easily later. And that's a simple procedure that we looked at earlier. Now this is going to create a new audio file on my hard drive. the other audio file still exists there, but this is going to be a new one, and it's going to kind of write those cross fades right into the audio. And there we have a new merged comped performance. So as you can see editing is a powerful procedure and DAW's have an incredible compliment of tools to allow you to craft a perfect performance from a variety of imperfect takes. I've only scratched the surface of what contemporary DAW's really are capable of. You'll always find yourself relying on cutting, moving, copying, cross fading, zooming. They are essential tools you have to be good at them if you want to have some kind of fluency at this. For me, the trick to editing is being efficient, you have to know what you want to do and you have to be able to do it quickly. Now we've looked at a very simple, kind of isolated, usage right here. There's kind of comping a take, which is two different bass performances and it was pretty understandable. But what happens when you have ten takes, and you have an entire tune? Well in that case you're going to have to be much more organized and careful. And in the next segment we'll look at some of the important tools that are available in all DAWs to organize and to make this process even more efficient.
