Mike Phirman contacted us with a shortcut and editing time saver he wanted to share with the community…

Hey fellas, just listening to the “favorite shortcuts” section in podcast 104, and I have two tips that I thought I’d throw in. One’s a proper keyboard shortcut; the other is a vocal-editing time-saver technique thing.

The keyboard shortcut I love most these days is this: clicking inside a track with the alt key down will place a pre-roll marker and engage pre-roll. Really handy when doing a punch-in. Click where you want to start recording, alt+click where you want the playback to start, and Booooooooooom.

The editing tip is this: when I’m editing vocal takes together, I’ve found that the best places to blend from one take to another are on “ess”es and “eff”s, and “emm”s. (S’s, F”s, and M’s) May sound obvious, but as soon as I noticed that, it gave me a jump on getting invisible edits a bit more quickly.

Thanks for everything. You guys are the best. PS. I listen to the show so often, my inner-voice now has a cool British accent.

Mike says - I didn’t know about the pre-roll shortcut, if you have the cursor at the drop in point and then hold down the Alt key and click at the point you would like pre-roll to start then as Mike says, it sets and enables the pre-roll. I regularly edit in mid word as it often produces a more natural sound because in speaking we often run words together and so by editing at the beginning of a word we may be cutting through the transition from one word to the next where as with a hard consonant in the middle of a word gives a good clear reliable edge to edit to.