Beat detective

[krokit]

Im in the process of editing 10 songs of drum tracks. The drummer has never played to a click before so you can imagine what Im up against! Yes, he's all over the f***in place :zombie:
Im having to BD every couple of bars which is mind numbing and there's plenty of copy/pasting going on so I thought Id ask the BD experts for their tips and tricks in effort to not go completley insane
One problem I tend to come across often is that BD will want to pull the hits in the opposite direction for example, which I still havnt sussed out!

This has got to be the worse playing Ive had the non-pleasure to have laid out in front of me so any help with my plight would be truly appreciated.

 

[ahjteam]

isn't the number one rule of audio engineering "don't fix it in the mix"?

 

[006]

Editing drums to be on time is a long hated tradition amongst audio engineers. If they don't play to a click, some drummers excluded, usually it will sound like garbage. Hell, sometimes even if they do play to a click you still have to edit the hits...

Drummers....

But, I guess ahjteam is one of the lucky few who get to work with drummers that play rock solid every time without a click?

~006

 

[krokit]

isn't the number one rule of audio engineering "don't fix it in the mix"?

The band are of the mindset that engineers have a magic wand and that 'shit in = great sounding mix out'. Basically he's a good 'visual' live drummer but in the studio he just cant hack it. Now he's my f***in problem unforunately.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Ever heard of www.beatfixx.com?

[not that I want to get involved in this disaster...]

 

[krokit]

Ever heard of www.beatfixx.com?

[not that I want to get involved in this disaster...]

If the budget allowed Id go for it!

Cheers

 

[AudioGeekZine]

how was the recording done?

drums, then overdubs?
Live band, vocal overdubs?

did the other guys play to the click or to the drums?

My rate is really low.

$25/song x 10 songs = $250

studio time locally is $75/hr

each song can take a minimum of 1 hour, the last one I did for a sneapster took 7 .

Make the band pay for it.

 

[krokit]

how was the recording done?

drums, then overdubs?
Live band, vocal overdubs?

did the other guys play to the click or to the drums?

My rate is really low.

$25/song x 10 songs = $250

studio time locally is $75/hr

each song can take a minimum of 1 hour, the last one I did for a sneapster took 7 .

Make the band pay for it.

Hi AudioGeekZine

The band is basically the guitarist. He comes to me and I record his rythmn guitars to a click. After Ive tightened his performances (he cant play to a click track either!) he sends the tracks to a drummer who comes in and plays to the click/guitars very badly. Then the guitarist says to me "when can we track the bass guitar" and I say to him "when Ive fixed the f***in awfull drumming" and he says "ok, Ill ring you tommorow" and I say "make it next week mate cos its gonna take me hours to fix those f***in drums" so he rings me the next day and says "hows it goin?" and I say "slowly cos the drummer is s**t" and he says "ok, Ill ring you tommorow" and so the pain goes on and on.... uke:

 

[AudioGeekZine]

I hope they're paying you for your suffering. Badly recorded drums also makes it hard. I hope those tracks have transients, I've worked on some with more bleed than direct sound.:zombie:

 

[006]

You can say FUCK and SHIT here man.

~006

 

[Sean in Silence]

^^^^^^
hahahahaha
If I were you I would go with making the band pay for all the time and energy you waste trying to fix the drums
If they don't want to pay for it then FUCK them
hahaha
They should have found a talented drummer to begin with or at least practiced to a click beforehand
not your problem

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I have so gotten over sweating the shit drummers. If they are really that awfull then garbage in and out ya get me? Either that or shit gets programed. I got sick of doing way more work than I was getting paid for (and most bands DO NOT want to pay for that shit).

I have had tracks so shitty that no amount of beat detective is gonna save them.

 

[Jesse Z]

Beat Detective is great. I used to use it all the time. Anywhere from an hour to an 8-hour day to fix a 3-5 minute song, depending on the complexity, etc., but I've started using Elastic Audio for quantizing drums and it is so much faster. A track that would have taken an hour with BD can be done in less than 15 minutes with EA. I'll never go back. In fact, I sold my MPTK license with Multi-Track Beat Detective, I'm so done with it.

BD sounds marginally better than EA, which can be noticed especially in the overheads/cymbals, or if any hits get stretched, but if you are sample replacing kick/snare/toms this is not an issue. I find that the time and mental health saved is worth the slight loss of sound quality, and the amount of degradation depends on how far off the drummer is to begin with, so the tighter the performance is, the less of a difference that can be heard between BD and EA. Besides, I'd rather make a drummer track a 3-minute song 20 times in an hour than spend 1-8 hours trying to fix a couple takes.

 

[Moonlight_Seeker]

Well if the band is not technical death metal and/or if the drum parts are not extremely complicated ( which I doubt for some reason ) I would consider writing the drum parts in midi.

 

[digitaldeath]

Are there any alternatives to Beat Detective for other DAWs?

 

[Machinated]

I do my editing in Logic and I'm pretty damned happy with it (although a % feature like BD would be nice).

 

[digitaldeath]

Glad to hear, but are there any general purpose Beat Detective alternatives out there?

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Nope
It's built into the daw to manipulate regions in a way that a plugin can't.

HOWEVER--- Most DAWs have hitpoint detection, or audiosnap function that can be used in a similar way, but not as intuitively IMO.

 

[digitaldeath]

I wonder if something could be thrown together using Reaper's API?