Removing measures - Found my answer

  I usually put around 8 or so empty measures at the front of new songs that I'm working on as a buffer for an unforeseen intro addition. When the song is complete I need to remove any unused measures from the front of the song. How do I do that in SONAR?

Well, you could simply leave it there and export the song in the usual way. Then open it in your wave editor and trim the starting silence. I do this all the time. 

You can also simply highlight the data and audio in the tracks.... be sure the snap to is set to measures, and drag the data to the left. 
I always just leave 2 measures of count in silence in every project and export to my wave editor for trimming start and end silence. 

In a project I'm working on currently, I did than and then discovered that I actually needed the song to start further back because I wanted to add a few instruments playing the intro a bit longer and differently..... so I simply set the snap to at measures and dragged the waves to where I needed them. 

Works like a charm. 

It is simple. You use the Edit menu and mark (on Sonar 7) from "Start" (or Beginning of Song) then move the bar measure locator to the next place where you want to end it and use "To Here". I do not have Sonar up so you will have to look in the Edit Menu and Select the measure you want to start at and where you want to end it. When you light up all the tracks (Alt in sonar 7) and see the color change of where you marked it, then you either "Cut" or "Delete" since both seem to work the same way. If you have the little window come up then you can decide what you want to delete - usually I just checkmark everything except do it by whole measures (which in this case you can) and then check "Delete Hole" and when done, the entire song moves the number of measures you marked "Delete" on and moves the entire song up to the first measure. If you want to leave a empty measure then you should have set the tempo of the song to record in the first place (in wave form audio) and then you can expand the wave files to pick the exact start of the measure where you want it or part of a measure to mark to Edit. Now if no one knows, you always cut where the wave filew crosses the zero point of in the middle or else you will get a click. Much like tape cutting at an angle in the early days of splicing tape or deleting tape - marking the song at the zero point crossing insures that there will no noise at that point. I do it all the time, once you get use to it, it will become a snap except for exact markings where you may have expand the wave file really long to get it to the exact point, although you can put it where you want in the end. Edit Menu - Select - From the Beginning - To the other Mark (whatever it says there) and Delete or Cut it - same thing in my Sonar it seems. I suppose if you Delete you - well you still can undo it, as well as cut. ??

Here's how you do it, export your file as a .wav in Sonar, then open it in SoundForge? Go to about one second before the music starts, and delete everything before there. Then select in that 1st second of silence and delete any amp/pre-amp or any other noice with the mute function while editing that .wav? Then look at the wav, see if it looks good, if it does, go to the end, and select a fade out, delete after the fade, save as a 320 mp3, and viola! You're finished!

amiller


  Hmmm...the first suggestion didn't work for me. In stead of deleting just the extra measures the first method deleted all of the data....

I just Select All, click and drag the timeline (making sure snap to grid is set to Measure) to select the measures I want removed and then Edit>Delete. Works every time with no problems. As has already been mentioned you can't use this method to delete a completely empty region so I use the PRV to put a note anywhere in the empty region.


1. Add note to empty region you want to delete.
2. Press Ctrl-a to select all.
3.Click and drag timeline to select only the measures you want removed.
4. Go to menu item Edit>Delete.
5. Make sure the delete properties are set to what you want to remove.


This is how I do it and I've never had a problem with this method. Perhaps the problem you had was because of the f keys that gustabo mentioned. They may not have been active on your keyboard. Their functions can be toggled on and off with the F Lock button on your keyboard.

Instead of edit/select all and trying to drag to left, use a crossing window with the mouse to select everything. This should allow you to drag to the left. This works assuming you haven't inserted any tempo changes along the way.

Question: why do you feel the need to delete anything from your original project?

Why not leave it exactly as it is?

If you're worried about the empty space being exported then exclude it from your export by using the time grid to select the relevant measures, or select by using Start & End markers.

I use Wavepad since it is free and very easy to use. 


http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/

I simply export the entire project using WHAT YOU HEAR and then trim the silence at the beginning and end using the "TRIM" tool.... 

too easy.

Bristol_Jonesey


Question: why do you feel the need to delete anything from your original project?

Why not leave it exactly as it is?

If you're worried about the empty space being exported then exclude it from your export by using the time grid to select the relevant measures, or select by using Start & End markers.

I gave this a try...WORKS LIKE A CHARM!!!  This is the answer I was looking for.
 
Thanks, everyone, for all of the great input...I love this site.