Damn, they tracked guitars along an unedited drum...

S

SawdustRecordings

Member
Aug 9, 2010
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Germany
Hey,

I am currently mixing and editing a band that recorded in another studio. Unfortunately they tracked the guitars while hearing the drums which haven't been edited by then. When I'm quantizing the drums now, the guitars are totally out of time. What shall I do? Leave everything as it is? Try to edit the guitars so that they are in time? Or call the band and tell them they have to record 10 tracks guitars again... this time along the click!

=/
 
SawdustRecordings said:
Yeah, thats really fucked up!

Drums played on Click only! Rest played on the Drums... =(
Click to expand...

ahhh ok, I gotcha....so they tracked the guitars to unedited drums.

Now, if you are tabbing to transients and slip editing drums, would it be at all possible to group the guitars with the drum tracks and edit them in all the same spots as the drums, then slip edit everything? I personally havent had much luck trying slip editing and pocketing or whatever....I cannot quantize to save my life yet. Just a thought, though....I'd imagine you'd probably run into problems though...?
 
Nice idea, but that won't sound any good! There would be too many edits in the guitar tracks. In addition to that, the guitars aren't that good in time with the drums. =/
I think I have to leave everything as it is, unless the band rerecords every single guitar!
 
hmm....well, good luck man! I'd probably try to have them track to the edited drums if possible. If not....sounds like you may not want to just let it "as is" if its THAT bad.
 
I'm guessing no, but do you have DIs of the guitar?

If so, edit the lot, reamp. Sounds edited as fuck, but you at least dont get the artifcact clusterfuck that you do trying to edit am amped sound. As you likely know.
 
Could you do a quick groove template of the drumtracks? The grid should follow the player, rather then the other way round. Should help you to edit the gits more easily.
Just slight drum editing (only if really necessary) -> generate a groove template -> edit the guitars to the grid

I've just done it in Protools and more common in Samplitude/Sequioa. It works good in there, but I don't know about other DAWs.
Still it's more work to do, so make them pay more!
 
Dude, I'd recommend just getting brutal with your editing. If you're not happy about the way it sounds at the moment and you wouldn't be happy having your name associated with the music, do your thing.

I've edited some seriously bad performances. Beat Detective and Elastic Audio are seriously powerful together, you can literally make anything perfect (that's if you're on PT). Edit the drums to the grid, then do the same to the guitars. If you don't have DIs then its more difficult but definitely not impossible. Maybe post a clip so we can hear the scale of your problem.

Best of luck with it and don't worry - you can't polish a turd, but you can certainly roll it in glitter ;)
 
Ok, I just started editing and stopped after ten minutes. The amount of work is enormous! They quadtracked the guitar, and I would have to slip nearly everything! It would be the only possible way to get a nice sound in the end, but my timetable can't handle it.

Gonna ask the band, what they wanna do.
 
if you didn't get DI's, you're screwed.

if you did, the easiest thing to do will be edit the drums and then use protools elastic audio to edit the DI's...whip through the DI tracks in analysis mode, drop a marker on every appropriate transient, quantize, go back and check it/adjust mistakes, render. this will work REALLY well and takes no time at all, if you have access to protools. it won't sound very "edited", either.

one important note: when editing DI's with EA over drums that were slipped, i find you sometimes need to nudge the guitar group forward a few MS to really sit everything just right. you want the drum transients to be just a smidge before the guitar transients.
 
SawdustRecordings said:
Ok, I just started editing and stopped after ten minutes. The amount of work is enormous! They quadtracked the guitar, and I would have to slip nearly everything! It would be the only possible way to get a nice sound in the end, but my timetable can't handle it.

Gonna ask the band, what they wanna do.
Click to expand...


Welcome to what I'm guessing a lot of us do on a daily basis.

+1 to Juju's comments, especially about sliding the guitars forward to pocket them.
 
Be very careful while you're editing the DIs. We can't really see the pick attack in the waveform (Yup, you read this right). Make the cuts about 5-10ms before the 'visual' transient.
 
Maamar Huq said:
Be very careful while you're editing the DIs. We can't really see the pick attack in the waveform (Yup, you read this right). Make the cuts about 5-10ms before the 'visual' transient.
Click to expand...

this has alot to do with the nudging. the big transient isn't the pick attack, we want the pick attack landing on the grid. it's actually kinda weird too cause EA, half the time, will drop a marker on the pick attack (correct spot) and half the time on the big transient. gotta watch out for that to maintain consistency. usually it makes most sense to just drop them all on the big transient and then just nudge the whole group forward, since that's what it gets most of the time and occasionaly the pick attack squiggle (not quite a transient) is barely visible at all.
 
waltz mastering said:
Almost like a real band!.. Why do you have to edit the drums? Did the drummer suck?..all in jest... but seriously.
Click to expand...

Yea I agree here. I'm currently tracking a band that didn't want their drums quantized to grid and I respect that.
I think being flexible is a good quality to have. There are old records that were never quantized and still sound good today. You can do it!
 
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