Need Drum Editing Help

[Downwards]

So yeah, I recorded a drum tracks in PT8(using triggers/samples)for the shells, and condensors for the overheads(2) and Hihat(1). It's aggressive modern metal, that has tempo and timing changes. I've been trying to edit the drums so they are locked into the grid, but I can't get anything to work. And the drummer isn't that bad. Not perfect, but not horrible.

But I've tried using beat detective, and quantizing them, but to no avail. Both methods just severely screw up the drum hits, and puts them in bizzare places. It works with simple stuff, but crazy metal shit, it just screws it all up. I don't get it.

How do you guys match the drums to the grid for complex metal with temp/timing changes? What do I need to do?

 

[Therion_Prime]

When recording triggered drums, I correct all midi notes by HAND without grid snap to maintain a tiny amount of "human-ness".
Yes, it takes AGES and your head is probably going to explode.

 

[Downwards]

Oh lord.. isn't there a faster way? And the triggered drums I recorded aren't actually midi. I just used triggers with Drumagog, and recorded them as audio. Then Drumagog replaces the "tics" prom the triggers with samples.

And I thought its expected that metal these days be super tight-100% to the grid? Thats what I'm trying to achieve, but like I said, everything I've tried just moves the notes to illogical spots on the grid.

 

[Therion_Prime]

Well you could quantize with a high resolution (for example 32 triplet or 64 triplet) and correct the mis-quantized notes by hand.

I always record triggered drums in midi only. Makes my life easier.
Drums: Triggered with DIY triggers
Cymbals: Roland CY-12
HH: Roland VH-12 (?)

-> everything into a Roland TD-20 drum module -> MIDI -> PC -> SD2

 

[DevonSteelman]

In order to edit drums properly without (hopefully..) phasing issues you NEED to first make sure you've grouped ALL of your drum tracks! Close mics, overheads, room, etc.. Second, Beat Detective in Pro Tools will not allow you to edit groups unless you purchase the add on from Digidesign/Avid.

Fear not though, because you can still edit your drum tracks to be on the grid with Elastic Audio! In order to do this, first make sure your drum group is selected as I said earlier, and then select Rhythmic from the Elastic Audio box on one of the drum tracks. Then, click where it says waveform on one of your drum tracks and select "warped". You will then see all the markers Pro Tools put on every transient. From there, you can then start adjusting each marker to be on the grid. I highly recommend doing it by hand, and absolutely do not recommend using the quantize window from tempo operations, because it's very inaccurate and will cause you a lot problems if you trust it too much. When you're done aligning everything to the grid, go back to the box where you chose Rhythmic and render it in X-Form by choosing X-Form from the box. This will take away a lot of "artifacts", and will make things sound a bit more natural. It takes time to render, but it's completely worth it in the end. Finally when it's done rendering, go back to the box where you chose Rhythmic and X-Form, and hit "disable elastic audio". After doing so, it will ask "commit", "discard", or "cancel". Hit commit, and you're done!

Good luck!

 

[JeffTD]

Fear not though, because you can still edit your drum tracks to be on the grid with Elastic Audio!

You can, sure, but say goodbye to any kind of phase cohrency or consistency of stereo image you had before. Stretching audio is a TERRIBLE way to edit drums, and should really never be done when cutting/moving and fading between (a process that Beat Detective automates)hits is so easy and sounds so good.

 

[ze kink]

You can, sure, but say goodbye to any kind of phase cohrency or consistency of stereo image you had before. Stretching audio is a TERRIBLE way to edit drums, and should really never be done when cutting/moving and fading between (a process that Beat Detective automates)hits is so easy and sounds so good.

Yeah, a classmate of mine edited the drums to a song he'd recorded with a friend of mine, and used flextime in Logic to edit them without using the slicing mode. When he first played them to us in the studio, everyone went "WTF, what the hell is wrong with these tracks?" Until we realized that it was caused by the phases going all over the place. It indeed sounded like the stereo image was somehow falling apart, and there was some weird flamming on the snare and hits being late or early despite being quantized to grid.

