SHIFT/ALT/Left Click tips?

[Gary Shore]

Been doing a lot of editing and moving waveform positions in Split Clips using this keyboard command and wonder if there's another way to do this...

As a keyboard player I'm thinking in terms of using the fourth and second fingers along with the thumb in my left hand to do this but....

About 60% of the time I get the Move arrow right away,more often than not the results include-

-The clip being split...

-Since I'm using a lot of 2-3 track Clip Selection Groups,one track gets deselected....

-Sometimes there's no result....

I've gradually  become used to thinking about this in terms of it being a crapshoot where it'll take a few tries before the function is activated ...

I tried to figure out the best place on each of the 3 keys to press simultaneously and make sure to use a fairly strong attack when doing so...but as described above,I'm "sure it'll happen this time" X ....number of attempts is the continued result....

Would appreciate any feedback from people dealing with this and finding out about a better way if possible....

Just about everything else I'm doing is part of a fairly empowered approach to using the DAW,it's the one aspect that sends me back in time and I start to feel like I'm cranking up the old Victrola instead of using cutting edge technology to get my tracks together....

[David Baay]

Not understanding why Shift is involved or at what point one clip in a Selection Group gets deslected. Alt+Left-click with the Smart Tool by itself should split a group...?

[Gary Shore]

Hey David!!

Have to tell you I really appreciate your continuing to reply to my threads over here....great to know someone like yourself w/extensive knowledge of how everything works is available to check things with...

In terms of focusing on everything relating to tempo (as per my earlier thread here you posted a lot of very helpful info on),did some more Googling of things and happened to find all the stuff you posted on the old Cakewalk forums under "brundlefly",along with links to different threads where you went into the ins-and-outs of Set Measure/Beat at Now....Much thx for making this available,have been studying everything and gradually getting a much more complete sense of things....

As far as the topic here,my bad for not explaining this better,actually referring to-

(Pg.359 Reference Guide)

To move data without moving its clip
1. Do one of the following:
Using the Smart tool , hold ALT+SHIFT move the pointer over the middle of the clip you want to edit.
Using the Edit tool , hold ALT+SHIFT move the pointer over the top third of the clip you want to edit.
The cursor changes to look like this .
2. Click and drag the clip to the left or right as desired.
As in the case of slip-editing, the hidden information in the clip remains intact but is not heard during playback.

Figured out I needed to depress the SHIFT/ALT first THEN hit the L click after the double-headed arrow showed...and that hitting the L click at the same time as the other 2 set up the types of things I went into..

Learned how to use the DAW at the same time I was figuring out how to use the laptop and  invariably keep finding out where I've confused the way you do things w/ it and how the DAW itself operates........

Again thx for all your replies here man......

 

 

Edited February 18, 2020 by Gary Shore

[David Baay]

Thanks for the praise, Gary.  I enjoy it, and I often learn some things along the way.  Good to hear you've found some of it enlightening.

This particular feature - moving waveforms within clips boundaries - is one I've never had occasion to use 'in anger', much less with grouped clips. Frankly, that seems like just the kind of unexpected/untested use case that might expose a bug.

I'll give it a whirl and see if I can repro any problems.

I usually try to avoid questioning why people want to do something, but I am honestly curious what the scenario is that makes moving  waveforms within clips preferable to trimming and  moving the clips...? I've never really understood what this capability is good for, but that's probably because my projects don't involve a lot of complex audio editing.

Cheers,

Dave

[Gary Shore]

Dave-

I was happy to see you replied again and have the time to focus on what I'm dealing with....here's a little more info about it so you'll have a better sense of how I'm going about things... 

 

What I'm doing is working on tracks that have a rhythmic focus( i.e.a drum part w/bass/keyboard where it's all about the groove and having everything work together) using a manual form of the types of things you can get into with the AudioSnap Palette features ...

 

I'm doing it this way because these are tracks originally put together using a keyboard workstation and drum machine where a lot of time was spent getting things to sound as natural and unprogrammed as possible as if they were a live band recording....

 

Things are where I want them positionally and all I"m doing is lining them up in terms of each other using a combination of visual/auditory processes...

 

For ex,yesterday I began to implement a much more effective means of doing this by taking a given one or two bar section,figuring out what the hi-hat pattern was(these are fairly intricate and use a combination of 8th/16th notes)and how the keyboard riff fit into it,writing it out on a sheet of paper,then transferring this to a view of the waveforms so I could judge their relative positions in terms of this...

