I need to delete a few bars from my song at the start

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Hi

I have tried to understand how to do this by using the help and the forums but am struggling.(again) I have a song to upload but it has a narrative voiceover at the start I need to get rid of for copyright reasons. The help section tells me to highlight all tracks and press delete or delete special. All this does is delete any data on the tracks. I want the song to start from a new point at zero when the narrative is taken out, obviously I don't want 10 bars of silence! Annoyingly I asked this last year and got (as usual) helpful replies. But I've lost the post and forgotten what I did! I think it was a dialog box asking how many measures to get rid of. Any clues welcome!

[wetdentist]

RIPPLE EDIT TOOL.

push the Ripple Edit button.  select all tracks, but just for the area you want to delete.  then in the Edit dropdown, choose "Delete Special" and then check all the boxes, and then delete.  it's like magic.  

[wetdentist]

but make sure to turn off Ripple Edit when you are done doing that (by pushing the Ripple Edit button again to deactivate it), or weird stuff will happen while editing other things

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks for this. I am missing something here; I tried this and yes it deleted the vocal track which shouldnt be on there, but as per my screenshot it hasnt taken away the blank timeline before the song starts, so there will obviously be silence until the music starts. This blank space is what I want rid of

[wetdentist]

hmm.  check to make sure when you activate Ripple Edit tool, the option that says "All" should be chosen.  then select the region that you want deleted (also making sure that all tracks are selected), and then try that process i described above again

[John Vere]

WAY easier to just top and tail an exported track in a wave editor. Lot's of free wave editors out there.  I use Wave Lab ( $100) but I also use Gold Wave which is free to use with nag screen http://www.goldwave.ca/   There's also Audacity and Sound Forge.  Cakewalk is your multitrack tape deck, A wave editor is for mastering. 

Just open or drag and drop the file and in 2 quick mouse moves delete and unwanted material from beginning and end.  Cakewalk cant ever export exactly what I want. 

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

Thanks John, that does sound simple and on my very basic level! Will have a look.

[user390096]

Assuming you don't have any tempo changes, first highlight the track with the voice-over and hit delete. Then select All of the tracks by using your keyboard and hitting CTRL+A simultaneously, you should see all of the tracks highlighted, then using your mouse simply go to any of the tracks (they should all be lit up) and click on it and hold the left mouse button down, and drag all of the tracks to the left and when you get them all to the left, let go of the left button on the mouse and they will now all be at the beginning. Very simple. It sounds like maybe you don't know how to select tracks?

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

I would put the head on the first beat of the first beat of the first bar where you want to start. Press Ctrl -A to select all. Then press S(?) to split. Then just select everything before the first beat and delete. It will all disappear and leave what you want.

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

All good alternatives. Audacity however didn't like the Cakewalk formats. 

 I retried the ripple edit suggestion from above user, and this time it worked perfectly and was actually quite simple. Thanks all, as usual I appreciate all comments and advice!

[John Vere]

No you don't work with CWP files, you Export your master and then you top and tail. 

What people are telling you to do is to delete the material you don't want then drag the whole song to the starting point. This is a receipt for disaster in Cakewalk if you don't set things right. It works if the song is simple with no automation etc. So best to not worry about the song at the project level and export it and deal with the master as a wave file.  

I'm just not a fan of using Cakewalk for mastering when wave editors are easily available with a better workflow. Example just a month ago I created a new Cakewalk project for Mastering an album of songs. My goal was to make every songs dynamics and overall sound even.  You put all the goodies on the master bus , drag each rough master to a track.  And then solo each song as you work on getting things right etc.  The sonic portion of this worked just fine and I got things very close to perfect but the export of each track was the downside.  It was not hard to drag each track to the starting point but it was never precise like in a wave editor.  And every song had a way different amount of space at the end  so the exports still needed trimming in a wave editor. Ya I know there are work around to fixing this but it just is clunky and time consuming the wave editor does it in seconds.  Not only that I can check the file has no overs or errors. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by John Vere

[RICHARD HUTCHINS]

I see your point John. From my point of view, I write songs to share with others, ( NB I am a complete nobody in song writing terms) and this is what I enjoy. To get to a higher standard of mixes and masters would be great but it simply would take too long to catch up and to learn new things to the level of yourself and others on the forum; if I ever got someone who said " nice song, here's a cheque" ha ha then I don't think it would be because I'd done a great job of mixing it producing it etc. it would be because it was a good song, despite an amateur mix. So I try to improve my understanding of the process but I also must be careful not to devote all my time to this as I simply dont enjoy that side of things. But I do try my best to take advice, even when its a bit over my head!

[mrneil2]

Edit> Delete Special> Delete Hole.  That has always worked for me.