Drum editing for my album has been started - Adam's Slip Editing!

[Erkan]

Hehe I'm a confused person in everyday life so no worries Well, I did edit a few cymbal transients as Adam mentioned in this thread - only when there is like a slow part with distinct cymbals and so on. But then again, the cymbals are grouped with the snare and the toms anyway so it causes no trouble to edit them.

Anyway, if I knew I wasn't going to do any sample replacing on the kick drum, I would've just edited the WHOLE drum kit together. But since I will be using very little of the original kick in the final mix, I chose to edit it separately for less splits on all other tracks.

 

[Charles J]

Hehe I'm a confused person in everyday life so no worries Well, I did edit a few cymbal transients as Adam mentioned in this thread - only when there is like a slow part with distinct cymbals and so on. But then again, the cymbals are grouped with the snare and the toms anyway so it causes no trouble to edit them.

Anyway, if I knew I wasn't going to do any sample replacing on the kick drum, I would've just edited the WHOLE drum kit together. But since I will be using very little of the original kick in the final mix, I chose to edit it separately for less splits on all other tracks.

Yup, I do the exact same thing. =D No use when you're just going to be replacing the kick anyhow... Depends on the style of music, but on 99% of the stuff I do (and enjoy doing) the kick is replaced to all fuckery. =D

 

[nwright]

^If you slip edited, though, why would you need to mess with the cymbal transients?

I've just started slip editing on my bands new project, and when I slip edit, it's the whole kit, then I go back and work on the kick specifically. But in doing this, the cymbal transients are all preserved because of where I place the cuts...How does this not work in Reaper (I'm on Cubase 5)?

 

[Erkan]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about right now but uhmm... anyway, I only edit cymbal transients if I need to. If the drummer (well me) plays a slow doom metal type of beat, and if he is untight between the kick and the cymbals then you will need to edit the cymbals to line them up with the kick if you have edited the kick separately. If you haven't edited the kick separately, you can't line anything up with anything because that will cause phase issues unless you have exceptionally low bleed. Editing the kick separately also means that you will probably be replacing it, so what's why you'll get away without phase issues later on.

But yea honestly I'm confused now. Not sure what we're talking about anymore haha I just know that I have no problems with slip editing and it works like a charm - yes even in poor little REAPER. Whatever artifacts I have is because I have edited the kick separately but since I'm going to replace it anyway (and I knew I was going to do that even before tracking the drums) I can get away with it.

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Sounds cool! Pretty cool drums, sounds kind of Mastodon-ish, I like that rawness

Thanks bro. It was a quick thing made in +- 1 hour. So it´s not very good but mixing real drums is not also my strong point.

Btw, I really hope that your album kicks ass because you have really cool riffs and ideias. Do you have already a singer?

 

[Erkan]

Yeah I have a singer and I'm really looking forward to tracking vox.

Mixing real drums is tough yeah! Gotta deal with all the bleed and try to make every piece of the kit consistent and stuff... I'm currently contemplating if I should use samples or not on the kit. I have gotten a pretty decent kick sound and the toms sound really nice too but I just cannot get a powerful sound out of the snare. I might have to use samples on the snare and leave the rest of the kit natural. It would be awesome to just go natural on the entire kit though, just because it's almost "expected" to use samples.

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Try your best mix without samples but if doesnt sound too well, try samples. But I know what you are saying. I also tried to pull a good snare sound and it´s not easy. The snare bottom has a annoying harmonic also!lol that dont work too well in a mix. More one thing that I noticed is that your china cymbal have a very odd sound, it lacks something. But try your best dude, eventually you will not even need to replace all the snare, a blend could work really great.

I am curious to hear your music with the singer. I will be waiting for your final product.

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Erkan, do you have any treatment in your room? Just curious. Sounds good! Those overheads sound damn nice considering what you paid for them.

Joe

 

[Erkan]

Try your best mix without samples but if doesnt sound too well, try samples. But I know what you are saying. I also tried to pull a good snare sound and it´s not easy. The snare bottom has a annoying harmonic also!lol that dont work too well in a mix. More one thing that I noticed is that your china cymbal have a very odd sound, it lacks something. But try your best dude, eventually you will not even need to replace all the snare, a blend could work really great.

I am curious to hear your music with the singer. I will be waiting for your final product.

Yeah, I've spent a couple hours on the snare now and it's just wrong. It's the wrong snare sound for this music I can't get a good sound that I'm happy with and I don't like the bottom mic sound either. Here is a clip of a "mixed" version of the drums so far. It's probably clipping a bit because it's not really mixed, just tried to polish up the individual tracks a bit. I still think the toms are fantastic though, I've never gotten this clarity in toms before. The kick is also not bad! This is the first time I'm getting a usable kick drum with my mic. After some processing, it's consistent and sounds almost sample replaced haha. The drums are so far 100% natural but I think I'm going for samples on at least the snare... won't sound good otherwise.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/Drumtest.mp3

Erkan, do you have any treatment in your room? Just curious. Sounds good! Those overheads sound damn nice considering what you paid for them.

