I think I have this right, but I wanted to check before I commit.
My band has (had!) a song that we have decided to split into two separate songs. There is a very brief pause, although the tail of the drums will carry to the opening chord of the second half. I’m sure we’ve all heard split songs that connect to the next song (hello Pink Floyd, Tool).
My question is, if I have mixed and mastered this track as one song, is it just a simple case of bringing that mastered file into my DAW, splitting the track into two at the right point and then rendering them out again?
I assume that given that it is digital, there will be no degradation issues, but I was wondering what I do at the point of the cut, as Reaper will put a small fade there to stop any clicks from occurring. Is that the way to go, or remove those fades, or make them as small as possible?
Hi, yes it is as simple as that but be mindful of were the very short crossfade ends: you don’t want to chop off the transient of the first note on the second half. If you want th songs to play seamlessly without a gap you need to remove the crossfade and make sure to render the time zone the connects to the other at the exact sample.
Spotify, Apple Music, BandCamp and possibly others have gapless playback but you can’t control how your tracks will be played since the user can mess up with the playback controls (cross fades etc.). And not all stores have that feature.
If you want to release on CD, then you just don’t cut the track but insert a cue marker where you want the track count to change.
I think some popular songs came about by splitting from an existing track, at least one Beatles song though I can’t remember which one. Find a way to use that drum tail creatively as an intro to the new track, or add layers of other instruments to it, or something in key but louder to mask the drum if possible.
Try to make sure to split it at a zero crossing so that it doesn’t pop/click if it’s playing on shuffle. Also, make sure that whatever DAW you are using isn’t automatically applying any sort of fade in/fade out to the clip.
Thanks Stan. The song itself flows perfectly fine from one to the other, as it was initially written as one song. But then we got a few impartial listeners stating how they felt it sounded like two separate songs. The drummer and I who, wrote the song, liked it that way and wanted to keep it as one, but the singer and guitarist liked the idea of splitting it into two, but of course having the tracks back to back so it really does sound like one anyway if you listen to the EP from start to finish, but also that they can stand alone as well. So I won’t need to alter the track at al, it’s more about how I go about the cut to ensure no pops and a possible smooth transition from one to the other.
So, Reaper does put an auto fade in but that’s no biggie to remove. But, there is no zero point. There is a large reverb on the vox and drums on the hit for two beats of space before the band kicks in with the next section simultaneously. So it will be easy to do the cut right on the impact (ironically the song is called Impact Player) or a fraction before hand.
But, @bozmillar, are you saying have no fade at all at the end of the first half and the start of the second where the cut is? Wouldn’t that create a pop? Or should be making a super small fade at both of those ends? I will endeavour to post 20 seconds of it in the next few days so you can hear what I mean.
You just have to pick a spot where the waveform crosses from positive to negative. It doesn’t need to be silent (or even quiet) it just needs to split where it crosses. That way if you start the second song without playing the first one, you won’t get a pop as the play head immediately tries to jump to some larger value.