Monday, October 7, 2013

Crossfading 101

The purpose of the first Dance Project of the year was to learn how to cut digital audio in Audacity. The purpose of Dance Project 2 is to learn how to crossfade instead of making hard cuts on a piece of music of the student's own choosing.  Let me tell you, this was a struggle for some students.

Some students learned that they need to listen to a piece of music differently when crossfading.  Instead of listening to the lyrics, they need to listen not just for the beat ("boom...boom...boom...boom"), but also for the count ("...5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2...").  The technique I have learned to use comes from working with WLA's Dance and Cheer Teams over the years.  They have what they call "8-Counts": generic sideline routines choreographed to groups of eight beats that they can adapt to fit any song that is played by the Pep Band at a home football or basketball game.

I use the concept of "eight counts" when cutting music to help me line up the end of one cut with the beginning of another cut.  The procedure I use and teach my students is this:
  1. Leave extra music (at least 4-5 beats) at the beginning and ending of each cut so that you have music to overlap to make a good crossfade.
  2. Find the last downbeat of the first cut (beat "1") and line it up vertically with the first downbeat of the second cut (also beat "1"). 
  3. Decide whether you need to either silence audio (Cmd-L) on either track at the overlap or if it works better to fade out audio on the first track and fade in audio on the second track (like in the picture above).
  4. Check your work by listening through your crossfade, tapping your foot to make sure the beat is steady and counting eight-counts to make sure "1" (the downbeat) fall on the strongest beat.
Want to learn more about crossfading in Audacity?  Read the article "How to Use Crossfade in Audacity for Seamless Transitions Between Audio Tracks" from How-To Geeks.

EDITED 10/9/13 11:54 am – Rebecca raised a good point in her comment below: I never talked about "Christmas trees" in this blog post.  When I first start teaching my students to see beats in a waveform, I encouraged them to tip their heads to the right and see the wave as a Christmas tree laying on it's side: the bottom branches of the tree are the beginning of the beat, the narrowest part of the wave is the top of the Christmas tree. (Do you the "Christmas tree" in the crossfading picture above?) Thinking this way, I can tell my students to always cut entire "Christmas trees" (up to, but not including the bottom branches of the next "tree") and they will always select entire beats in their editing.

When should you use the "Christmas tree" method?  I use it every time I select audio, because I will always select a full beat.  The challenge in crossfading comes when you are working with music that has lyrics.  Crossfading lyrics gets messy because you can hear the same singer singing two different words at the same time.  If it can't happen on stage that way, I try to never let that happen in my editing. So, I'll do a hard cut, using the Christmas tree method) on whichever track needs the lyrics cut out and use a fade on the other track.

21 comments:

  1. Very nice description on how to crossfade music. Did not know the shortcut for silencing was Cmd-L. How long have you done the music for the dance team?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. There are keyboard shortcuts to most Audacity commands. Look in the drop down menus. I've cut Dance Team music since the inception of the Dance Team. The first software I used to cut music was Logic and the plugin to speed up and slow down music was $600. That's why I like teaching Audacity. It does the same thing and it's free!

      Delete
    2. Wow, $600 dollars for that. That's crazy. I'm glad we have Audacity.

      Delete
    3. Eveything comes down in price eventually. Now Logic Pro is only $199. (http://www.apple.com/logic-pro/) I don't remember what the plug was called that I used to use. I'd have to do some serious searching to find that info.

      Delete
  2. Thanks to you I now know how to cut my own music for the dance team. :) I wish I had taken this class sooner. Where did you first learn to use cross fading?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad you can! That's exactly why I teach this class! I learned cross fading kind of on my own by trial and error. I've never taken a class in music editing. I have learned a lot from the dance and cheer teams, especially when they ask for cuts on a certain count or give me directions for cutting based on counts.

      Delete
  3. This is a very good description on how to crossfade! Very clear and easy to follow! Now that I know how to cut the music like this and crossfade I can finally make our competition routine music :) Do you prefer to use the christmas tree method you taught us for dance project 1 or using the crossfading method?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I use both methods, depeding on what the music needs. If there are a lot of lyrics, I generally need to use hard cuts or silencing audio on an overlap. If the music is mostly instrumental, I can get away with using a pure crossfade. When does your comp music need to be done by? Do you know what music you are going to use? What are the time requirements?

      Delete
  4. As I was doing my blog, I looked around for some good ways to describe crossfading in a simple way that most can understand. I wish I would have looked here because this is absolutely spot on! I like how in the intro you have a lot of links to the things you were talking about, that's nice for the person who wants the background on why this was going on. As Jake stated, I did not know that Cmd-L was the silence shortcut, very interesting. On a weekly basis, besides this class, do you use audacity often to help with other things you are doing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Caleb! Audacity has become my go-to software for recording or editing audio. I haven't found the need to use anything else. I was going use it to record myself singing for Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 4 until I realized that all you needed to do was to record directly to the VC4 website. All you need is Audacity and a decent USB mic. I personally love the Blue Yeti microphone! http://bluemic.com/yeti/

      Delete
  5. This article was very clear, it had lots of great links, and, most importantly, it really gave a good description of how to crossfade! If I was just a random person that came to this article and read it, I would almost completely understand how to crossfade correctly and tastefully. You might want to add the benefits of crossfading over the 'christmas tree method'. Also (and this has nothing to do with the article really but all the good questions were taken!) if you could change one thing about Audacity what would it be?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Benefits of cross fading over the Christmas tree method? You're spot on! You should be an English teacher! I'll add that next.

      Delete
  6. Good point! I should have talked about Christmas trees! I'll write more later. Chapel now!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I added that information. Look for the "EDITED..."

      Delete
  7. It was very good and descriptive, and it teaches people who aren't in Tech music class what crossfading is all about.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I really like the way you described crossfading. It is fairly simple and has some good links.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It is a good post of explaining how to cut music better! It was not my first time use this software but this is my first time be taught what is the main knowledge when I cut a song.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have some question. How can you know this free software? Or use the software from Mac like GarageBand?
      There are some software I know like nuendo and cubase. Can you talk me what is the different if you know it.

      Delete
  10. sometime it is really hard to find beat to cut and add with crossfading. you explained very detailed and easy to understand thanks!! and many links also help a lot too!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. I agree with Sienna! For me it was very hard to find the beat and I had to ask every time to find it. The article is very good to understand. Now I think I have understand the most of the project! Thank you for that :}

    ReplyDelete