How To Edit Metal Guitars in Pro Tools

Sloppy guitar takes can kill a massive metal mix before it even starts. You can have the sickest tone, the most brutal riffs, and a killer performance, but if the timing is loose, the whole track feels weak. Getting those guitars locked-in and surgically tight is a non-negotiable step for modern metal production.

But what’s the best way to do it? Should you slice everything to the grid? Warp it with Elastic Audio? How do you avoid those annoying clicks, pops, and digital artifacts that can ruin an edit?

If you’re ready to move beyond just dragging clips around, we’re about to break down a professional workflow for how to edit guitars in Pro Tools. This is the stuff that separates a decent demo from a release-ready track. We'll cover session prep, two powerful editing methods, and the specific settings you need to get the job done right.

Prep Your Session Like a Pro (Before You Cut Anything)

A clean session is a fast session. Taking five minutes to get organized before you dive into editing will save you a massive headache later.

Clean Up and Get Organized

First thing’s first: get rid of the clutter. You probably have a bunch of record-enabled tracks, alternate playlists, or muted takes. Hide them, make them inactive, or just delete them. A tidy workspace lets you focus.

Next, use color coding. It might seem trivial, but being able to instantly identify your left rhythm, right rhythm, and DI tracks at a glance is a huge time-saver. Pick a color for your left tracks (e.g., red), and a color for your right tracks (e.g., blue), and stick with it.

Pro Tip: Use a tool like Keyboard Maestro to create custom macros for repetitive tasks like deleting tracks. A simple shortcut can replace multiple clicks, speeding up your entire process.

The Golden Rule: Group Your DI and Amp Tracks

This is critical. Before you make a single edit, make sure your DI track is grouped with its corresponding amp track. Create an Edit Group for your Left DI + Left Amp, and another for your Right DI + Right Amp.

Why? Any edit you make—a cut, a fade, a nudge—will be applied to both the DI and the miked amp track simultaneously. This maintains perfect phase alignment between them. If you edit them separately, you’re asking for a phasey, hollowed-out mess.

Zoom In on the DIs

Your DI (Direct Input) signal is your best friend for editing. The waveform is clean, with sharp, obvious transients that are much easier to see than the saturated waveform of a high-gain amp. Make your DI tracks taller in the edit window so you can clearly see the start of every palm mute and chug. Use the Control + Up/Down Arrow shortcut to easily resize your selected tracks.

Two Core Methods for Tightening Guitars: Slicing vs. Warping

In Pro Tools, you have two primary weapons for tightening guitars:

1. Slicing & Dicing: Manually cutting clips and moving them to the grid. This is perfect for staccato, chug-heavy riffs where there are clear gaps between the notes.
2. Elastic Audio (Warping): Stretching and compressing the audio in time without cutting it. This is your go-to for sustained chords and legato phrases where slicing would create audible gaps or clicks.

We’re going to cover both, starting with the classic grid-editing approach.

Method 1: The Classic "Slice and Dice" Grid Edit

Let’s get our hands dirty with some manual editing. Before you start, enable Elastic Audio on your guitar tracks. Even if you're primarily slicing, having it active gives you more flexibility later.

Select your guitar tracks and enable Elastic Audio, choosing the Polyphonic algorithm. It’s a great all-arounder for complex sources like distorted guitar.

Making the Cut

For tight, chunky riffs, we want to cut out the silence between notes.

1. Use the Selector Tool to highlight the silence between two palm mutes.
2. Hit Delete. This creates that super-tight, almost gated sound common in modern metal.
3. To separate a note you want to move, place your cursor at the beginning of the transient (on the DI track!) and hit Command + E to split the clip.

Aligning to the Grid

With your clips separated, switch to the Grabber Tool (the little hand) and drag the clip so the transient lines up perfectly with the grid line. If you accidentally cut off the start of the transient, you can use the Trim Tool to drag the edge of the clip back and reveal the audio (thanks, Quick Punch!).

Mastering the Batch Fades Dialogue

Now for the most important part: avoiding clicks. Every time you cut a clip, you need a crossfade.