Joe

The treatment in my room is actually just ordinary rehearsal space treatment. But the weird thing is that not all walls are covered but about half the room's walls are covered in glass wool thingie and the other 2 walls are concrete. I hung a carpet up on one of the walls and hung a thick blanket on the other one. I'll take pictures later when I start doing "studio log"-videos and shit.

Yeah these drum mics aren't the best but I'm pretty sure you can't get any better than that for the price.

 

[Erkan]

Oh and yea, even though the kick is edited separately and compressed a lot, it doesn't really have that much audible flubs in it as I thought it would considering it's not even sample blended. Some editing to clean the kick up from unwanted noises and the filtering process I talk about in the OTHER THREAD, and it's pretty good. It's gonna get even better with all instruments added.

 

[Mago]

Yeah, I've spent a couple hours on the snare now and it's just wrong. It's the wrong snare sound for this music I can't get a good sound that I'm happy with and I don't like the bottom mic sound either. Here is a clip of a "mixed" version of the drums so far. It's probably clipping a bit because it's not really mixed, just tried to polish up the individual tracks a bit. I still think the toms are fantastic though, I've never gotten this clarity in toms before. The kick is also not bad! This is the first time I'm getting a usable kick drum with my mic. After some processing, it's consistent and sounds almost sample replaced haha. The drums are so far 100% natural but I think I'm going for samples on at least the snare... won't sound good otherwise.

some snares just dont work out good when recordet, at least that's what i experienced

 

[Erkan]

Yeah, it sounded great in the room but I don't like how it translated through the 57. I think I miced it a bit bad though... hmm, too close to the edge so it has a lot of ring because it really doesn't ring that much in the room. I'm gonna blend that motherfucker with one of Behindert's snares, those are FAT and will kick the ass out of my recorded snare.

 

[AdamWathan]

Not sure if you saw my post in the Slip Editing thread but here Erkan...

Hey dude, just a tip to speed things up, don't just arbitrarily edit the kick separately for the whole song. Edit all of it together and when you get to a part where the kick and snare are at the same time and not synced up perfectly, sync up the snare, then create a split at the next transient so your next chunk of drums remains grouped and the kick edit your about to do doesn't throw off the kick compared to the rest of the kit for the rest of the song, click the group icon in the kick item that was out of sync to ungroup just that one snippet and move that one hit manually.

I find this is a lot faster than editing the whole song twice (once for kick, once for rest of kit) and you maintain phase coherency between your kick better for the whole track.

With fast double bass runs that usually create cymbal artifacts, I will cut ALL the drums at every second or fourth .bass drum hit, and then fix the in between kicks separately

In the clip you posted originally, there aren't that many spots where you needed to edit the kick separately. ALWAYS edit everything together, only edit the kick separately if you can HEAR it fucking up your cymbals or if there's a spot you need to make a compromise because the kick is hitting at the same time as another drum and they aren't in sync with each other. It's waaaay faster dude! You only have to edit the song once fixing the individual off kicks as you go and it sounds better at the end because you will not have NEARLY as much flamming. Good work though dude!

 

[Arrowed Lung Studios]

haha Erkan your such a perfectionist, the performance was good and the drum sound is really good with the stuff you got. Im liking the kick and the snare alot on your latest upload. Keep it up man.

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Wow, nice processed sound Erkan. Care to share briefly what you did to em?

Joe

 

[feles]

Yeah, the snare is a bit dull.
Why don't you make new samples of your snare, process them, and maybe you could get it right with replacing them? Did you tried that?

 

[Nuno Filipe]

Yeah, I've spent a couple hours on the snare now and it's just wrong. It's the wrong snare sound for this music I can't get a good sound that I'm happy with and I don't like the bottom mic sound either. Here is a clip of a "mixed" version of the drums so far. It's probably clipping a bit because it's not really mixed, just tried to polish up the individual tracks a bit. I still think the toms are fantastic though, I've never gotten this clarity in toms before. The kick is also not bad! This is the first time I'm getting a usable kick drum with my mic. After some processing, it's consistent and sounds almost sample replaced haha. The drums are so far 100% natural but I think I'm going for samples on at least the snare... won't sound good otherwise.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/Drumtest.mp3

Wow, that´s a really, really nice mix. Very controled. I didnt spent to much time on the mix but I am really suprised with your mix. You have skills Dude for what I hear you will have just to blend the snare, all the rest works great. What it lacks in the snare it´s more crack and punch. You just have to do a blend with a really nice snare. Care to share some info of what you did with drums? Love that kick, for a 100% natural kick it´s awesome. More one thing, did you used a noise gate to reduce the bleed?

