Modes d'édition

Understanding Edit Modes in Music Production

Okay, so let's have a look at the edit modes that are available. I'll be switching between all the different tools for this, so I've gone for smart tool selection.

Slip Mode

Slip mode basically means that there is no limit to how I make my selections or movements.

• If I make an edit selection, I can be as accurate as, well, 1/48,000th of a sample.
• How do I know? Well, that's my sample rate: 48 kilohertz.
• Essentially, this is unlimited; I can pick something up and move it without any restrictions.

If I change to the Grabber tool, I can put it anywhere I like, no problem at all. Let's undo that.

Grid Mode

Slip mode can be useful, but if you're working in MIDI, for example, then grid mode might be more beneficial to you.

• I change to grid mode: this means I can only make edit selections and movements to my grid selection.
• The grid selection is set here, and as you can see, it's set to 16th note.

To make it more obvious, I'll set this to quarter note. Now, you can see that the lines on the screen appear less frequently, just on the quarter note.

Note: If I click where it says "Grid," I can turn those lines off. Most of the time, we'll leave them turned on.

Now, if I make a selection, I can't go in between these, only on those lines. If I try to drag something, I can't drag it in between those points, just to those points unless I hold the Command key.

• By the way, holding the Command key in grid mode suspends the grid. Let's undo that.

Grid Types

Grid mode has two versions: grid and relative grid.

To understand the difference, I'm going to quickly:

1. Go into slip mode.
2. Slice the beginning of this by hitting A (which removes everything up to my edit point).
3. Zoom in a little bit.

Now, let's go back to grid mode. If I click and drag this in grid mode, it will move the beginning of these clips to the grid position.

• When I drag here, you can see it's moving the whole thing to that point.

Let's undo that.

If I change to relative grid, it will maintain its offset from the grid. So now, if I drag, it doesn't drag onto the grid line but rather just as far from the grid line as it was in the first place.

• This is what you'll end up using most of the time because, if you have a note that comes in slightly early (that's part of the groove), it will maintain that groove when you copy and move it elsewhere.

So, relative grid is more useful than it first appears. I'll switch it back to absolute so it looks like its default settings.

Think of it as:

• Grid: Move to the grid position.
• Relative Grid: Move by the grid amount.

Spot Mode

Then we have Spot mode, which you are very unlikely to use.

If I click on something with Spot, it asks, "Where would you like to put it?" and then you type in the value.

• One occasion you might find it useful is when I quickly move to slip mode (F2) and then go back to Spot mode. Click down at the bottom, you can see that it actually has the timestamp including the bar/beat position from where this file came from.

If I click here, it enters that value into the start point. I press OK, and it puts it back where it originally came from.

So yes, Spot mode is occasionally useful in music production, just to place things back if you've accidentally misplaced them.

Shuffle Mode

Now, let's zoom back out again (Option A is zoom out to see everything) and let's actually use the Trim tool. Oops, let's go back to slip mode to pull the beginning of that back up.

Shuffle Mode

Shuffle mode is best thought of like a deck of cards.

• If I take a card out from the middle, it doesn't leave a gap; the cards on top fall down to fill that gap.

So if I select these clips and press delete, all the clips to the right move over to fill in the gap.

Let's undo that.

This is immensely useful in post-production, and there are music production techniques where it can also be useful.

• For instance, you could drag this over, and you'll see a yellow line showing where it's going to go, but it won't go over the track that's there; it pushes it to the side.

Think of it as shuffling a deck of cards. If you're trying out doubling a chorus or verse using groups, this is a nice and easy way to rearrange things without having to manually push in gaps.

Most of the time, though, you're going to spend in one of the forms of grid mode or slip mode.

As mentioned, the way to remember it is: Shuffle, Slip, Spot, Grid is F1, 2, 3, 4 in that order.

Say that to yourself a few times, it should stick.

Closing

Okay, see you in the next video!