Crossfades (Quick Tips)

Hey, it's Josh Doyle from Triple Threat Artists!

Today I want to talk about Crossfades - and when you would want to use a narrow crossfade versus a wide crossfade, and how it can impact some of the creative edits and creative choices that you want to make.

I'm going to start here with a simple vocal just by itself. And let's check this out - and we're going to make some some creative edits to this. We're going to change it up. So let's take a listen here.

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Okay, so let's let's take the ending first. Let's suppose that I wanted to extend how long she holds this very last long note here. So let's find where she kind of settles on that long note.

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So it's right around here.

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All right, so let's say that I wanted the vocal to last twice as long on that note here. So good to do a command 'D' to duplicate. All right, and now I'm going to zoom in here and make sure we've got a little crossfade leftover. So let's just listen to what we have here.

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Okay, so we have that little pop happening, right? Now, let's do this. Let's first take this section and just bring it back over a little bit. So we have a bit of audio from both sides to crossfade with, and now I'm just going to do a small crossfade on this like that. So it's something really small. You can barely see it when I zoom out. And now let's listen.

(Audio Plays)

Okay, so that got rid of the pop, but you can still kinda hear the point where the edit happens, right? So in a case like this, when I've got long notes that I'm trying to make a seamless transition, I will do a wider crossfade something maybe like this. And now let's try this and see what this sounds like.

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All right, and we're getting just a little bit of of the previous note in there. So now let's listen. I just nudged it back over so we're we're getting kind of a cleaner transition.

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Okay, so now you hear that. Now you can still hear a little bit of the point, but it's not such a drastic point, right? Kind of a smoother transition

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And especially in the music - that's gonna just blend right in.

So now, let's now let's take a listen to a section where we might want to use a small crossfade. So let's see. Let's start here.

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Okay, so let's suppose that we wanted to duplicate or maybe extend this beginning section here. Let's do something like that. I'm going to duplicate this and let's hear what it sounds like now.

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All right, so we've got those pops in there, but let's suppose that we generally like that idea. So I'm going to select both crossfades, do the command 'F' in Pro Tools, and now that is going to automatically create, let's see, a 10 millisecond crossfade automatically on both of those. So that's what just happened there, right? So now we've got crossfades on both of these. So now let's listen

(Audio Plays)

So that's okay. You know, this isn't going to be perfect because it's still gonna sound like an edit, but let's see if we can just make this a little bit smoother. Let's drag this out a little bit and see what that sounds like.

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All right, we're, we're kind of getting there, right? We're, we're smoothing this out a little bit. Sometimes it takes a little finessing.

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Bring that back just a little bit more.

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All right, and maybe let's make this crossfade a little bit wider.

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Let's just bring it back. Maybe something like this.

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All right, so now we're getting a little bit closer.

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So there's still a little bit more finessing that I would do with this, but you can hear how where you place the crossfades at the edit point, and how wide of a crossfade you choose, can really impact how the edit sounds.

So give this a little consideration next time you're editing pieces of audio together. All right. Have fun!

Cheers!

Josh

https://www.thetriplethreatartist.com/