Missing Feature or User Error?

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

Hi Folks,
I’m using Audacity to edit my bands live recordings and there is one feature that appears not to exsist.
Typical situation, in the middle of a song there is stab from all four members. It sounds fine , live, however on play back the bass and bass drum are slightly apart, and the lead and rhythm guitars aren’t together.

What I’d like to be able to do is move a small section of the offending track to bring everything together without affecting the rest of the track.

Does this feature exist and if so where?

Thanks

Mike

2

If each instrument was isolated on a separate it would be possible to time-shift one instrument, e.g. edit one off drumbeat,
but if the instruments are all on the same track then shifting one but not the rest is impossible.

Simultaneous multitrack recording apparently is possible on Audacity … Multitrack on a Budget, TASCAM US-1800:

But even then you’d have to ensure each musician’s contribution was isolated , and didn’t include the sound of other musicians if you wanted to time-shift one instrument.

Without additional hardware you could you record each instrument separately asynchronously, (one at a time), but that’s not a live ensemble performance.

3

I record the shows on a Zoom R16 it’s purpose built for this. I have up to 8tracks I can record simultaniously, there is some bleed between instruments. the amount varies. For example I DI the bass and guitar amps so that is isolated, however there is some bleed onto the drum mics.

I’ll try the time stretch.

Mike

4

To move parts of a track you can use the Time Shift tool, but there must be room (empty track space) to move them.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tools_toolbar.html#timeshift

Here you can see that the third beat in the first track is late, but the other beats are OK, so we need to move just that one note:
tracks004.png
Here I have carefully selected that one note, from the exact start of the note to the exact start of the next note. (Zoom in close to get the selection accurate), then press Ctrl+I to “Split” that selection (“Split” is also in the Edit menu somewhere).
tracks005.png
Next I make a new audio track (Tracks menu) and drag the track up so that it is directly below the original track. (Click on the box on the left end of the track and drag - take care to avoid the track sliders and buttons).

Change to the Time Shift tool (shortcut is F5) and drag the offending note to the correct place on the new track.
tracks006.png
When you have made all of the necessary corrections to the track, you can “mix down” tracks 1 and 2 into a single track by selecting them, then use “Mix and Render” from the Tracks menu.
tracks007.png
More info here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_tracks_and_clips.html

5

Thanks for that explination of time shift.

I’ll experiment with this tomorrow.

MIke