Since computers rely on nonlinear editing technology, DAW programs give you a great deal of freedom in moving around information. Your masterpiece of music is nothing more than chunks of data to a computer. It doesn't care what order they're played back. By default, the computer plays back your music just as you recorded it. What's different is that you can drag pieces of your music to and fro at will. Let's take a look at a sample Pro Tools session for some visual aids.

FIGURE 12-1

Pro Tools session Screenshot used by permission of Digidesign/Avid Technology, Inc.

FIGURE 12-2

Edited Pro Tools session Screenshot used by permission of Digidesign/Avid Technology, Inc.

As you can see from the simple 4-track mix in FIGURE 12-1, each track occupies its own line. The different tracks are shown by visualizations of what the audio looks like. Suppose you wanted to add space at the beginning for an intro that you were going to write and record later. At the same time, you want to double the length of each track by copying them end to end. Take a look at the finished product, shown in FIGURE 12-2.

You'll see that the window is a bit smaller to accommodate the length — that's purely so you can see it all in one window. All we did was drag all the files to the right by thirty seconds to make room for the intro. After that we made a copy of each track and put it end to end with the original, which allowed us to repeat a part of this song to double its length. Simply done. All it took was some dragging with the mouse.

As you can see, it's very simple to build up arrangements and change aspects. And this is just the tip of a very large iceberg, because this is only the beginning of what you can do.