I'm recording guitar parts one phrase at a time and I find it's a real hassle trying to do this on just the one track. Not quite as bad as trying to learn guitar properly so I can do it in one take but, sigh, you go with the hand you're dealt I have to try to start the next recording slap bang up against the tail end of the previous one and it leaves me no time to prepare. It would be nicer if I could play the whole thing all through on one track, play it all through again on the next and so on, then pick the best version of each lick and copy that to a fourth track and have that be the final track. Can I do that? I know I can cut and paste and so forth but not while maintaining accurate time. I need an automatic way of doing it. I know I can get a lot more "feel" in that way.
You use many tracks to do a recording that way and here's how it's done
You have a main track with drums or a click track and or rythym guitar so you can see the overall time of your whole piece and keep track where you are as the song progresses.
start on the track right below the main track and record your guitar snipit using overdub so that track is in sync with the main click track.
record each new snipit on it's own track.
edit or shorten each track down to the exact length you want,
hightlight a short edited track section by clicking on it,
then hold down control and hit the up or down arrow key to move that section onto a new track that has all your guitar snipits
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You can edit and move short tracks as you go along so you don't end up with 25 tracks.
It looks like this on the mixcraft screen.
x's are the music
Be carefull not to move the short track section left or right or they will not be in time with your click track.
By highlighting the short track and then using control/up or down arrow, the track sections will move up or down and stay in perfect sync.
By the way, on the short snipits sections.
You can start early and and stop late, you don't have to start and stop exactly on the money. If you have a bunch of silence before you start playing or after you stop, just grab the edge of the track and shorten it.
That's all great, thanks, I got it going ok, saves me bags of time. I don't recall seeing any mention of this in the tutorials, perhaps it would be a good idea if it were included.
I have to try to start the next recording slap bang up against the tail end of the previous one and it leaves me no time to prepare. It would be nicer if I could play the whole thing all through on one track, play it all through again on the next and so on, then pick the best version of each lick and copy that to a fourth track and have that be the final track. Can I do that? I know I can cut and paste and so forth but not while maintaining accurate time. I need an automatic way of doing it. I know I can get a lot more "feel" in that way.