Drum editing questions...

AdamWathan

AdamWathan

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Apr 12, 2002
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So I've never really done any drum editing before and was curious about a few things...

I hear a lot about people grouping their drum tracks and cutting at the kick transients and then quantizing all of it through that... I understand how that would work if the drummer was playing in time with himself but not with the click since it would shift everything at once, but what if the kick is out with the click but everything else is in? Do you guys edit things totally differently depending on each scenario? It just strikes me as odd since people in PT seem to just use beat detective and bam everything is fixed, but I don't understand how it is "smart" enough to do totally different types of edits in different situations...

What if a kick is early and a snare is late, what happens when you shift all the drum tracks forward making the snare even later? Or what do you do with the overheads in that scenario?

Really I'm just looking for someone to explain the basics behind drum editing work flow and how the deal with all the different scenarios, I've never really understood the whole chopping and shifting of overhead tracks, especially with time stretching, blah blah blah... What would be particularly helpful is if someone could explain all of this with Reaper since that's what I'm using...
 
im looking for the answers to these same questions!!!

Allthough in a band I recently recorded there were some blast beats that where the bass drum was early and the snare and cymbals were late. I quantized the snare to the beat and than manual edited the bass drum to be on time as well. I figure that because im filtering everything bellow 625hz the bass drum would be least likely heard in the overhead tracks. I would like to see what others are doing, particularly Mr. Stugis lol
 
I play in a metal band with a jazz drummer, and on our last recordings I ended up just leaving the drums sloppy because like you were saying, the kick was the only thing that was off most of the time and I couldn't get it out of the overheads. We're recording a new demo this weekend, and I'll probably be sending the drum tracks to get BeatFixx'd just to see if it's possible to line everything up properly :cry:
 
I cut at kick transients AND snare transients. Including overhead tracks of course. That way kicks and snares are aligned to grid but hihats may be off.

But there are times this method doesn't work. For example when snares are in place and kicks are all over the place you rely on low cutting the overhead tracks and hoping the best.
 
I edit by hand unless it's blast beats of any sort, but if you are going to quantize I find the best method is deal with the snare drum first (by hand normally, leaving it sounding reasonably human) then quantize the kick drum to grid on it's own to give a tighter feel. Don't be afraid to move the kick seperate from the OHs if you have to, if it's in a fast section and you've high passed your OHs reasonably high then it really is better to have it sounding tight with a few funny bit's of hits in odd places in the OHs
 
No easy answer im afraid.

If you have blast beats and the feet and hands don't match, its just a case of checking different ideas. BD is only a tool for detecting transients (a very good one), its not able to make a drummers hands and feet match hahaha.

I use BD and absolutley love it though, i would be toast without it :lol:

Dont be afraid (like Skekesis268) to ungroup the drum track and literally just move the snares in line with the kick (leave everything else on the grid, cut to the kicks). Some poeple get very anal about moving JUST a snare for instance and get their pants in a twist worrying about phase, if it works use it. Dont feel like you have to move as a group all the time, Blast beats are a pain when it comes to this.

Also don't be afraid of overdubbing just kicks for example, say you have cut the blast beats to the snare and the feet are off, overdub just the kicks.

Or sample a left and right foot then make the blast beat by hand (shifting the samples around actually in the project) using the left foot and right foot samples.

Make sure you pick up some DDrum clips as the trigger samples will cover allot of imperfections.

Hope it helps
 
AStudio said:
No easy answer im afraid.

If you have blast beats and the feet and hands don't match, its just a case of checking different ideas. BD is only a tool for detecting transients (a very good one), its not able to make a drummers hands and feet match hahaha.

I use BD and absolutley love it though, i would be toast without it :lol:

Dont be afraid (like Skekesis268) to ungroup the drum track and literally just move the snares in line with the kick (leave everything else on the grid, cut to the kicks). Some poeple get very anal about moving JUST a snare for instance and get their pants in a twist worrying about phase, if it works use it. Dont feel like you have to move as a group all the time, Blast beats are a pain when it comes to this.

