THE MULTIPLE EDIT

Repeating small pieces of music (clips with interesting sounds) so that new rhythms are created is called a MULTIPLE EDIT.  A popular editing team “The Latin Rascals” used to edit remixes produced by Arthur Baker.  Other noteworthy editors included Chep Nunez.  Songs by pop artists were turned into dance music by editing together alternate mixes and incorporating short sections of rhythms made up of “multiples” that were surprising and fun.

We have already discussed how a bar (measure) of music can be broken up into even divisions based on 1, ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/16, etc.  By dividing a bar into divisions and then REPLACING some of the divisions it is possible to create new interesting rhythms.  This is a Multiple Edit.

With analog, we had to make physical markers to show the lengths of tape needed to create the rhythmic subdivisions of whole, half, quarter note, etc.  We made marks and then would line up our tape so that the tape piece would START with an interesting element (drum hit, vocal sound, etc) and then cut the tape so it was the exact length needed for the rhythmic note desired.

With digital it is much easier.