Post-Production

With the flexibility and possibilities offered by hard-disc editing, it is important not to edit all the musicality out! We believe that good music editing should show the best of a performer, whilst not losing the sense of the piece of music being performed. How this is best achieved varies from performer to performer, with the intended purpose of the project, and with the repertoire. We try to remain flexible and sensitive to those needs. Music editing (of classical music) essentially involves joining takes together; that is to say that it presents a sequence of sounds that were played and recorded. It is not about creating notes that were never played, or changing ones that were into ones that were not! The usual chain of events is that some time after the recording sessions, the music editor creates a first edit, picking the best takes he/she can find, following the instructions and score-markings provided by the producer. Artists are then sent a listening copy of this first edit, and asked for their feedback. (In larger groups such as a choir, usually only the conductor, accompanist and any soloists would be sent listening copies). With the points from the first edit in mind, artists are usually the invited to attend a second edit, during which further options and improvements may be investigated. Sometimes it will be necessary to create further listening copies, but often by the end of the second edit, the musical side is complete. Many projects then undergo a ?beauty edit? where extraneous noises (such as clicks, creaks, even page turns) can be removed or suppressed. By reducing the distraction of these extraneous noises, we allow the listener to concentrate more on the musical performance. Many recordings will be made at a higher resolution than that in which they will ultimately be released. Be it longer word-length, higher sampling rate or both, we always edit at the higher resolution, only making the change down at the mastering stage. The majority of music editing is in stereo, but the same principles apply to multi-channel editing, e.g. for surround sound.