Editing

See also how to edit synthesised music.

Although the basic process of creating music is orchestration - recording - editing, even orchestration can include elements of editing.

Some of the sounds in my tracks are software instruments - I set the software to make certain notes in certain places, and the software creates those sounds either as it plays the track back to me or as it makes the output file. The master doesn't contain any sound files for software instruments, though the software probably has sound clips that it uses to manufacture the sounds made by that instrument. Sounds made by software instruments don't really require editing other than changing the notes or effects.

Other sounds are often referred to as audio files. These are waveforms, either recorded by a microphone or retrieved from a sound library as audio files. These can be directly edited, including fading them in or out, changing the gain on individual regions, clipping parts off the beginning or end or even out of the middle, cutting into individual notes and putting them in a different order and any number of other things. These sorts of sounds are less versatile and much harder to work with. Especially for sounds recorded with a microphone, they can be extremely time consuming to edit into finished form.

Let's say some guitar is recorded. If the timing wasn't quite right, one of the notes had fret buzz but was OK later in the recording, or it's decided that some of the notes would be better longer or shorter, all of that can be changed, but it can take a long time and a lot of effort.

Both sorts of sounds can have effects added to them. In the end they are digital recordings, streams of digits, and that means you can do almost anything to them. The technology has got to the point that almost any sound imaginable can be manufactured one way or another, if you have the time and the patience.

Nothing created by people is ever going to be perfect, but making it as good as is humanly possible is a slow process. Increasingly as the years have passed, you can rest absolutely assured that the tracks on this site were gone through repeatedly, listened to hard, and had strenuous efforts made to improve it.