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Today, we’ll talk about the bane of many a producer’s life – Editing! This is usually the most dreary and time consuming (and therefore expensive) part of the whole recording process, and a double edged sword for most people who do this work professionally – while it can be a “cash cow”, it’s also work that most of us don’t want to do even for a pile of money! It’s basically janitorial work – why pay skilled labor to clean your stinky bathroom? If you are doing your own recording, make sure you flush the toilet before sending the tracks out for mixing – it will be better for everyone involved!
Standing here at the (imaginary) Producer’s Convention, let’s ask some of the Professionals out on the floor…
Look, it’s Dave Sperandio! “Hey Dio – what do you think of editing?”
(Dave lets out a terrified shriek and runs away.)
Hmm, let’s ask James Gammon: “Hey James – what do you think of editing?”
(James pulls out a switchblade and tells me to never mention that word in his presence again. I run away screaming.)
Freddie Feldman overhears my question and calls out an alarm…
After being narrowly missed by Tat Tong’s nunchucks, I try to escape between Pete Hollens, Marty Gasper, and the whole Liquid 5th gang who heard me mention the “E” word and are running toward me with big clubs!
You get the picture – we all feel pretty strongly about this stuff, and console each other when one of us is in “Editing Hell”! We feel each other’s pain!
When a group sends one of us something that is well edited, we also announce that to everyone else because it means we will have a nice day with little trauma involved.
When you do your own recording, make sure you allow plenty of time for editing – the more you can do before you send it out for mixing, the less it will cost, and the less likely your mix engineer will be waiting for you in the bushes when you get home (oh yes, they know where you live!)
This is an example of a track that was actually sent to me at one point. Listen to the whole 45 seconds. I’ll wait…
Listen Now
For a pile of money and a bottle of scotch to ease the pain, I could have fixed it, but instead I sent it back to them to fix themselves. The big secret here is that the group itself can do this editing almost as fast as a professional can. Like I said, this is basically janitorial work – if nothing else, take out the extraneous talking, phones ringing, and really, really bad unusable stuff - then try to basically line things up so they make sense, if not hopefully form some sort of groove. While a skilled producer is capable of cleaning your sink, they’ll still charge the same amount for their time as they do painting that nice scrollwork around it, which is the skilled labor for which they are known!
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