[Harry Lavo]

I'm hoping that some of you experienced in Audacity can help me out with the
great difficulty I have had in trying to do "inserts" in a solo classical
piano recording.

I have recorded for many years, most of it back in the tape era, and have
razor-bladed my share of edits. But this most recent effort, for a friend,
involved recording via Zoom H4n. I now have nine Rachmaninoff "Opus 39
Etudes" and the six movements of Ravel's "Le tombeau de Couperin" to edit.
Each separate zoom folder (for each movement) contains from three to six wav
files, usual one or two complete takes and one to four inserts for a
specific small section lasting a few seconds, which correct an occasional
miscue.

Never having edited on the computer before, I read what little instruction
is available in the Audacity help file and did some practicing. I managed
to do major splices, e.g.. cutting and splicing the beginning of one take to
the end of another without too much trouble....by setting up a "final mix
track and copying sections (sometimes having to do a slight time shift) and
using trim commands. However when it came to doing inserts, I came a
cropper. I find some reference in help to some arcane commands, but
absolutely no indication of how they are used to accomplish a goal. And no
guide whatsoever of how to do editing beyond the most basic.

The basic problems I am having are these:

1) There seems to be no way to put an insert mark in a track and have it
stay there when I select another track to do a copy (even if I started out
with both tracks selected).
2) Likewise, if I select the section to be copied first, and use "save
selection" to send it to the clipboard, when I move to the other set of
stereo tracks, the saved selection disappears from the clipboard (seems to
me this is very "un-Windows-like" and unintuitive).
3) I'd like to be able to mark a section and delete it, and then insert or
save over with the saved section into the empty space. In other words, a
pretty basic "save and insert" or "save and copy" function. But I must be
missing something because I just can't find or figure out how to do it.

The editing is further compounded by the fact that I am editing largely
"exposed" notes and so the splice must be extremely precise. I am finding
that when I expand the timeline enough to identify the beginning of notes,
the visible squiggles meld almost indistinctly into the background noise
level of the tracks (I am using the "shallow" dynamic range 36db setting but
used 48db and found it not much different). With tape, I could hear the
beginning of a sound. With Audacity I seem to have no way to slow sound
commensurate with the expanded timeline...and with full sound the waveform
screens move and disappear so fast as to be useless). So I must rely on
visual only.

Finally, I have seen references here to "snap on" and "snap off"
settings....and have a vague idea that they move the insert point to the
nearest frame beginning or end. But I have no idea of whether this is
really important to what I am doing or not. For what it's worth, I've set
"snap to" as on (as well as the setting to edit at the crossover point).

I've followed this group for years, and contributed some on the actual
recording process (I'm happy to say that my friend is VERY happy with the
sound I've captured from her 9' Steinway). But in all this, I am a total
newbie. I'm hoping some of you may help with this (to you , I am sure) very
basic information.

Finally, for what it is worth, I do have a copy of Steinberg's Cubase LE 4,
but have shied away from it because of its apparent complexity, in favor of
Audacity's supposed "intuitiveness". Was/is this a mistake?

Harry Lavo
Holyoke, MA
Retro Sound Recording

[Mike Rivers]

On 8/21/2011 12:17 PM, Harry Lavo wrote:
I'm hoping that some of you experienced in Audacity can help me out with the
great difficulty I have had in trying to do "inserts" in a solo classical
piano recording.

Audacity is a great program for beginners to start out with
when they're first learning ot use computers for recording.
The price is right, it works on just about all computers,
and it's great for keeping Linux people happy.

However when it came to doing inserts, I came a
cropper. I find some reference in help to some arcane commands, but
absolutely no indication of how they are used to accomplish a goal. And no
guide whatsoever of how to do editing beyond the most basic.

That's the reason for my comment about Linux. Audacity just
isn't a very easy or intuitive program to use for jobs like
that.

Finally, I have seen references here to "snap on" and "snap off"
settings....and have a vague idea that they move the insert point to the
nearest frame beginning or end. But I have no idea of whether this is
really important to what I am doing or not.