1. Make a selection that covers the end of one clip and the beginning of the next.
2. Hit Command + F to open the Batch Fades dialogue. This window is your command center for all fades.
3. Crossfade Settings:
   • Length: For tight metal guitars, a short crossfade is key. Start with 3 milliseconds. Anything from 2-5ms usually works well. Longer fades can soften the attack of the next note.
   • Shape: Use Equal Power. This is generally the smoothest and most transparent option.
   • Link: Set your fade to be Pre-Splice. This means the fade happens entirely before the cut line, which is crucial for preserving the aggressive "pick" or "chug" of the transient you just aligned to the grid.
4. Uncheck "Create new fade ins" and "Create new fade outs" for now. We only want crossfades.
5. Click OK.

Now, for every subsequent edit, you don't need to open this dialogue again. Just select the clip boundary and hit the F key, and Pro Tools will apply your last used settings.

Method 2: Surgical Timing with Elastic Audio

What about a long, ringing chord? If you slice and move it, you’ll either create a dead gap or a nasty digital click. This is where Elastic Audio's Warp View shines.

Getting Started with Warp View

With Elastic Audio already enabled, select a track and switch its Track View from "Waveform" to "Warp". You can do this from the track header menu or by using the shortcut Control + Command + Left/Right Arrow. You’ll see vertical lines called "Event Markers" that Pro Tools has automatically detected on the transients.

The Art of Placing Warp Markers

Your goal is to "pin" the audio in place where it's already in time, and then stretch or squeeze the parts that are off.

1. Add Anchor Markers: Find a note that’s perfectly on the grid. Hover your mouse over its transient in Warp View, hold Control, and click to add a Warp Marker. Do this for the notes before and after the section you want to fix. These are your "anchor points" – the audio outside of them won't be affected.
2. Add a Marker to the "Bad" Note: Now, click on the transient of the note that's either early or late.
3. Drag it into Time: Simply drag that Warp Marker left or right until it snaps to the grid. The audio between your anchor points will stretch to accommodate the move.
4. Delete a Marker: If you make a mistake, just hold Option and click on a Warp Marker to delete it.

Fixing Pro Tools' Mistakes: Analysis View

Sometimes, Pro Tools’ automatic transient detection gets it wrong, placing an Event Marker in the middle of a chord’s sustain instead of at its start. This can cause weird, glitchy artifacts when you warp.

To fix this, switch the Track View to "Analysis". Here, you can manually drag, add (Control-click), or delete (Option-click) the Event Markers to ensure they are perfectly aligned with the actual start of each note before you start warping. You can also adjust the Event Sensitivity in the Elastic Properties window (Clip > Elastic Properties) to make the detection more or less aggressive.

The Final Polish: Listen and Verify

You’re not done until you’ve used your ears.

• Solo with the Click: Solo the edited guitars and turn on the metronome. Listen through the entire song. Does every hit feel locked in?
• Check for Artifacts: Listen closely for any weird stretching sounds or glitches from Elastic Audio. Sometimes a slightly different warp or a classic slice-and-fade will work better.
• Listen in Context: The ultimate test. Un-solo the guitars and play them with the drums and bass. Does the rhythm section groove? Does it feel powerful and cohesive? A part that sounds perfectly "on the grid" in solo might feel stiff in the full mix. Don't be afraid to nudge a few things slightly by hand to make it feel right.

Perfectly edited guitars are the foundation of a crushing mix. They give you a clean, tight, and powerful base to work from. Once your timing is locked in, you can focus on the fun stuff, like dialing in the perfect tone. The next step is often aggressive filtering and frequency shaping, so be sure to check out our complete guide to EQ strategies for mixing modern metal. From there, you can make them punch even harder with the right dynamic control, which you can learn all about in our metal compression secrets guide.

This editing workflow is a total game-changer, but seeing how top-tier producers apply these techniques on real-world sessions is the next level. Imagine watching the original producer for bands like Gojira, Periphery, or Meshuggah edit and mix their tracks from scratch, explaining every move.

At Nail The Mix, that's exactly what you get. Every month, you get the raw multi-tracks from a massive metal song and watch the producer mix it live. Unlock your sound and learn how to mix modern metal beyond presets.

Plus, with a URM Enhanced membership, you get instant access to our entire back catalog. That's over 1,500 more tutorials covering every aspect of production, from tracking and editing to mixing and mastering. Stop guessing and start learning from the best in the business.