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As silly as it may sound, I think there is an art to creating , for example, 60 sec edits, 30, etc. In some of my tracks though, not so clear cut to create edits that say. don’t start out mid verse and go to the chorus without sounding abrupt, or pasted on. Anyway, not as straightforward as you might think. Any advice or anyone want to give a primer for us new to creating these type of edits?
i’ve wondered the same thing. how do you approach cues with awkward 30, 60 sec edit points?
I think you learn how to do it with practice.
I start from the perspective that I am writing library / production music, which is not like “song” writing.
I plan for the edits in the compositional process. I’m conscious of what’s going on around the 30 and 60 second marks. Often, I start by writing a :30 or :60 cue and build the full length cue from there.
It’s fairly easy in DAW to edit audio files and mix them seamlessly. Sometimes, it’s necessary to modify the midi files, or to replay some live parts.
If you come up short, you can add pick-up notes or a fill intro to the cue. If you have a good DAW, you can sometimes get away time-strecthing, if it’s not too extreme.
Take your time to look for the most musical spots to make the edits, that won’t sound awkward.
DOn’t sweat the extra sometime 2 to 4 seconds (i.e. 34 to 1:04)
This does matter. 60, 30 and 15 second cues are standard lengths for advertising. The edits should actually be out by 59.5, 29.5 and 14.5.
If you don’t do edits to those lengths, you are leaving it to the commercial’s producer to edit the cut to make it work, which defeats the purpose of supplying edits.
I make my edits button at 29.5 or 59.5 and let them ring out past the 30 or 60 point. I also cut them from a mixed track.
I take my original project file (I work in Sonar) save it with an alternate name, say “title-edits”, delete all plugins and tracks and basically zero everything out. This way I have a project file in a default state with all my original markers and at the correct tempo.
I set a marker at 29.5 and one at 59.5 and load in the mixed track. I can now cut on marker, bar or beat lines, paste to a different track and button out as close to 29.5 (or 59.5) as I can. Because I’m working in a project file with the correct tempo it’s easy to cut or add an 8th or 16th and make the edit more musical. I then render that track to a mix. I knock these out very fast using this method.
Great advice! I’ve always disliked creating edits, so much so, that I finally stopped doing them. Perhaps I’ll reconsider now:) I wonder how much of a difference it’ll make with sales.
As someone stated above, making a 30 sec track is harder than you think. We recommend when creating new music, a fun exercise is to make a really bang-up 29.5 sec track. And if you still love it, expand it to 59.5 sec. If you really, really are having fun and think it’s great then expand it to a full track of at least 90 sec so it can go into a streaming music station, or of course longer if you like.
Sometimes it’s just fun to make a bunch of 30 sec tracks in a number of genres that can be grabbed by clients needing a quick commercial.
Another reason to religiously stay right under the 30 sec or 60 sec time is that smaller clients may not have the edit capability and will just have to chop off a 32 or 36 sec track, and it destroys all your efforts at a smooth / perfect ending for your wonderful short tracks.
And an even more compelling reason to stay within the time limit is that the clients just won’t buy your 32 sec or longer tracks and instead, will license someone else’s cue that meets their criteria of being within the 30 or 60 sec max length.
I find Sound Forge’s “Time Stretch” feature helpful in making exact timing edits. Make your edit as close as possible then tell the software to make it exact to the time you want. If you make the right settings there are no artifacts. Sometimes I use the time stretch feature on just the final hit instead of the whole tune. I do some math to figure out the time needed on only the final hit to give me the exact timing, and stretch only that section. This can work better than an abrupt fade.
Disclaimer: I am not, and have never been, a member of “Taxi.”
Here’s an article by it’s founder, in which he discusses edits. about midway down.
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