Mute/cut part of audio

[ktk]

Hi everyone,

I'm super new with Reason and I could not find what I am looking for on Youtube tutorials & other places so bear with me if this is a stupid question, but:

Screen Shot 2020-07-03 at 17.14.18.png (73.37 KiB) Viewed 513 times

I'm editing a Vlog audio track I did and I would like to mute the parts where I make some strange noise that the gator did not catch because the level is too high. In the screenshot it's the first part you see, some small "smacking" noise I made apparently.

Could anyone give me some instructions on the best way to either mute or cut that out of the audio (the cut should not alter the timeline, as I have a video with it)

thanks!

[EdGrip]

If I were you, I might automate a mute button.

You can automate the mixer channel mute button, by right/cmd-clicking on it and selecting "edit automation". You'll then get an automation lane below the audio which you can draw mute/unmute events on.

BUT! You might want to use the mixer mute button for other things, so to be on the safe side I would add another device with a mute button - such as the 6:2 line mixer. Just drop it in the insert box of the audio's mixer channel in the rack, route the audio through one of the 6:2 line mixer channels, and automate the channel's mute button.

The 6:2 Line Mixer is also a handy stock device to use if you want to automate levels - again, rather than automating the mix fader in the SSL which you'll want to leave un-automated to mix with.
You might find it sounds smoother, rather than using a mute button, to automate level with a V-shaped bit of automation centred on the sound you want to silence. (Once you've made one V-shaped automation cut, you can copy/paste it anywhere you need it - same goes for the mute automation.)

This is just how I'd do it! I don't work with speech really, and I don't know the standard "pro" way of doing this.

Some instances might call for you to copy a bit of neighbouring audio and paste it over the offending sound.

If you need to, record some room-tone (the background noises of the room without you speaking) and play that in parallel with your dialogue - you can use this artificial noise floor to cover edits and holes that you make in the *actual* noise floor of your dialogue track - when you can "hear an edit". It's good to record some speech-free audio in every place that you shoot, just for this purpose. I'm sure you know this

[EdGrip]

Here's a little Reason project to demonstrate what I mean.

[EdGrip]

An even easier way to do this is to just draw a new piece of audio clip over the offending sound. Make sure "Snap" is switched off on the tool bar, select the pencil tool (by pressing W on your keyboard) and click and drag on the audio clip to draw a new, silent audio clip on top of it. Then select the cursor tool (Q) to click and drag this moment of silence to fine-tune its position. I've put one of those in the demo project too.

[selig]

I've long preferred to cut and mute the audio so that I have a visual on screen of what was there and what was removed. An additional benefit is you can use a fade in, which I do all the time, to bring in the main clip so there are smooth transitions, being careful if there is no background music to "hide" the edit. If there's no music, I suggest the "room tone" approach to allow you to freely cut dialog wherever you need to without worries of background noise coming and going abruptly.
Also worth commenting, using a gate during recording is an unnecessary risk IMO, since you have far more control adding it after recording. For example, you can automate the gate threshold so it catches the things you want it to catch and ignores the things you want it to ignore!

[EdGrip]

Good point about keeping things visually clear, so you can see what's happening where - one way to do that is to keep the automation clips no longer than they need to be. I've updated the project to show that, and also coloured all "mute" events red.

[WarStar]

What Selig said.. I like working with audio in the sequencer, that's how I learned back in the day.. but easiest and quickest way is use the razor tool.. cut the offending parts, a left cut and right cut.. and simply mute that part

[ktk]

Thanks a lot for the responses, will try the suggestions in here! Special thanks for the demo-project @EdGrip!

@Selig nice to see you here, I bought DeEsser, Leveler and ColoringEQ. First two are great, helped me a lot fixing the voice. ColoringEQ needs more time I guess, I have no EQ experience so far.

Ah and I did not do any gating, that's in reason itself where I do it.

[mjxl]

You can also just draw a new clip, disable Snap and place it where you need it to be.