Snap-to can be useful, depending on what it snaps to. Many
modern editors snap to the nearest grid line on the
assumption that you're editing a rhythm track and you want
everything to coincide with a beat. Other "snaps" are to a
marker, which is very handy for editing but not a lot of
programs do it, and "snap to the edge" of whatever you're
sticking together. I can't remember what Audacity does.

Finally, for what it is worth, I do have a copy of Steinberg's Cubase LE 4,
but have shied away from it because of its apparent complexity, in favor of
Audacity's supposed "intuitiveness". Was/is this a mistake?

This is why I said that Audacity was good for beginners. It
doesn't do as many things as Cubase, so it's easier to get
through the forest.

If you're on a PC, I think you might be ready for Sound
Forge. The "Studio" version should be all you need, and I
think it can be had on the street for $50 or so. You can
download a demo.


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Harry Lavo]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
On 8/21/2011 12:17 PM, Harry Lavo wrote:
I'm hoping that some of you experienced in Audacity can help me out with
the
great difficulty I have had in trying to do "inserts" in a solo classical
piano recording.

Audacity is a great program for beginners to start out with when they're
first learning ot use computers for recording. The price is right, it
works on just about all computers, and it's great for keeping Linux people
happy.

However when it came to doing inserts, I came a
cropper. I find some reference in help to some arcane commands, but
absolutely no indication of how they are used to accomplish a goal. And
no
guide whatsoever of how to do editing beyond the most basic.

That's the reason for my comment about Linux. Audacity just isn't a very
easy or intuitive program to use for jobs like that.

Finally, I have seen references here to "snap on" and "snap off"
settings....and have a vague idea that they move the insert point to the
nearest frame beginning or end. But I have no idea of whether this is
really important to what I am doing or not.

Snap-to can be useful, depending on what it snaps to. Many modern editors
snap to the nearest grid line on the assumption that you're editing a
rhythm track and you want everything to coincide with a beat. Other
"snaps" are to a marker, which is very handy for editing but not a lot of
programs do it, and "snap to the edge" of whatever you're sticking
together. I can't remember what Audacity does.

Finally, for what it is worth, I do have a copy of Steinberg's Cubase LE
4,
but have shied away from it because of its apparent complexity, in favor
of
Audacity's supposed "intuitiveness". Was/is this a mistake?

This is why I said that Audacity was good for beginners. It doesn't do as
many things as Cubase, so it's easier to get through the forest.

If you're on a PC, I think you might be ready for Sound Forge. The
"Studio" version should be all you need, and I think it can be had on the
street for $50 or so. You can download a demo.


Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a look.

Harry

[Scott Dorsey]

I think the function you want is called cut and paste in audacity, but
I am on the other side of the country from the studio right now.

Try "The Book Of Audacity" which my other friend Mike highly recommends.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

Harry Lavo wrote:

I'm hoping that some of you experienced in Audacity can help me out with
the great difficulty I have had in trying to do "inserts" in a solo
classical piano recording.

Maybe I don't understand what you need to do, but try this and see if
it accomplishes what you're after.

1. Open the "master" take in one window.

2. Open the insert in another window.

3. In the insert window, highlight the material you want to
insert into the master recording by dragging the mouse, holding
down the shift key, etc., etc., as usual. Clicking play will
play the highlighted section so you can be sure you got what
you want and nothing that you don't.

4. Press Z to adjust the highlighted area so it begins and ends
on zero crossings.

5. Copy to the clipboard using ^C.

6. Switch to the master take window.

7. Locate the material you want to replace with the material from
the insert and highlight it. Again, you can play the highlighted
section to be sure it's what you want to overlay.

8. Press Z to adjust the highlighted area so it begins and ends
on zero crossings.

9. Paste the material from the clipboard using ^V.

I just tried this on an audition recording I made recently and was
able to insert what I wanted where I wanted using this method.

HTH. Maybe I just don't understand the problem.