Editing/remixing Software, Freestyle type tape-editing on the Mac Options

[keybie]

Actually I use Digital Performer. Here's what you do. In the EDIT window of your DAW;

This is the kind of editing I've done for years with even free software like Sound effects and Audacity (not editing songs, but audio samples, speeches etc.).
Although editing music this way can be done you can imagine just how complicated it must be when making perhaps hundreds of tiny edits in a song, keeping track of:

a) the exact location where the clip is copied from
b) the exact length of the clip you copied
c) the exact location where you will paste the new clip
d) finding another exact location in the song to extract (with the exact same length as the section you pasted somewhere else), so as to make room for the new clip without "shifting" the rhythm flow.

Yes, I'm sure it can be done (after all, the pioneers of this art-form used 1/4" tape, cutting, splicing and shifting bits around. I'm sure they must have measured (literally, with a ruler) how long a section of say 1 bar would be, then divide it to get the length of the section they wanted to copy/paste etc.).
Just listen to the example MP3 clip I posted earlier and you'll hear just how complex a "multi-edit" or "machine-gun edit" can be.

I was hoping for a better tool for this task than a "normal" audio editor (as in a tool for trimming audio samples, removing or shifting around parts of a speech, normalizing an audio file or adding effects etc.), which in the end is quite different from cut/paste of "stand alone" audio, where it doesn't matter if you "shift" the audio in front or behind the section you're working on around.

Are there any Mac users here who does this kind of multi-editing?

This post has been edited by keybie: Tue 17 Apr 2007, 13:24

[keybie]

Most of them have a "grid" function that is at the tempo of the song you're recording but you can cut, copy or paste anywhere you need to outside of the "grid" just the same way they cut, copied and pasted tape loops. What is a helpful function in pro tools is something called "tab to transient" which moves your cusor to the beginning of a transient or beat like a kick or snare. From there it's really easy to cut a piece and paste it on a transient where you want your copied piece to be.

That sounds useful if it works, because wouldn't relying on transients be unreliable as the software could mistake another sound than the kick or snare to be a part of the actual beat?
Perhaps there's a way you can manually define where say a 1 bar 4/4 beat starts and ends (i.e. a perfect 1 bar rhythm loop), then tell the software to duplicate this definition throughout the rest of the song.
If the song has a steady beat (e.g. a drum machine) that should work fine. Otherwise the measurement definition could be repeated only for a certain part of the song, then re-defined. This is just an idea I have in my head and there might be other, better ways of doing it.

But getting back to ProTools which you talk about, once the "tab to transient" function has been turned on, can you then choose how high resolution that "grid" or "ruler" will have (so you can see bigger or smaller parts of a beat) and then select a "block" of audio instead of carefully aiming the mouse to get at that precise section of audio?
Now THAT would be a helpful tool: If I could divide the whole song up into perfectly correctly length sections according to the beat, then just shift and/or copy them around as I like

Does ProTools have an advantage over other software applications (such as Logic Express which I'm wondering if I should get), or do all major DAW applications allow for this sort of thing?