 

[Erkan]

In the clip you posted originally, there aren't that many spots where you needed to edit the kick separately. ALWAYS edit everything together, only edit the kick separately if you can HEAR it fucking up your cymbals or if there's a spot you need to make a compromise because the kick is hitting at the same time as another drum and they aren't in sync with each other. It's waaaay faster dude! You only have to edit the song once fixing the individual off kicks as you go and it sounds better at the end because you will not have NEARLY as much flamming. Good work though dude!

You know what Adam.. you're totally right. There hardly are any spots in my songs where several drums are hit together. I don't know why I automatically wanted to edit the kick separately from the rest of the kit. I think I thought it would be a better idea because it would reduce the amount of splits throughout the entire kit. I want the kick to be pretty darn tight so I have to chop up almost every hit and just nudge it over to the grid, and this will cause many many splits on all other tracks as well. Is it really good to do it this way? I'm wondering if there'll be a lot of artifacts or not... but it seems this method is really sounding great and doesn't produce many artifacts at all.

haha Erkan your such a perfectionist, the performance was good and the drum sound is really good with the stuff you got. Im liking the kick and the snare alot on your latest upload. Keep it up man.

Thanks man! Yeah I think everyone around here knows I'm a perfectionist asshole and it surely does me more harm than good I suspect but that's the way I roll for now. The snare sounds kind of dull but I guess it could work in a few genres but not for this one I believe... we'll see how it goes once some blending occurs

Wow, nice processed sound Erkan. Care to share briefly what you did to em?

Joe

Thanks! Aye, I will post some screenshots after this post. Takes too long to write, although it's not really anything advanced.

Yeah, the snare is a bit dull.
Why don't you make new samples of your snare, process them, and maybe you could get it right with replacing them? Did you tried that?

Yeah that is a good idea but I think I will blend one of the snares I've found on this forum instead. There are many awesome snares floating around and I'm sure I'll have better luck with one of those But I really like the idea of just using my own snare... at least I could say the drums are 100% mine Too bad I have to resort to samples though, I really wanted to keep the kit 100% natural but... I think that's hard in this genre. I'd definately need a better starting point for the snare, probably a different snare altogether.

Wow, that´s a really, really nice mix. Very controled. I didnt spent to much time on the mix but I am really suprised with your mix. You have skills Dude for what I hear you will have just to blend the snare, all the rest works great. What it lacks in the snare it´s more crack and punch. You just have to do a blend with a really nice snare. Care to share some info of what you did with drums? Love that kick, for a 100% natural kick it´s awesome. More one thing, did you used a noise gate to reduce the bleed?

Thanks, it really makes me happy to hear that! I will share the info now in a post below. Going to take some screenshots so you can get an idea of what's going on with the drums.

 

[AdamWathan]

You know what Adam.. you're totally right. There hardly are any spots in my songs where several drums are hit together. I don't know why I automatically wanted to edit the kick separately from the rest of the kit. I think I thought it would be a better idea because it would reduce the amount of splits throughout the entire kit. I want the kick to be pretty darn tight so I have to chop up almost every hit and just nudge it over to the grid, and this will cause many many splits on all other tracks as well. Is it really good to do it this way? I'm wondering if there'll be a lot of artifacts or not... but it seems this method is really sounding great and doesn't produce many artifacts at all.

Yeah I hear ya dude. The only time it is ever an issue is on really fast 16th note double bass rolls where you are really butchering the overheads with splits everywhere. That's when I start editing stuff separately, but you will be surprised what you can get away with when editing everything together. Like I said, rule of thumb, edit everything together always. If you listen back and something sounds like shit, then edit the kick on it's own and leave everything else natural.

 

[Erkan]

Here are some screenshots from Reaper. The chain goes from up to down on the left side, then continues from up to down on the right side. Many of the parameters are just dialed in quickly and it's nothing really serious. That doesn't mean it can't sound decent though but if you wonder how I got that particular sound of let's say the kick, now you'll know it.

One more thing, the lowpass EQ on for example the kick or the toms is my bleed filter. It's parameter modulated so that when the toms are struck, it makes the EQ open up all the way to 24khz to let all of the signal pass through, and as the tom decays the EQ low passes more and down to a maximum of around 1000hz. This effectively kills most of the bleed but lets the tom's tail through.

Kick: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-Kick.JPG
Snare Top: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-Snare.JPG
Snare Bottom: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-SnareBottom.JPG
Snare Group/Bus: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-SnareGroup.JPG
Toms: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-Toms.JPG (all toms currently have the same chain but with slightly different EQs and comp settings)
Overhead Group/Bus: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/585020/random pics/-OH.JPG

Edit: Did you notice the lovely EQ on the kick drum? I went the "Yeeaaaah... let's fuck all respect for audio signals and waveforms"-route when I tweaked the kick. I was set on sample replacing the kick anyway so I was just tweaking "for fun" and it actually started to sound good. I guess this shows why my kick mic sucks so bad. It picks up way too much mids and way too little highs.