Also don't be afraid of overdubbing just kicks for example, say you have cut the blast beats to the snare and the feet are off, overdub just the kicks.

Or sample a left and right foot then make the blast beat by hand (shifting the samples around actually in the project) using the left foot and right foot samples.

Make sure you pick up some DDrum clips as the trigger samples will cover allot of imperfections.

Hope it helps
Click to expand...

cut to the kick? but surely the snare is more present in the overheads and moving it on it's own would end up messy? Then again, you sound like it's worked for you, so if it works dont knock it i guess
 
You're not talking about editing drums, you're talking about fixing a sloppy performance. If you fix it, it will sound less natural because you're going to have to take out the room, etc. This problem should have been corrected during tracking.

Another solution is to cut and paste from another part of the song that's played better, if that's possible. Bleh!!!

How do track drums? ¯\(°_o)/¯
 
For fast double bass kicks, I duno what anyone else does, I don't even know if this is right or wrong, but what I just started doing on the current CD I'm working on is use the Spike Gen from Apul Soft (Aptrigga). I set it up so it sounds relatively human, different velocities a little swing and some "Human" touch. set it to 8th or 16th notes, then send the outputs of that track into another preamp, then record just the spikes and put Aptrigga on the recorded track, and blow away the original double bass kicks. High pass the Overheads around 250Hz, and send both kick tracks to a "kick buss" put a little bit of lovin (EQ Limiting Comp Etc) and hit play it seems to work for me! I can even set the spike gen to sound perfect, but then it sounds weird.

For the edits, I then pull up a transient detector with some stretch ability's (for me in Sonar it's audio snap) then pull those snares (by hand) in syncopation with the kicks. I have one mic'ed snare track and one triggered snare track, and of course the overhead transients that all get dragged in line with the kicks. Sounds tight, but it's time consuming.

Edit... Oh one other things, you have to have the tempo map of the song in order for this to work, otherwise you'll be pissing in the wind.
 
i usually just edit the kick seperately from everything else. I group the toms snare and overhead and make cuts at each snare and tom and at obvious cymbal hits using tab to transient(and this amazing macro keyboard i picked up from newegg). Then i quantize it all in sections(listening to just the overheads on each section after i quantize it) and then fill in the gaps and make the crossfades. Then i listen through just the overhead track of the entire song to make sure everything is good

then i go back and cut the kick track using beat detective and quantize the kick drum track in sections, being careful to make sure the kick matches what he's playing in the overhead. There are definitely certain sections that i will seperate and quantize the kick along with the other tracks, but it usually doesnt matter. The cymbals are high passed so much that the kick is inaudible(for the most part). any parts the kick can be heard, i go back and fix it.
 
alan1990 said:
im looking for the answers to these same questions!!!

Allthough in a band I recently recorded there were some blast beats that where the bass drum was early and the snare and cymbals were late. I quantized the snare to the beat and than manual edited the bass drum to be on time as well. I figure that because im filtering everything bellow 625hz the bass drum would be least likely heard in the overhead tracks. I would like to see what others are doing, particularly Mr. Stugis lol
Click to expand...

i match my editing to the drummer

some examples

first and foremost i should mention what i do, basic
if the tracking is solid, then start by transparent quantizing, by hand (i use nuendo, set events to transparent, no names)
group all the drum tracks, and start cutting and slipping (i use slip editing, by hand)
i do all quantizing by exactness, no play. a little play can be added later.
get stuff approved, cross fade, bounce, (re-edits, if necessary) then, mixdown drumagogs

plea for purging:
guy does a lot of hitting drums over kick rythyms, and i felt a lot of what was really going on was getting lost after quantizing... so anytime two drums were supposed to occur at the exact same time, i'd move something forward (usually the kick, unless it wasnt involved; never the snare) by about 10 - 20 ms
unfortunately im not very happy with what i did to the blast beats on this record so i'll just skip that

prada new record:
anytime two hits occur at the same time, leave it alone, unless its toms then move by 64th note. there's an insane amount of double bass on this cd, so i just left it.

