Usually we work in our home studio by ourselves and this is more creative ,but there are sometimes that you have thought how good it would be if you had an assistant to help you with setting up your microphone for recording guitars to the song you are working on or just anything else that could help you and be more productive without any distractions.
The DAW’s we use ,have some functions that can really help us and be much easier to our recordings. Today we are going to talk about punch in and punch out function.If you have never heard about this function, then keep reading 😊
Let’s say, you want to record a guitar part for your song. As you work alone ,you have to set everything ready for your recording and the hardest part is to be prepared to push the rec button on your keyboard , take your guitar and start recording. That’s very stressful ,isn’t it? So what are you doing? You prefer to press the rec button 2-3 bars behind the recording bar,if we can say ,so you can be ready to record. I suggest to use punch in function. But what does this function really do? With very simple words ,you just activate recording , without pressing any key on your keyboard. And how can you do this?
First of all,you have to set the left locator to the bar you want to start recording. As you can see in the picture below, I have set the left locator to bar 6. Then on the transport panel, you just press the punch in button ,as it is shown in the picture below. With these two moves,you are absolutely ready to start recording your guitar or any instrument you want. This isn’t only for audio recording. you can apply it in midi recording also. In general, I would suggest to use this function and apply it in your workflow. I think that you can be faster and more productive!
You can also use punch out function ,which is the opposite of punch in. Punch out deactivates recording ,so you don’t have to worry for stopping your recording. To activate this function you have to do the same things you do with punch in. You set your right locator to the bar you want to stop recording and pressing the punch out on your transport panel, where it’s just below the punch in button.
When you finish recording and you want to record again, the only thing you have to do is to press the punch in button on your transport panel. If you want to record multiple takes on your track ,then you can use additional the cycle button on your transport panel. May be on your DAW it’s called loop.It’s exactly the same!
I think you should learn some functions on your DAW ,that can really help you work faster and more efficiently!