Editing tracks

[legato]

So was finally able to hook-up sound card+mixer+DI and record some guitar tracks. Great!!! Except now I have proof that my playing sucks. I should practice some more I guess. 

But anyway, how should you edit your tracks? Lets say, record a few tracks and get the better segments and sort of slap them together? How should I go about this? Which software and features do you use?

Would appreciate some tips on your approach, like I'm afraid if I do this too much the track wont align with the backing tracks or something of that sort.

Currently using audacity and am not sure if this is the best software to use for this type of problem.

[KitC]

If you want to multitrack, use Reaper instead although Audacity does well with that job too. I suggest looking through the Plugins and Soundfonts sticky, you will see a lot of free DAW software there as well.

I use Sonar at my DAW and I usually engage track layers and loop a segment during which we record several passes. We then 'comp' a track by using the best passages per segment. Sometimes an entire song gets completed this way. Often the the first take will be one pass over the entire song, then the succeeding dubs are usually to correct 'errors'. In some cases when we want to experiment with different voicings, do we do the layer process. It all depends on your workflow.

[legato]

I was thinking cut and paste when it should be to mute certain parts of different takes pala. Thanks Kit!

I'll look into reaper, looks good too.

[KitC]

I've been experimenting with Reaper myself. It's unexpiring shareware so you can use it to your heart's content, until your conscience nags you to pay the program's creator (who happens to be the guy who created Winamp, btw). Reaper's come a long way since it's inception, and since it costs a fraction of what the big DAWs cost, it'd be foolish not to support it.