Editing question

[KSband]

I've been using the audio transients to  shrink and stretch my bass tracks to match up with the drums and I've noticed some times during playback it will be perfect and then every once in a while it will get out of sync. If I hit stop and restart it is fine again. It seems like it's processing the edited tracks every time I play them. Am I missing a step after I'm done editing? I always hit save when I'm done.

[reginaldStjohn]

One thing you can try to do is to bounce the adjusted tracks to audio. This will bake in the adjustments and should not show the issues you mentioned. However, I have noted in other threads were sometimes bouncing adjusted notes didn't render correctly. So double check the results.

[KSband]

When you say bounce do you mean record to a separate track (it's already audio) ?

[John Vere]

At the top of the track pane on the left are some drop down menus. One say's Tracks. click on that and then bounce to tracks. Make sure the dialog box is checked for the options you want. It defaults to what always works for me.

This is a great way to clean up untidy tracks that are cut up in a million pieces. 

Make sure the whole track is highlighted first. Use the magnifying tool to shrink your view to see the whole song. 

Edited September 22, 2020 by John Vere

[KSband]

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. I gave it a try. I solo'ed my bass after the bounce and was surprised to hear some weird sounding notes, it must be from all my manipulating the wave forms to get them on time.  It wasn't the bounce that did it, it was the editing. I may have to re-record the bass.

[John Bradley]

Tip: Use as few audio transient markers as you can get away with (say, one per bar), and disable the rest. You'll get the best results with longer, uniformly-stretched audio segments rather than stretching/squeezing every note to be precisely on grid.

Also, position the markers right before the note starts, rather than in the middle of the attack. It'll be less noticable if there's a phase/tonality shift between the notes rather than in the middle of them.

Finally, there are several different offline rendering methods (Elastique Pro, and a number of Radius algorithms). Play around with them at see what works best for your particular audio.

Oh, and avoid the automatic quantization unless you enjoy seeking out and fixing random errors. Safer (and arguably faster) to just drag the markers around by hand. At least, that's what I do.

[RBH]

You can select the whole track and  ( bounce to clips ). This should render all ram based edits on the existing track which leaves all track settings intact. This will leave a single clip. Which creates a single file, depending on settings.

[KSband]

15 hours ago, John Bradley said:

Tip: Use as few audio transient markers as you can get away with (say, one per bar), and disable the rest. You'll get the best results with longer, uniformly-stretched audio segments rather than stretching/squeezing every note to be precisely on grid.

Also, position the markers right before the note starts, rather than in the middle of the attack. It'll be less noticable if there's a phase/tonality shift between the notes rather than in the middle of them.

Finally, there are several different offline rendering methods (Elastique Pro, and a number of Radius algorithms). Play around with them at see what works best for your particular audio.

Oh, and avoid the automatic quantization unless you enjoy seeking out and fixing random errors. Safer (and arguably faster) to just drag the markers around by hand. At least, that's what I do.

Oh yes the automatic quantization makes a mess.  Thanks all for the help.

[Byron Dickens]

Play in time and the problem solves itself.

[John Vere]

Another way to achieve a very tight bass track is to drag it to a midi track where you can quantize and easily move notes around. I use the Ample Bass for VST bass and it's real hard to hear that I'm cheating. This of course is depending on the type of music.

It also allows you to use radically different bass sounds. One I use a lot is the Acoustic Bass found in Dim Pro. Pretty convincing. I used to play upright bass and got rid of it because it was just to dang big sitting around the studio like that. And the maintenance was expensive too. 

[John Bradley]

Yep. I can play bass and have one hanging on the wall in my studio, and almost uniformly use MODO Bass (and click in the bass part on the PRV) on everything I do. Run it through a nice amp sim and hardly anybody could tell it wasn't real.

And it's inherently on-grid. Saves the time of fixing it with AudioSnap.

Only time I record real bass is when it's a sparse mix and/or the bass is the featured instrument. Or if it has lots of slides or percussive bits that'd be annoying to replicate in midi. See Flea, etc.

[Will.]

On 9/23/2020 at 1:03 AM, kurt soderquist said:

Thanks, that is what I was looking for. I gave it a try. I solo'ed my bass after the bounce and was surprised to hear some weird sounding notes, it must be from all my manipulating the wave forms to get them on time.  It wasn't the bounce that did it, it was the editing. I may have to re-record the bass.

Are those weird noises pops and clicks? If so, use your cross faders where it was cut - front and back. 

[KSband]

I re-recorded it yesterday, got a much cleaner track to stark with. Only needed small amount of adjustment. I think one of the things I did wrong before was the marker wasn't always before the start of the wave (small part behind) so I think it stretched or shrunk it weird. Recording is always a shock to me, it really reveals my bad timing and sloppy buzzy notes.

[John Vere]

 Recording is always a shock to me, it really reveals my bad timing and sloppy buzzy notes.

You sound like a prime candidate for trying the drag the audio to a midi track and use a VST bass. Try it with the track you just recorded. You have nothing to loose as it keeps the audio track. Simply insert a midi track and drag and drop the bass audio onto it. Melodyne will convert it.

These steps I apply to the whole track by selecting all:

Some VST's you have to transpose up 12.

I quantize

sometimes have to drag the duration back a bit so the notes don't overlap.

I will also even out the velocity by dragging to the max let go, and drag back down to about 110. 

 

Ample P bass lite is free.    https://www.pluginboutique.com/categories/64-Virtual-Instrument?free=true

You can also use SI Bass I get a pretty good sound from the Jazz Bass patch. 

Edited September 24, 2020 by John Vere