Many people think you need to be professional mixer or sound technician in order to utilize the tools found in audio editing equipment. Five years ago this statement may have been true but with the technological advances in the audio world, it is now possible to create an entire studio environment in your home. Even though I am a firm believer of knowing the roots of music mixing with hardware, audio editing rivals many of the out dated hardware functions. With one software interface, you have the ability to carry out a huge selection of functions that would otherwise be carried out by multiple processors stacked on huge racks. Space is very valuable and a large rack setup will definitely be overwhelming for most home studios. Software is becoming more and more affordable everyday. If you find yourself needing to continually go to someone’s studio to complete simple tasks, you may want to invest in some audio software of your own.
If you create music of any kind then audio editing software should become one of you close acquaintances. Even if you don’t know how to play an instrument, there are programs which allow you to hum notes into a microphone and record notation from the sounds. This will come in handy for songwriters who, while writing a song, also think of melodies.
The second thing you need audio editing software for is to aid in all your music creation made with hardware. A lot of people feel that the use of hardware is a thing of the past. I do not feel this way because I know that hardware contains a certain fingerprint sound that can not be duplicated. Also there will always be people who are attracted to the history of a hard sounding analog synthesizer. Truthfully, a mix of hardware and software is the best probably combination. Today, a lot of software pages contain hardware counterparts to give you a hands on feeling.
The third thing you may need editing software for is conversion. Although you may need raw audio tracks in the studio, that will only be needed in the actual mix. The studio engineers will have to mix your files down to WAV format in order to put it on a quality CD. Now when you get home, you might want to put this song on your IPOD or maybe even make a remix. With the use of notation software, you would be able to do that and more. A lot of time you will run across MP3 tracks that are rendered in different qualities. Audio software will allow you to uniform everything and make sure the multiple tracks are close to the same volume level.
The fourth and fifth reasons kind of go hand in hand. They are the options to edit and store different elements of your composition. This is great for times where you need to cue an old piece of work that is going to be integrated into a new project. Also being able to have all tracks in front of you is very convenient. You basically will have the vocal track, instrumental track and finished product all in one setup. Brush up on your mixing skills and you will be ready to fire your engineer. In conclusion even if you use the software 2 times a month, you will definitely be getting your worth of out it. Make sure you save your files continuously as you work so you do not lose any valuable notation. May all your musical dreams come true.
