4 Sessions - Nearly Two Hours of Material - Now What?

Power Tracks Audio Pro is a great program for capturing your rehearsals.  This particular set was broken into 4 sections (ten songs) and ran nearly two hours when I began to look at what was there.  Loading the material up is only a small part of the battle - the Audio Edit Window allows for loading the complete sections, but then you have to load and reload while you break songs out into their individual pieces - the easier method would have been to record each song separately and then the pieces would have been smaller and more manageable.   INSTEAD - I just let the recorder run (in one instance nearly 45 minutes) - which left me with a lot of clean up to do.  THEN there was the second problem - the balances were good - but the track was nowhere near enough soaked without some serious EQ and normalization to drag it all up to a good listening level.

I labeled each section when I saved like this - Session1-06032006, Session2-06032006, etc. until I had saved all four parts.  These larger parts would then be available to glean the actual song material that had been recorded from in multiple editing passes.  This is not a small job.  You begin by trimming the tuning noises, dirty jokes (yeah!  :) , spirited laughter and other miscellani out of your material.  This is easy to do once you open the audio edit window and simply listen making note of where the punch/clip marks will be made to edit it down to an easier to work with size.  Editing waves is a snap in Power Tracks Pro Audio - for the modest amount that you can purchase this software for you will be absolutely amazed at the results you can get.  For starters - I have 48 tracks available - and don't think mixdown is difficult - it isn't.

As a note to this - all balances are individually adjustable and one session track that was recorded includes "RAIN" (Beatles) which was recorded orginally with only one vocal track on the initial sound check track.  After the fact I was able to go back and record additional vocal harmonies to enhance the recording quite a bit.  (I am chuckling to myself as I work on this just waiting for the guys to hear THIS).  

Power Tracks Pro Audio also has an incredible feature called MERGE TRACKS TO A WAVE FILE which gives you the opportunity to merge two or even 48 tracks complete with DX audio effects, reverb and whatever else the bug you had at the time caused you to do.  This in turn can then be loaded to a true mastering program like WAVELAB for further work and enhancement (e.g. additional EQ and even punching if necessary).

Scroll down a ways to see POWER TRACKS PRO AUDIO and BAND IN A BOX for a great price, all orderable with a simple click of  a mouse.

To further elaborate - the wave edit window (AUDIO EDIT WINDOW) in Power Tracks Pro Audio allows for very accurate trimming and editing.  (A La PRO TOOLS style!).  While I am not planning to do this on this pass - you can futher enhance your recording with samplers, additional percussion, even more vocals or guitar doubling.  You can also build a project from scratch with nothing more than a click track and a drum machine - and if you DON'T WANT to mess with an actual drum machine - Power Tracks Pro Audio will FILL YOUR TRACK with drums which are available in the software itself.

As you can already surmise - Power Tracks Pro Audio is an economical and powerful way to record - you can produce manufacturing quality CD masters with the skill that you will rapidly acquire using this program.

Till Next Time.

-g