Editing riffs

[davenz]

Excuse my ignorance, but is there any way of editing a riff once it is recorded? For example, I am trying to lay down a drum track with my trusty SR-16 and I'll be damned if I can get the thing to start exactly at the right time. I see some of you maestros use drum machines so my question is this; how do you sync the exact start/finish time when recording and does it have anything to do with editing the riff once laid down? I know that's two questions, but humour me!

Cheers

Dave.

[scott]

Dave,

You can't edit a layer once it's been recorded - at least not in RW.
If I do any drums outside of RW I use my Roland keyboard manually and set the Lead In in RW to 'Metronome'. It's then just a case of hover your fingers above 'Go' and move them in time with the beat for the two bars before the actual riff starts.
The other way would probably be midi but I'm not clever enough to do that!

[pooterpatty]

I too have an SR-16, awesome little drum machine. I've not yet tried to use it with Riffworks - I might have to blow the dust off it and see what I can do. I'll post here if I can get it to work without too much fuss.

[camaro24gold]

RW doesn't have a MIDI clock that you can synch hardware to. The way I bring in a keyboard drummer is to record in another application that is capable of acting as a ReWire slave. After your drummer is recorded in the other slave app. you can then bring it in thru ReWire on RiffWorks.
Another way to do it would be record it in RW as best you can get in time....export as a wave file and then open in Propelarheads ReCycle. There you could set the loop markers to where they need be and make a REX file that could be brought into RWs REX player.
The former ReWire method would however be a lot, lot more easy to accomplish and probably a cheaper route for you to go.
Many here use Audacity and it's a free application but I am not sure it supports ReWire. Somebody else will have to chime in here on that.

[davenz]

The biggest headache I have is that I can start the drum machine (what I think is) right on the button, but when the loop finishes after the prescribed amount of bars the drums aren't perfectly in time, no matter how close I am to the timing. With the built-in drummer, the loop is, of course, perfect, but no way can I do that with the SR-16. And the built in drummers always fill and crash at the wrong time; there is no way to get a steady beat with fills right where you want them. I think paying $9.99 for drummers that can't be programmed is a little rich to be honest. At this point a riff editor, or at least the opportunity to import wavs or oggs would be a huge bonus to the software. A system similar to Mixcraft would be ideal, where you can import, chop and shape riffs/loops before injecting them back into the timeline. Oh well, chalk it up on the wish list.

Dave.

[camaro24gold]

Dave.....if ya can just make a wave file of your loops (Audacity, Creative WaveStudio, etc.) you can also use this utility that one of the members here designed that will allow you to import your drums as layers: http://www.sonomawireworks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3575


I have downloaded it but not used it yet myself; but many here say it works very well.
I forgot to mention this earlier.

[davenz]

Dave.....if ya can just make a wave file of your loops (Audacity, Creative WaveStudio, etc.) you can also use this utility that one of the members here designed that will allow you to import your drums as layers: http://www.sonomawireworks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3575


I have downloaded it but not used it yet myself; but many here say it works very well.
I forgot to mention this earlier.

Kewl, will try this out.

OK downloaded and installed, got a warning about Vista not supported but it seems to install and open OK. Now all I have to do is record a wav file; seems silly going back to recording wavs after years of finding other/better formats to record in.

Cheers.

Dave.

[pooterpatty]

Dave,

Keep in mind that Riffworks is still "young" as far as software goes. The Sonoma team originally coded Riffworks with the features that they thought would be most helpful to musicians looking for a quick way to make a good quality recording. However, no one size shoe fits every musician's needs. However, I hear the Sonoma code monkeys are busy coding away, ankles chained to their desks, implementing the features we're requesting here on the board. Sonoma is definitely a company that listens to it's customers, that you can be sure of.

I can't speak officially on this of course (since I'm a lowly end-user and not one of the Sonoma muckety-mucks), but I'd look for the next major release of Riffworks to include the ability to import WAV files, as that's one thing users have been clamoring for the most.

