Editing

Editing, like listening, is a tool that pervades all parts of the music production process. We edit while deciding what to record, thinking about what types of sounds to use and how to use them, and then by taking apart the recording itself and sculpting individual sounds. There are endless permutations and directions that can be explored with the same raw materials and editing allows you to do these explorations and make choices based on observation. It allows you to rewrite the story of the moment in the recording. Putting different places adjacent to each other, or on top of each other as different layers in an arrangement is as simple as a few clicks of a button. The lack of a requirement for sequential linearity, which is allowed by looking at an audio waveform or an arrangement on a screen - taking it apart, moving pieces around, cutting out individual seconds - offers the ease and flexibility to construct a world on your own terms, governed only by the limits imposed by the raw material and your decision-making process.

To get close up to the sound and play with where the edit begins and ends opens it up in a new way, and reminds us how drastically different a change can occur from what seems like a small extension or reduction of time. Moving an edit point of an audio waveform a fraction of a second to the left or right (i.e. earlier or later) changes the rhythm of the sound and can take something that felt unusable and turn it into something inspiring. Where a sound ends and begins, how it feels, whether it stops on a hard cut or is allowed to fade out, determines the relationship of each sound to its surroundings. What might seem disposable at first can turn into a focal point for your work after inspecting it closer and experimenting with the edit. The more one practices, the easier it is to recognize.

This goes hand-in-hand with looking/listening closer, finding the hidden moments that can easily be overlooked, pulling out the latent possibilities, and generally offering oneself a chance to consider the sound differently. When listening we have the opportunity to do some editing in our head, to begin thinking about what to take out of the original source. When you record, whether it is in a public space or within the home, the resulting recording is a palette from which to pull. It is there to play with, to search through, to take what you need and leave what you don't. It is ripe with possibility - dependent on what you're looking for, how you want to use it, and the direction you're moving towards.

Potential is the essential point. It is the beginning of everything. You don't know what you'll find, but if you recognize the potential in a sound, in a source, in a movement, you at least create the circumstances whereby you have tools to play with. You allow the situation to exist, to take shape, to form itself into something complete. It is easy to write something off as not fitting, or as not being the right "thing," and sometimes it just isn't, but when you develop your own sensibilities and your individual conception of sound you will begin to more easily recognize the materials which may add value, which may help you fulfill your vision, and perhaps change it in the process.

Assignment:

Please edit five sounds out of the recording(s) you made for the first assignment. Think about what you thought you would want to edit out when you were listening initially and look at your notes, if you made any. Compare this with how you think about the sounds now. Do you still want to edit the same things? Why or why not?

Consider that these will be used in a sound piece. They can be as long or short as you'd like.