 

Once I figured it out,then I shifted things and listened to the results,trying different positioning until the sync I was looking for was achieved.....

 

The Clip Selection Groups are being used because I set up multiple tracks for each component of the mix which are each EQ'd differently and have a different complementary sound  in terms of FX,these are grouped and sent to buses etc etc...

 

(For ex.2 or 3 kick drum tracks with each representing a different part of the overall frequency spectrum .)

 

I could have done this using an alternate workflow and waiting until each individual instrument track was adjusted positionally then duplicating them and getting into the EQ/FX aspects of things but I was interested in seeing how different approaches to each might sound at the same time the focus was on the relative positioning of these.....

 

The approach I"m using is a nice one given the great features the DAW has...I check out a given section,see what the markers I've inserted are about i.e."line up bass line with kick" then use CONTROL/SHIFT/H to move a bunch of selected tracks to a new view where I can focus in on things...

 

Fortunately by setting up the Clip Groups anything I do to a single track in this view will affect all the others ..so if I have multiple tracks of a given instrument and am just looking at/working on a single instance of each in the CONTROL/SHIFT/H screen,this will automatically be applied across the board...

 

Having just gotten started actually doing things in the DAW after a lot of studying,as you can imagine there are a lot of things I'm working on understanding and developing an approach to using so being able to go into things with yourself and the many other knowledgeable people here on CD is a big part of where I'm at right now.....

Edited February 19, 2020 by Gary Shore

[David Baay]

I understand that you want to experiment with relative timing of rhythm tracks, but not understanding why you would do it by moving waveforms within clips rather than just moving the clips themselves...? A feature that will help you with tweaking relative timing if you move clips instead of waveforms is 'Nudge' which lets you' define three different increments for moveing clips earlier or later by small amounts using the Numkey pad:

Nudge Documentation

 

 

 

[Gary Shore]

Appreciate being able to continue getting into things here....  

Thx for taking the time to post the link....

Actually have looked at Nudge/Slide as well as the ASP features relating to this stuff in some detail and am planning on getting into using these as the situation warrants ...

As far as my decision to leave the clips themselves where they are as part of a continuous track,rather than mess with this,I'm basing it on my being new to editing waveforms/using a DAW after developing an approach to this using a hardware digital TASCAM DP-008....

Moving clip sections while everything is still lined up visually is a methodology I am comfortable with,just splitting the clip in a zero crossing location using the ZOOM/waveform scaling to see this stuff along with the grid set to 1 tick,then applying the techniques described above...

These are 7-8 min tracks with a number of related 8 or 16 bar sections and I think keeping things lined up like this is the way to do things for now...

Probably once I get more familiar with things and start making shorter tracks,I'll be doing more of the actual moving of clips ....

Have done this a little bit already when I thought it would be better for a given situation after seeing what the position of the waveform was,used it instead of sliding the waveform itself/slip editing things when I saw that data would need to be deleted to prevent a duplicate event occurring, as sometimes  part of the same phrase being shifted  is there on the new clip resulting from a split location as well...

Been very lucky so far and have had to use fades to cover clicks very minimally, maybe 5% of the time if that even...

Having gone through changes with this stuff with the hardware machine before moving to the DAW,it's a real relief to be able to get things where they should be without worrying about hearing clicks and pops when I check it....

(Using Looping as a regular go-to part of my workflow here,it took me a minute to get used to the sound the Loop makes when it reaches the end before repeating as initially I thought I  was reexperiencing various problems like this ....)

Nudge is a useful feature and I can see myself using it if I'm working on something where a definite parameter can be established i.e.if a clip being edited in relation to another one is consistently off alignment by the same amount (and related as well to being able to use the other 2 options for setting up the Nudge amount within this same general area)...

With the current material,this isn't the case and things require a situational approach each time ....

This is the thinking behind my deciding to just line things up this way on these initial tracks,although I really think the "proportional movement" ASP techniques would work as well.... i.e.moving the same transient marker location on multiple tracks simultaneously,lasso selecting a transient area on multiple tracks,using the Window to set up how close to a given transient other markers are affected and "Merge and Lock Markers" etcetc,all of which do pretty much what I'm currently doing automatically.....

Edited February 20, 2020 by Gary Shore