as far as sample editing goes (dynamics and what not), i use slate samples. i turn dynamic tracking off because there are dynamic samples supplied for you. so if i want a hard hit, i make sure there's a hard hit there. etc etc. try it sometime, you'll be suprised.

im usually using 4 solo'd kick hits on just about every record i make. i do a lot of production accents (extra kick and snare tracks that come in and out). its like my own custom way to automate. where one producer would turn overhead or drum tracks up and down with volume, i use extra samples to get the point across. im doin this with all peices of the drum kit. mostly kicks, and cymbals

lets see what else...

anything in specific ??
 
F0RBIDDEN said:
So I've never really done any drum editing before and was curious about a few things...

I hear a lot about people grouping their drum tracks and cutting at the kick transients and then quantizing all of it through that... I understand how that would work if the drummer was playing in time with himself but not with the click since it would shift everything at once, but what if the kick is out with the click but everything else is in? Do you guys edit things totally differently depending on each scenario? It just strikes me as odd since people in PT seem to just use beat detective and bam everything is fixed, but I don't understand how it is "smart" enough to do totally different types of edits in different situations...

What if a kick is early and a snare is late, what happens when you shift all the drum tracks forward making the snare even later? Or what do you do with the overheads in that scenario?

Really I'm just looking for someone to explain the basics behind drum editing work flow and how the deal with all the different scenarios, I've never really understood the whole chopping and shifting of overhead tracks, especially with time stretching, blah blah blah... What would be particularly helpful is if someone could explain all of this with Reaper since that's what I'm using...
Click to expand...

the basic concept is that you're cutting a peice of the audio, and moving it backwards or forward in time, to line up with a click / grid. what ends up happening is a lot of gaps and overlaps. when you deal with a gap, you're goin to take the next audio event and drag backwards. what this does is a "repeat". since we're dealing with drums and cymbals are similair to white noise, you almost can't tell that the audio is being repeated to repair the gap. this is better than time stretching (almost always audible in my opinion). the connection between the edit and the drag back is tied with a cross fade.

when dealing with an overlap, the event that overlaps the next event is drag back to meet with the next event, then cross faded (resulting in a loss of recorded audio). all you're losing here is the tail end of something, since a cymbal is struck then fades, you won't lose much but decay (no one will really be able to tell you lost anything here unless its just a special situation).

it sounds really confusing at first but its not that difficult to understand when you give it a try and see the result for your self. as you do it more and more, you'll encounter situations where you have to figure out something new to correct an editing problem, and you'll figure these things out with time, once you learn the basics like the back of your hand. then it just comes down to making logical decisions.

just take my advice and dont use time stretching for quantize editing. it sounds horrible!

specific stuff:
the snare wins over anything. the snare is usually the loudest drum. and you never want to intentionally knock it off time to fix something else thats off time. lets say a kick and snare are close to each other, but one is off. you want to line up the snare. the snare is going to come through everything. the kick is most likely irrelevant because you can probably mute the kick track and not even hear it with other tracks still playing. some projects i quantize with the kick still in (because you pretty much have to), and then later delete the kick track and make my own.

another important thing is to tell the drummer what is important to you, even if you have to put it into drummer terms. if whatever mic/sound/editin setup you have sounds bad when kicks are early, then tell the drummer not to have early kicks. even if that means watching him like a hawk and saying, hey redo this part, your kick is early! seriously, if you intend to keep the audio tracks, make them what you want them to be. if you dont have time, then plan on having early kicks or coming up with a fix!

blast beats are pretty easy if the drummer is good, line up the snare, fuck the kick. of its a euro blast, you'll need to pay attention to the kick while you quantize. while you'll want to keep the snare on time, it might be quiet enough to ignore considering the kick is leading the blast. keep an eye on the right hand cymbal track (if you've got that track / mic from the session), because a lot of dudes are hitting the cymbals about 10 ms before the kick and you could be cutting within that range, hence chopping off the transient of the right hand hit leading the blast.

