How To Preserve Pick Attack in Guitar Editing: The Pro Workflow

You’ve tracked some killer, high-gain guitar takes. The performance is 95% there, but to get that brutal, modern metal tightness, you need to do some editing. You dive into your DAW, start chopping things up, and suddenly… it sounds fake. Robotic. Lifeless. All the aggression and human feel has vanished.

Nine times out of ten, the culprit is a destroyed pick attack.

That initial, sharp transient at the very beginning of a guitar note is its identity. It’s the "thwack" of the plectrum hitting the string. It’s what gives a chug its punch and a riff its definition. If you cut it off, smear it with a bad crossfade, or mangle it with time-stretching, you might as well be using a sterile-sounding synth.

Getting surgically tight guitars without making them sound like a machine is the goal. Here’s the pro workflow for editing heavy guitars while keeping that all-important pick attack intact.

Why Pick Attack is Everything

Before we start slicing audio, let’s get on the same page. Zoom in on a DI guitar track in your DAW. See that initial sharp spike before the main body of the waveform? That’s it. That’s the pick attack or transient.