This week’s blog post is all about cleaning up guitar tracks. Although this is not the most exciting topic… in today’s production/perfection crazy audio industry having extremely clean tracks is expected. There are lots of ways that you can clean up your tracks, and in this post I’m going to briefly go over a couple that I utilize.

First, and possibly the most important, is making sure that all punch in and punch out points have fades. I always took for granted that audio tracks would be properly faded in and out when I started off. That is because I was always the one working on the tracks. However, not that I am receiving tracks online from clients… I’m realizing that some basic production necessities sometimes go overlooked. Fading in and out audio tracks at the beginning and end of their region is an absolute necessity, and here is why. When you have an audio signal that is cut (either at the beginning or end of a region) you are creating a spot where there is an audio “pop”. The only way to avoid this is to make sure the cut is at the absolute zero amplitude mark… just about impossible. I say this is just about impossible, because most DAWs don’t allow the precision for this to happen. Soooo… the way to avoid this kind of noise is to make a fade. The fade can be a short 2 millisecond edit fade or a long drawn out musical fade… either way there needs to be a fade at the ends of every audio region. Even if you don’t hear a pop right away… that doesn’t mean one won’t sneak in later during mixdown or export… and once they are there, there is no turning back.

The other key noise removal techniques that I like to employ is using noise removal plugins to remove amp noise, ambient noise on acoustic tracks, or just about any unwanted noise. Nothing is more annoying than hearing a fantastic sounding song and at the end, as the guitar sustains and decays their last note, all of a sudden this obnoxious amp noise creeps in. That kind of production just doesn’t fly… however, sometimes you just need to use a noisy amp to get the tone you need. That is when I bring in the really cool plugins and do some noise analyzation and reduction. I have recorded acoustic guitar tracks that have had truck noise from the back alley in them and sometimes there is just too much hissing from an amp to ignore… but those noise issues need to be taken care of. I have found the typically the only way to get these noises out is to employ a plugin that will analyze noise and remove the analyzed parts. There are a handful of manufacturers out there that make products like this… and I highly recommend finding one that works for you

That is it for this week. Check back next week for another songwriting blog post.