 

[bryan_kilco]

I was wondering about quantizing as well. I am just learning the ropes and was messing around with dynamic splitting and quantizing in Reaper. I find that when I dynamically split the tracks, it splits the transients right in the middle instead of right before the hit. and I cant seem to figure out how to fix this.

 

[AdamWathan]

I was wondering about quantizing as well. I am just learning the ropes and was messing around with dynamic splitting and quantizing in Reaper. I find that when I dynamically split the tracks, it splits the transients right in the middle instead of right before the hit. and I cant seem to figure out how to fix this.

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/561958-reaper-slip-editing-tutorial.html

 

[demirichris]

Honestly, I am just going to try and out source this aspect of recording as long as I possibly can. Drum editing is a mind crushing task for me and it totally takes the fun out of music.

I can't believe people edit by hand, I guess you get faster at it, but we have to be talking about 4-5 hour per song minimum here right?

 

[Skinny Viking]

^ depends on how good / bad the drummer is, what you're trying to do and how many drum tracks there are but, yeah, it can

 

[jeid]

I edit by hand. With a good drummer, a 3 minute song can take about 2 hours. I've done a 4minute song by a bad drummer in 3 hours. It really just depends on what's going on and being as accurate as hell. It's laborious and sometimes I sit there and ask myself "man, why do you do this, whyyyyyy?"

But then I hear it in time, and I feel it's worth it. I sent the OP a message offering my services.

I think a sick part of me really likes drum editing. fml

 

[greyskull]

wow!
i can BD a song in about 10 minutes most of the time.
If its really tech and the drummer sucks maybe a couple of hours.

 

[Skinny Viking]

wow!
i can BD a song in about 10 minutes most of the time.
If its really tech and the drummer sucks maybe a couple of hours.

I'll be honest, I've never bothered with BD because I've been using PTLE for a long time and only recently has it been a multi-track version. So I learned by doing things manually. Now I will say this for clarification ... a simple rock style song, yeah, I can edit that fast as hell usually. But I was keeping the OP's description in my head ... "It's aggressive modern metal, that has tempo and timing changes." That being the case, doing things manually and with the other factors I mentioned, it can take several hours and I didn't even bring into it the length of the song

 

[JeffTD]

Honestly, I am just going to try and out source this aspect of recording as long as I possibly can. Drum editing is a mind crushing task for me and it totally takes the fun out of music.

I can't believe people edit by hand, I guess you get faster at it, but we have to be talking about 4-5 hour per song minimum here right?

it's not exactly fun or musical but so far i've found it to be my main source of income.

4-5 hours with super tech stuff, sure, but most tracks are 1-2 hours.

 

[JeffTD]

wow!
i can BD a song in about 10 minutes most of the time.
If its really tech and the drummer sucks maybe a couple of hours.

with simple beats, i like BD. with anything even remotely technical, i've found it far faster and honestly more settling to my mind to do it by hand.

BD also completely lacks the ability to quantize cymbals, which get out of time just as much as the shells of the kit. you really have to do cymbals by hand, since you've got to carefully look at the waveform to find the half-assed transient they produce.

 

[nwright]

While it may not be speedy, I'm completely hooked on Slip editing now. As others have said, I feel I can get a busy 3-4 minute metal song done in a couple hours.

 

[darthjujuu]

some really bad advice at the beginning of this thread...downward, TONS of guys on this forum (myself and jeff included) would be happy to edit your drums for probably alot less than you think. if you're determined to learn, slipping in reaper based on adams video is definitely the best way to get a fundamental grasp of how drum edits work. i'd say definitely learn that BEFORE trying beat detective, because beat detective does the exact same thing just in an automated manner.

 

[JeffTD]

TONS of guys on this forum (myself and jeff included) would be happy to edit your drums for probably alot less than you think.

speak for yourself, sir - I work begrudgingly for slave-labor wages!


but seriously I will edit your shit. fo free*.










*free, read: my normal rate

 

[Skinny Viking]

but seriously I will edit your shit. fo free*.










*free, read: my normal rate

This was good