editing to score

[thenewyear]

I am in the process of finishing off an album of church organ music for a well respected musician in my (admittedly small) country.

The recording was done on location over two days recording into Pro Tools LE. After I had provided 'rushes' on two CDs the producer sent me a complete set of scores for all the pieces with edit points between different takes marked on in green pen. I then went through and stitched the whole thing together.

Now I read music fluently and have done this kind of work in the past but this was easily the biggest project of this kind I have attempted and at times it was completely doing my head in

Are there many other folks doing this kind of work regularly? Any hints or tips to share???

[rr1073]

The key is good notes and being very organized. It can be a real jigsaw puzzle if you don't have clear directions/notes from the sessions. As far as editing goes, the ambiance of the room/hall and the sustain of the notes can be tricky. That's where most of the difficulty lies. Tempos need to be pretty consistent. It helps if the producer at the session is aware of how editing works and can account for that when they are doing multiple takes and pick-ups. You always look for a good edit point, but sometimes you have to edit between 16th notes or something and it can be difficult. I try to take a short break every 2 hours or so just to clear my head. And if my ears get too tired...stop.

[jhamburg]

I've done a fair amount of classical editing and all I can really say is that it takes longer than you think. Having any sort of formal music training is obviously a real help. Just realize that to make truly musical edits, you need to have spent some time learning to play, reading scores, studying some theory and so forth. When you are cutting, you are acting as a non real-time performer. Even though you have the luxury of sitting in front of the computer, it can be stressful. I've just learned to relax and trust my instincts, when something doesn't seem right, there's always an underlying musical reason.

As to losing one's mind;
My first real editing project was produced by Bob Wollf who is one of John Williams editors. I spent about a week on a 40 minute album in which I obsessed over every single element. I did nearly piss myself with fear when I sat in the mastering suite as he reviewed my work. Luckily, I only screwed up once. I feel your pain.

cheers,

joel

[fifthcircle]

Ahh yes... welcome to my world.

I earn a pretty good chunk of my living doing classical editing. This is where 4-point edits are *very* powerful- whether you are using Sonic, SADiE, Sequoia, or Pyramix.

What I would suggest is to assemble, then edit. Keep your mind on the music. Find the chunks you need and put them all in a row. Once that is done, go in and tweak crossfades to make the edits work.

I would also make an written edit list before you even start listening to music. If you put it in 2 colums, the first being bars and the second being take numbers, it can become very clear. That way, you may notice that bars 1-23 are from take 18, bars 24-27 from take 32, and bars 28 to the end are from take 18. In this case, I'd put the entire take 18 up as my base take and then just plug in bars 24-27 from take 32.

Looking at your music in this kind of organized fashion will save you much time...

--Ben

[genericperson]

what's a "4-point edit"?

[fifthcircle]

4-point editing is an editing model that is used a lot in film work and was originally developed by Sonic Solutions for audio work in their workstations. In some ways, you can consider it similar to cutting tape, but being on a DAW, much more versatile (and quicker)

It works this way:

You have tracks as a source and other tracks as a destination. In each, you can label a start and end point (in and out) for your edits. With one key, the audio marked in your source tracks can edit into the destination tracks. The audio will be put in exactly the area you labeled regardless of length (ie. 2 minutes in source could get edited into a 2 second destination and the audio past it will adjust as needed).

When used with the crossfade editor, you have an amazingly powerful editing interface.

There are also 2 point and 3 point variations with this-

3-point:

In a source or destination, you set an in and out point and in the other you just set one of the points (in or out). When you edit the source up into the destination, the audio will be replaced in the same amount of time as you specified. This can be handy, but if your sections aren't the same length, you can have difficulties finding your edit points.

You do this often when you are assembling takes for editing in classical music for your rough edits. Place source ins and outs and edit to a single in point. The in point in the destination will move to the end of the section and you can repeat.

2-point

In this way of editing, you simply specify a set of start points and
everything past it edits up to the destination start point.

Now, once all of your audio is assembled, you go into your crossfade editor and you can simply match up the wav representations... You slide the audio around and change the fades. With this, the most complex edits can take seconds to do. I have used it to clip the fronts of notes when attacks aren't together, edit inside notes, put words together in dialog editing,
etc...

4 point editing is considered by many (especially classical music editors) to be the only way to go... As I said, Sonic Solutions started it, but this workflow has also been adopted by Sequoia, Pyramix, and SADiE.

I have a couple screen shots that will hopefully explain a bit better- They can be found at http://photos.yahoo.com/fifthcircle2004 Select the option for Sequoia screen shots.


A bit more info about exactly what you are seeing in these jpegs (they are a bit hard to see unfortunately)....

The first 2 are various shots of the crossfade editor in Sequoia- you'll see a similar one in Sonic and Pyramix and a different, but functionally similar one in SADiE. In Sequoia, a multichannel edit looks pretty much the same except that the crossfade editor says something other than 1 track in and out...

The next 2 shots show the source/destination mode...

The top panel is your destination and the bottom is your source. An in and out point is labeled in each. At the press of 1 button, the audio from the bottom will replace the audio in the top with a crossfade at each end.

In your source section, you may want to take an entire session and drop markers as it loads. This makes it very easy to find your edit points.

This source/destination model can work over as many tracks as you want (at least in Sequoia it can). I have done 24 and 48 track edits with this model. It is done the same way... If you prefer, it can be easier to edit from one project into another as well...

OK... enough of a novel here... In the end, it is much easier to explain in front of the computer... Hope this helps.

--Ben

[Remoteness]

Excellent...

You always give us your best thoughts and enlightenment.
Keep up the good work Ben!

You are one of the reasons why I love Gearslutz and our (quality not quantity) Remote Possibilities Forum.

[sonare]

Originally posted by thenewyear

The recording was done on location over two days recording into Pro Tools LE. After I had provided 'rushes' on two CDs the producer sent me a complete set of scores for all the pieces with edit points between different takes marked on in green pen. I then went through and stitched the whole thing together.

My hat is off to anyone who can edit organ music in PT! IMO that can be the most difficult because of the reverberant sound that you are working with, and without a good crossfade editor I would not even try it. In Sequoia I often will cut the sample rate for playback in half just to make the runs easier to cut within. And Ben's suggestion for preparing a "roadmap" is solid gold.


As for this making your head hurt-- if you are not a lover of classical this kind of project would be a backwards donkeyride thorough Hades!

You happen to have one of the best engineer/producers on the planet right there in Scotland-- Philip Hobbs at Linn Records. If I lived there I would offer to assist for free just to be able to observe and learn.

Rich

[thenewyear]

The musician and producer on the recording have both worked with Philip Hobbs on a number of occasions so I have had a lot to live up to.

Some good techniques and suggestions here, I will post back when I have more time to reply to all the great points individually.