Connecting music (sound tracks) is often necessary. The only question is what kind of actions and with which components must be performed. There can be many options, so it’s worth considering some of them. Understanding the basics of working with individual tracks and whole compositions for many novice computer musicians in the future will help them easily create their own projects or remixes without much difficulty.
Action options
To begin, let's decide what needs to be done. For example, you can connect two tracks so that they sound one after the other without interruption (pause) during playback. Such actions are completely elementary in any software player, where you need to set the value equal to zero in the parameters of the time interval when playing files.
But we can assume that you may need to merge several files into one. There are many programs for this, and for the most part they relate either to music sequencers or to audio editors. With their help, you can perform more complex actions regarding mixing based on several musical fragments, which is used to create the final composition or remix. We will talk about this and much more.
How to combine music in one track?
First of all, we will dwell on the simplest actions that allow you to combine several tracks into one file, which will be played by the player as a whole, and not by removing the gaps between the tracks. To do this, it is best to use modern audio editors like Sound Forge, Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro), Cockos Reaper, Acoustica Mixcraft and the like. Any such program allows you to connect music (tracks) in a couple of seconds.
To do this, in the open track, which should sound first, the cursor is positioned at the end of playback, and then the next file or the fragment copied from it is inserted into this position. In the same way, just a fragment or the entire contents of another file can be inserted into any other position and in any selected track (at the very beginning, in the middle, etc.).
It is much more convenient to connect music using the multitrack mode.
Here you do not need to copy the contents, but you just need to place the files on several tracks, setting their start sound in the appropriate position.
Similar actions can be done in sequencer programs.
For example, in FL Studio, for long fragments distributed by patterns, you can specify the playback order in the playlist. For short sequences, combining can be done directly in one pattern. But here it is important to remember that to get the original sound of the original pieces in the step sequencer when loading the audio file, you need to select the C5 note as its position (it is set by default).
How to cut and combine music?
As for such actions, in audio editors they are not much different from the above. The only difference is that not the entire track for subsequent insertion is copied, but only part of it. For a file into which another fragment is inserted, such trimming is also used.
For example, you can cut the ending or cut out the middle (by simply deleting the selected fragment), and then paste other material there.
Combining musical parts into a single whole
Finally, we move on to more complex actions, which suggest that you need to combine music to create a complete composition using ready-made instrumental or vocal parts. In audio editors, you should only use the multitrack mode for this. In sequencers, the actions will be similar. After downloading the selected parts to the appropriate tracks, they must be arranged in the desired order and in the desired positions. It seems to be easy! However, there are some difficulties, usually associated with the fact that almost never created parts do not sound with the same level of volume and panorama.
But in this situation, you will have to either edit these parameters directly in the options of each track, or set the desired levels on the mixing console, which is much preferable (usually such actions are called mixing or mixing).
In the final processing, mastering should be used, which implies the processing of all combined batches as an integral composition using the appropriate tools on the master track. So, for example, processing with equalizers, compressors, limiters, normalizers, etc. is very popular. Due to the use of such tools, you can achieve that very “commercial” sound, and at the same time set the same volume level for several tracks, say, from one album and frequency bands.
Brief summary
As you can see, connecting music using the appropriate computer programs is not so difficult. Another thing is that very often additional actions are required, in the simplest case, related to equalizing the volume or frequency characteristics of the combined fragments. And here you have to learn the basics of mixing and mastering. Without this, to achieve high-quality sound in any music program, even taking into account the use of automated processing tools, will not work. However, the most lazy musicians for final processing can use the universal application AAMS (Auto-Audio Mastering System), which works on the basis of templates or selected tracks for which you need to "adjust" the sound.