[davenz]

Dave,

Keep in mind that Riffworks is still "young" as far as software goes. The Sonoma team originally coded Riffworks with the features that they thought would be most helpful to musicians looking for a quick way to make a good quality recording. However, no one size shoe fits every musician's needs. However, I hear the Sonoma code monkeys are busy coding away, ankles chained to their desks, implementing the features we're requesting here on the board. Sonoma is definitely a company that listens to it's customers, that you can be sure of.

I can't speak officially on this of course (since I'm a lowly end-user and not one of the Sonoma muckety-mucks), but I'd look for the next major release of Riffworks to include the ability to import WAV files, as that's one thing users have been clamoring for the most.

Yeah, that would be awesome; the ability to import other formats is what makes some apps great instead of average. I look forward to future features.

Dave.

[davenz]

Dave.....if ya can just make a wave file of your loops (Audacity, Creative WaveStudio, etc.) you can also use this utility that one of the members here designed that will allow you to import your drums as layers: http://www.sonomawireworks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=3575


I have downloaded it but not used it yet myself; but many here say it works very well.
I forgot to mention this earlier.

After downloading and experimenting with Audacity and Intelliriffer I can say that it is almost impossible to get drums edited this way, in time. For starters, the wav outputted from RW (using the Mix function), has, even though I stop recording at the end of the bar and before the riff loops and starts another layer, a double beat (out of time) added at the end of the wav file. The wav, when opened in a WAV editor plays fine, until the extra beats at the end. If I edit those beats off, export the new wav and use Intelliriffer to create a new layer, it imports the wav file OK but where the extra beats were is now a silence so the drums are still out of time anyway. After much m(another letter)ucking around I have decided that this is just impractical.

Add to my wish list a clock trigger or whatever it is called for external drum machines and the ability to edit riffs in the GUI (even if it was just to trim start/stop points); this would make RW the ultimate recorder IMHO.

Thanks for the suggestions, and if anyone has actually managed to do this, please, I'm all ears.

Dave.

[jamienelson]

I export riffs to wavs then chop them up in an external audio editor. I bring them back into RiffWorks by using Ableton Live Lite 4 Rewire and mix them back to a Riff. It works pretty slick.

Unfortunatly, the newer versions of Ableton Live Lite won't do Rewire.

[strychninekid]

If you ask me Riffworks is a great guitar stand alone product. And with the ability to use rewire and link other products to it the capabilities are limitless!!!

[scott]

The wav, when opened in a WAV editor plays fine, until the extra beats at the end. If I edit those beats off, export the new wav and use Intelliriffer to create a new layer, it imports the wav file OK but where the extra beats were is now a silence so the drums are still out of time anyway.

If you use an audio converter like Audacity to chop beats off the end of a riff, you need to re-extend the riff again to take up the same 'time space' after the beats are cut out. Audacity will let you do this as long as you take a note of the exact riff length before altering it.

[davenz]

Thanks for all your tips. I too think RW is the best out there, I was more annoyed with my own limits than RW's.

Dave.

[geocare]

RW doesn't have a MIDI clock that you can synch hardware to. The way I bring in a keyboard drummer is to record in another application that is capable of acting as a ReWire slave. After your drummer is recorded in the other slave app. you can then bring it in thru ReWire on RiffWorks.
Another way to do it would be record it in RW as best you can get in time....export as a wave file and then open in Propelarheads ReCycle. There you could set the loop markers to where they need be and make a REX file that could be brought into RWs REX player.
The former ReWire method would however be a lot, lot more easy to accomplish and probably a cheaper route for you to go.
Many here use Audacity and it's a free application but I am not sure it supports ReWire. Somebody else will have to chime in here on that.

I'm a little foggy on what applications are capable of acting as a ReWire slave. I have Logic Express 7 and Cubase LE. Will either of these work? Thanks in advance and excellent forum/community out there!