Song edit critque

I'm planning on making a bunch of Simfiles based on Eurovision songs that I like or songs that were potential songs for it whenever I get the chance to. Each song is about 3 minutes or so & I'm trying to edit down to about 1:40-1:50 (about DDR length)

This is one of the first edits I did to shorten it down. The song is Lose Control by Waldo's People http://www.mediafire.com/?rh939zjj75l9ihk

Critques about the editing will be nice I will be making more examples soon

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I can notice where things are cut because things sort of just COME out of nowhere.
Hear around 0:21-0:30 (0:23) for the error.

I have some doubts about other parts of the song, but good first try.

Post the original MP3 you're trying to cut down, and I'll give you instructions to making a better cut out of it.

Tyma: Here's the original



Aegis: Yeah that's where most of the editing had to take place, took out a huge chunk out of the song, taking out the 2nd verse, 1 chorus & pre-chorus & starting it with the 2nd pre-chrous

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I mean the MP3 you actually cut to make the edit. I was going to give you time measurements as examples of where it can be cut without having an obvious jump in the musical progression.

Ohhh ok here you go http://www.mediafire.com/?cytzznmjwzn

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Well, here's my try at cutting it...
It was simple in this one because of the repetitive chorus that comes back, so you could just join the first and the second one.
http://www.mediafire.com/?iesmem3llc64t8e

Just to know how you are handling this...what program are you using?

The actual cut you made in your file is very good, and it stays perfectly on beat. The problem is that you cut from one movement to another movement, in which different instruments are playing.

Here's my cut :

http://www.mediafire.com/?ta7vwanats9us7b

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Here's how I made it :

The first step is to split the song up into it's musical movements :

00:00:00 - Leadin
00:00:09 - Verse 1
00:00:23 - Refrain 1
00:00:37 - Chorus 1
00:01:05 - Breakdown 1
00:01:12 - Verse 2
00:01:25 - Refrain 2
00:01:39 - Chorus 2
00:02:07 - Breakdown 2
00:02:28 - Chorus 3
00:02:51 - Leadout

In most cases, the chorus will always be identical (literally copied and pasted in the mixer), and the music in each verse will be identical, even though the vocals will be different.

If you want to find out, make a cut from the 2nd bar of Chorus 1 (Bar 22), and the 2nd bar of Chorus 2 (Bar 58). You'll notice that it's a seamless cut, because the song was constructed in a way. The chorus is always the best place to make a cut, because it's completely seamless.

Another place you can make the cut is from the start of each refrain, or the start of each verse. The vocals in each instance may be different, but the music will almost certainly be the same.

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When you've identified all the spots in the song where you can potentialy make cuts, you want to think about which parts of the song you want in the simfile. The most popular choices are :

Verse - Chorus - Verse
Chorus - Verse - Verse
Chorus - Breakdown - Verse - Chorus

In the case of Lose Control, I think the first Breakdown is kind of interesting (It's a funky guitar solo), but the 2nd Breakdown is boring as hell. It has a cool part near the end (Bars 81 - 85), but it's going to take some serious effort to get that into the song, without either clipping, or including the full thing. Fuck that.

So the first cut we should make is from the middle of Chorus 2 to the middle of Chorus 3

00:01:51 to 00:02:36

We've cut out all of that horrible breakdown, and the song is now 2:14, and contains :


Leadin
Verse 1
Refrain 1
Chorus 1
Breakdown 1
Verse 2
Refrain 2
Chorus 3
Leadout

If we look at what we have left, there are very few ways we can make another cut, which will cause clipping. We can cut from Verse to Verse, Refrain to Refrain etc. But that cuts out half of the song (making the song 1:11).

We need to find another spot in the song where the music loops, and because this is a badly made electonic song, we can find that in..... The chorus! Yay!

We're going to cut from :
00:00:43 to 00:00:54

That's the moment in the chorus where the singer says "*I* Just can't believe it!". She only actually sings the chorus once, and the vocal is repeated, but in the case where the singer actually sings the entire song without vocal loops, this would still be a great place to make the cut, because of the way she puts prominance on "I". Even if the cut isn't immaculate, that means that the sound will create a "punch-in" effect.

This song also a little unique in that the 2nd refrain repeats itself, so we can take that out.

Cut from :

00:01:11 to 00:01:18

Our song is now 00:01:53, and we have a choice of what we can cut out :

A. The Breakdown (0:07)
B. The second loop of Chorus 3 (0:14)
C. The 3 seconds of silence at the end (0:03)

I would reccomend just cutting out C, because having the chorus repeat twice at the end of the song is a nice finale. It's really upto you, and how you want to arrange your steps. You should definately cut the silence at the end off, though.

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This happens to be a really easy song to cut, because they were particuarly lazy when they made it. In many cases you won't be able to just cut from A to B, without also taking out loops of music, and inserting them between A and B. I'll try and find a good song that desmontrates how to do this.

Feel free to mess around and find ways of cutting which produce a more fun file. It'll be interesting to try and make a cut that includes the second, longer breakdown, although that'll obviously be terrible to actually have to play ^^;

edit : Aegis did include the 2nd breakdown, and it worked out really well! We both came up with completely different cuts, which should hopefuly show just how much freedom you have in cutting a song - There isn't a "right way" to cut it. If the same person were to make a simfile for each of our cuts, I'm sure they'd turn out completely differently in terms of flow, intensity, and oppurtunity for different steps / gimmicks.

Aegis: I really like your cut of it, yours is what I tried to go for basically & I'm using Audacity at the moment, don't know any other good audio stuff

Tyma: I really like yours too You give a lot of good detailing about it too

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I use Cool Edit 2000, which is probably kind of hard to find, but does the exact same thing as all the freeware audio editors out there. The only huge benefit it gives over Audacity is that it can mark out beats and bars within a song, and has a multitrack editor, which is essential for songs that don't let you cut from A to B, such as rock songs and a lot of doujin songs.