Mixing 1 stereo track of drums?

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

How do? A friend of mine sent me 2 songs to mix but the each of the drum tracks are 1 stereo track- kick,toms,snare,cymbals,OH's everything. 1 track. I called him and he said theres no way they can retrack the drums because the drummer is going in for surgery and wont be able to record for a least a month or two. The only thing I can think of is to go through the track and build up a drumset by hand. How would you go about this situation?

 

[LeSedna]

If you're at ease with midi programming and if the songs are not too groovy, you could program everything yourself. It's possible to go through 2 songs, but it all depends on the style.

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

Its possible to program the same track which is my original idea, I was wondering if anybody had any other ideas aside of programming.

 

[mick thompson]

well back to programming you could (but i dont know how successful it would be) try eq'ing, compressing, gating limiting etc the track to try isolate specific tones and frequencies.

example: try really bump up the kick drum to an almost extreme level (that wouldn't be used in actual production) then use toontrack's drumtracker and get it to automatically map out a midi file of the kick drum. do the same processing to the snare and the hi-hat if you can - that way you could save yourself programming at least the kick, snare & hats (if you are able to isolate them) after that its just a matter of programming the cymbals & toms and whatever other percussion if involved on the track.

then if you dont want to use superior drummer etc you send it to multiouts and trigger them off using aptrigga or drumagog or just send your midi to a hard synth with a fast release and trigger it off that using whatever samples you want

its a long shot - upload the .wav or .aiff of the stereo track and let me take a listen and ill see if i can isolate anything from it and produce a secondary single channel .wav / .aiff for you - if i can then thats your best option IMHO unless someone else has another idea

 

[LeSedna]

I've used that trick too. It just needs the parts to have their own characteristic to show well in the track. If the kick is boomy enough, you can make it resonate by boosting the good frequencies and triggering it. You could maybe do this with the snare and the kick; and if not for the tom you could program them. In the end, you would end with kick/snare/toms and use the original track as overheads/room tracks. It would be ghetto, but for a demo maybe it will be enough.

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

Ok so I ended up just going through the drum track and sound replacing it drum by drum....I'm gonna use the original track as the room mics since that seems to be the only option I really have...Heres 3 clips...all in one link, first is original drums, second is my samples (no cymbals) and 3rd is it mixed together...theres NOTHING else done to it yet but some basic panning and volume adjustments...Keep it or ditch it?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/854969/DT Drums.mp3

 

[LeSedna]

What is the deal with the band regarding those mixes, what are they for ?

 

[ahjteam]

I am now on a laptop, but as a general suggestion would maybe do a wide dip in the room mics (3khz) so you won't hear the possible flams, and maybe cut the low end (200hz) just in case to remove possible phasing

 

[cloy26]

you should get a better snare sample...

 

[TheDriller]

Why is the kick in the original panned so far to the left?

 

[Morgan C]

^ Yeah listening on my laptop I thought it was just from the overheads but the snare/kick seem almost hardpanned left and right. Weird.

Depending on the music I'd either completely program the drums, or just make it mono and leave it as is. Its a suitable sound for some genres. I don't think just samples will help out.

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

^ Yeah listening on my laptop I thought it was just from the overheads but the snare/kick seem almost hardpanned left and right. Weird.

Depending on the music I'd either completely program the drums, or just make it mono and leave it as is. Its a suitable sound for some genres. I don't think just samples will help out.

Thats probably my fault, I have the original stereo track hard L and R. So get rid of the samples and just work with the original drum track?

 

[Jind]

You know - by the sounds of your issue, this might have been a good place to try something like Toontracks Drumtracker. I've never used it but it looks like it would do the job.

http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=41

http://www.toontrack.com/tv.asp?channel=products&sort=views&way=DESC&item=59#1

 

[mick thompson]

do you still want me to give it a go dude?

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

Ill probably pick up that drumtracker eventually, i keep looking at it and then spending my money on something worthless....and mick thanks dude but I ended up just going with the samples and the guys seem to like it so i guess thats how its gonna stick. thanks for the help guys

 

[mick thompson]

ok man, np, tip me off if you need help with it in the future