How to put breaks in tracks for easy editing

[buildingcastles]

So, I’ve heard some of you say you put breaks in between parts so it’s easy for a music editor to chop it up how s/he wants it. Do you have any tracks you could post as an example of how you do this? Do you do it in transition between each/every section? Like A-break-B-break-A etc? Do you kill any slow decays and reverb tails almost instantly, so they don’t ring out in the break? How long is the break? Do you try to make it a short break, so it almost sounds like it’s supposed to be that way and doesn’t sound really awkward and disjointed when played back unedited? Or do you figure, “meh, it can be a half bar break, and they can just slice it together to sound fluid if they want.” For those of you that do this, do you do this with ALL your tracks and edits? Wouldn’t this sorta screw up 60 and 30 second edits, that you probably want to be music all the way through, and with the spaces, it just feels sorta unmusically disjointed? Thanks for any details. I wanna make sure I do this right.

[buildingcastles]

I guess this would also mean avoiding cymbal crashes at the end of a bar before a break, adding them to the beginning of the new section instead. (I thought of this was I was just now working a crash into a track)

[Mark_Petrie]

We do this in trailer music all the time. Some of the TV shows I write for also like the breaks. Avoiding a cymbal crash before the break is a good idea, but anything with a long decay can be cool as long as you let it ring out and die off before coming back in. I don’t think complete silence is always necessary, especially if you’re giving them stems. I think it’s wise to still make it musical – some people will just want to play the music from beginning to end.

Here are some examples of my work: (I apologize for the big press photo in each demo, I need to figure out the new SoundCloud settings!)

gap at 1:11

gaps at :53, 2:00 and 2:30

gap at :54

[Tbone]

Holy cow, what razor do you use Mark? That has to be the closest shave I’ve ever seen!

I let stuff ring out in the breaks for mine, though I don’t do many tracks with pronounced breaks anyway.

[MichaelL]

Thanks Mark….always a pleasure to hear your work!

Best,

Michael

[Advice]

Holy cow, what razor do you use Mark? That has to be the closest shave I’ve ever seen!

HAHAHA! Smooth as a baby’s bottom!

Just razzin’ 😛

[buildingcastles]

Thanks for posting those tracks, Mark. I forgot to check them out when I was on faster internet, but I’ll get to them tonight.

[Author]

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