Editing fine tuning or how to nudge – Andre’s Production…

Hi guys it’s Andre,

it’s the 49th issue of my production diary and I’m still sharing all the tricks and techniques I learn at the Benztown Studios.

To get full accuracy while editing, Pro Tools offers a feature called nudging. With nudging you can place your audio or MIDI files exactly in grid, in time or time code or other parameters like Feet + Frames or samples.

First you need to set your nudge value. You can do this in the tool bar at the top of your edit window.

This was the first step. Click to see the rest…

After you’ve set your nudge value, make sure ‘Link Timeline and Edit Selection is activated. You can either do this in options or click the icon in your tool bar. It’s the icon under the grabber tool. Check the screenshot below. It’s the blue icon.

Mark a region and nudge it by pressing +  and – on the numeric keyboard.

If you have no numeric keyboard, you can nudge by activating Keyboard Command Focus Mode and pressing . (period) and , (comma).

You can also nudge your cursor, which can be a nice feature, when it comes to find the exact place in your session or when you’re working with automation and want to place your dots and values.

Here’s a simple nudging example. I’ve set the nudge value to one bar and then just nudged my audio forward.

Here’s an example for intelligent nudging:

You’re cutting a loop from a song, but you need to fade every duplicated sample to make it sound clear. This can be time-consuming and annoying, so just use nudge, set it to the length of your sample and then nudge from fade to fade. Just two moves – nudge, then fade.

Here’s a pic to make it clear. The fades are always at the same point in the grid, so it’s easy to get to the right points via nudging.

Make the fine editing tasks a little bit easier and get a better work flow via nudging.

Cheers and have a nice weekend.