always make your edits close to the hit, but before any transients within the entire kit (yes you've literally gotta check, a lot of the time!)
 
joeymusicguy said:
i match my editing to the drummer

some examples

first and foremost i should mention what i do, basic
if the tracking is solid, then start by transparent quantizing, by hand (i use nuendo, set events to transparent, no names)
group all the drum tracks, and start cutting and slipping (i use slip editing, by hand)
i do all quantizing by exactness, no play. a little play can be added later.
get stuff approved, cross fade, bounce, (re-edits, if necessary) then, mixdown drumagogs

plea for purging:
guy does a lot of hitting drums over kick rythyms, and i felt a lot of what was really going on was getting lost after quantizing... so anytime two drums were supposed to occur at the exact same time, i'd move something forward (usually the kick, unless it wasnt involved; never the snare) by about 10 - 20 ms
unfortunately im not very happy with what i did to the blast beats on this record so i'll just skip that

prada new record:
anytime two hits occur at the same time, leave it alone, unless its toms then move by 64th note. there's an insane amount of double bass on this cd, so i just left it.

as far as sample editing goes (dynamics and what not), i use slate samples. i turn dynamic tracking off because there are dynamic samples supplied for you. so if i want a hard hit, i make sure there's a hard hit there. etc etc. try it sometime, you'll be suprised.

im usually using 4 solo'd kick hits on just about every record i make. i do a lot of production accents (extra kick and snare tracks that come in and out). its like my own custom way to automate. where one producer would turn overhead or drum tracks up and down with volume, i use extra samples to get the point across. im doin this with all peices of the drum kit. mostly kicks, and cymbals

lets see what else...

anything in specific ??
Click to expand...
First of all thanks a ton man!!!

The only question i have now is for example on the new tdwp you said when 2 drums are supposed to have been hit at the same time (lets say a snare and bass drum) you are quantizing the snare to the beat and just leaving the bass drum where ever it falls even if it may be early? and then with the toms after you quantize the beat if the toms are off with the kick you slide ONLY the tom tracks to within a 64th note of the kick leaving the other tracks where they were quantized to by the kick?

although i do understand that these scenarios are directly effected by how good the takes are obviously in a bad take stuff like the bass drum being early is going to be more obvious.
 
F0RBIDDEN said:
Thanks Joey dude! Lots of helpful stuff there!

So is the general consensus that every time you move a drum hit you should split and move all of the drum tracks along with it?
Click to expand...

yeah, the original concept behind this was to keep things in phase

now days everyone's replacing, but you still run into timing weirdness, so you want to keep everything together, still
then clean up as much as you can later, without getting double / accidental fallam hits in the overheads vs the drum tracks
 
alan1990 said:
First of all thanks a ton man!!!

The only question i have now is for example on the new tdwp you said when 2 drums are supposed to have been hit at the same time (lets say a snare and bass drum) you are quantizing the snare to the beat and just leaving the bass drum where ever it falls even if it may be early? and then with the toms after you quantize the beat if the toms are off with the kick you slide ONLY the tom tracks to within a 64th note of the kick leaving the other tracks where they were quantized to by the kick?

although i do understand that these scenarios are directly effected by how good the takes are obviously in a bad take stuff like the bass drum being early is going to be more obvious.
Click to expand...

oh, well what i said probably makes more sense if i tell you the kick was completely programmed

so when i said "i just left it" it meant, the kick is perfectly on time

so generally throughout the entire cd, there's no play
and my point was, i dont do that all the time
 
great thread :)

one more question guys.....what do you think about recording shells and cymbals in different takes? in theory this would make quantizing the kick/snare/whatever hits a breeze as your cymbal hits are a completely different deal, but then again, what about the lack of mainly snare "ambience" in the OHs? would it eventually result in a dead sound?
 
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