Creating a very pretty crossfade: how?

[Christopher Gilland]

Guys,


Keep in mind, this isn't anything I'm doing to be released commercially,
although that said, I'd like to get this as polished as possible.


I'm working on an arrangement of What Child is This. Yes, I'll be more
than happy to send the bounced mp3 or if anyone would like it, the
entire session, although just know, there probably will be some plugins
you won't have, as I'm gonna use a few which are not included with PT.


Anyway, on to my question.


So, what I am gonna do is, before the whole band comes in to kick off
the song, I'm going to manually record, with a few virtual instruments,
the last part of the chorus, probably with the Mark One electric piano,
maybe some very very light organ, Ivory, and an orchestral harp where it
says, "haste haste to bring him laud, the babe, the son of Mary."


What I want to do is, I'm doing this in the key of E Minor. When I get
to, "The babe, the son of Mary," on Mary, when I hit that final E minor
chord, I want to let the background organ just basically hold out
ringing that E minor chord, but if I let off the keys, or my sustain
pedal, it's just gonna go, boo'oom! and die out cold. That's not gonna
sound natural at all! Especially being that I'm wanting an effect where
the organ basically on that last E minor slowly fades out while
transitioning into the actual song itself with the band all starting on
the E Minor where the organ left off.


So in other words, I'm trying to do like, I guess you would call it a
sort of gradual crossfade? Would that be the right termanology? from
that organ into the main portion of the piece.


I could simply select that organ track out to the end with
option+shift+return, being sure in the track list table it's the track
selected, then just do a fade to end, then just start recording the rest
of the band on separate tracks at the point where the organ starts
fading audibly. But, is a fade to end the best way to do this, being I
kind of want a fade out, yes, but I'm wanting it to sound more like a
smoothe crossfade. Does that kind a make sense? Also, I forgot the
keystroke command for fade to end. Can someone refresh my memory?


Thank you so much for your help!


God bless, and Merry Christmas!


Chris.