i guess this is a question / call for tips and any suggestions.

i have a lot of old *unfinished* song "ideas" in S1 as well as from a prior daw. none of these were recorded to click. many of these did not have a proper count in and or need polished intros / pickups *seamlessly* recorded before what's already in the song or audio file. equally important, most of the songs need to have material punched in *seamlessly* after what's already been recorded to finish the songs (add 1 or more verses, chorus, and perhaps a close out.

in sum, i'd say the majority of these consist of what i would call "only the middle" of songs that need some "left and right additional polish" i usually don't / didn't have a full song idea structure in mind when i initially record / recorded it. so i have tons of really good but unfinished ideas / seeds out there that often were recorded well that i'm going to have to seamlessly record / mix / match new audio to on either end to complete it. i'm talking 100% audio here (no midi or instruments)

so here's the problem. i find myself in a different county now. all my old gear - mics, interfaces and instruments (gits / basses) - used to record all of these existing songs is still back home and it makes more sense to rebuy where i'm at for a lot of reasons (time, money) vs try to get it all here (which would also probably require shipping it all back again at some point in the future doubling the cost and time). though i'm still using S1, going forward i'll now have an entirely different mic, entirely different interface, totally different acoustic / electric guitars and of course a different room to record in. i also used to use a preamp with an outboard compressor on many of those old takes as well.

obviously one option is to just retake every song with the new gear from scratch and maybe have the full song structure worked out and finished before i do that this time . the arrangements are fairly stripped down (2-3 gits, vox / background vox tracks, and maybe a bass) so it's not like i have tons of retracking to do

the other option is to punch in and out and record the new parts on either end. but i'm not sure if matching the gain gain and tonality of the new parts to the original recordings is going to be too difficult considering i'm using entirely new everything. matching the gain probably not a big deal but the tonal blueprint of old vs new is likely to be quite different. so i guess i'm asking for any first hand experience regarding this before i potentially waste a lot of time doing it.

one thing to add is that my recording style was very basic in the past. i usually sat in the same position in front of the same mic playing the same instruments and singing the same way. so there wasn't much to tweak in the recording process proper once i found what worked well.

i also kept things very simple with the takes in S1 itself meaning i would prefer full takes to a lot of punch ins and overlap of audio events on a single track. this allowed me to *avoid* having to use the editor because i never understood or felt comfortable with it fearing that i'd be performing destructive edits on the underlying pool files every time i did a split, or having to worry about overlapped transient pops and clicks / cutouts etc etc.

but i've finally (sadfully only now) really taken the time to understand the editor so that i feel comfortable enough to start using all of it's power versus limiting myself to full takes. so assuming i actually had the same equipment, my guess is i could do exactly what i want 100% with only new takes.

long story short, any tips related to *seamlessly* punching in and out of old material gladly welcome here as well. outside of setting gain properly, my study seems to indicate that the key things for me are probably :

- setting up preroll (auditioninging) so i pickup my playing a bit ahead and better in time with the already recorded material
- setting either the punch in point a bit ahead of where i actually want to record or the audio prefs "pre-recorded audio input" to a couple of seconds of time so i have recorded material to work with just before where i actually need the take to help eliminate initial recorded take playing errors and so that i have some extra silent space to drag the event marker when there is overlap of transients with the existing part
- finally, moving the adjacent audio event start / end markers when necessary to a position that prevents (hides) any overlapping transients and using cross fade on those overlapped transients if and when necessary.

i feel pretty well-versed in how the s1 comp takes work once they're recorded so my call for tips is mostly about seamlessly recording overdubs in the first place (better timing / synch with original takes) and then dealing with overlapped audio transients when you try to blend everything (new with old) together.

sorry for the long post. just trying to be clear