Need Drum Editing Help

[Downwards]

1st, thanx to everybody who replied with help. Because I wasn't able to use beat detective or quantize in some competent way, I ended up using beat detective to separate the hits at the transients, conform, and then move what was off by hand. So far, I got the snare and kick drums done(I just created a new kick track that would contain both kicks, and pasted samples where the hits would be). So far, this has yielded me the best results. Does this sound right?

Also, cuz of the transients that cymbals put out, will I be able to edit those the same way? Whats the best way to edit the cymbal mic tracks?

And what do you guys do if say, the drummer is supposed to be playing fast double bass under a slower beat? I've found myself in a situation where I can't get the speed of the kicks right. It's either too fast, or too slow when I match them to the grid. Like there's a part where the feel drops to half time(say, 73bpm), but the double bass part is still hauliln' ass. Common sense says that the tempo map for that part should match the slower feel of the snare/downbeat, but then It's not fast enough even with 64th notes to get the kicks up to the speed they're supposed to be? Should I double the tempo to have more flexibility for the kicks, er..?

And yes, I want to learn how to do all this myself. Just need some help is all.

 

[DevonSteelman]

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.

I was in no way trying to say elastic audio was a great way to edit drums.. But it sounded to me like he didn't have the multi track version of beat detective... And if he didn't want to do every process completely by hand, elastic audio I felt was his best bet.

 

[greyskull]

1st, thanx to everybody who replied with help. Because I wasn't able to use beat detective or quantize in some competent way, I ended up using beat detective to separate the hits at the transients, conform, and then move what was off by hand. So far, I got the snare and kick drums done(I just created a new kick track that would contain both kicks, and pasted samples where the hits would be). So far, this has yielded me the best results. Does this sound right?

Also, cuz of the transients that cymbals put out, will I be able to edit those the same way? Whats the best way to edit the cymbal mic tracks?

And what do you guys do if say, the drummer is supposed to be playing fast double bass under a slower beat? I've found myself in a situation where I can't get the speed of the kicks right. It's either too fast, or too slow when I match them to the grid. Like there's a part where the feel drops to half time(say, 73bpm), but the double bass part is still hauliln' ass. Common sense says that the tempo map for that part should match the slower feel of the snare/downbeat, but then It's not fast enough even with 64th notes to get the kicks up to the speed they're supposed to be? Should I double the tempo to have more flexibility for the kicks, er..?

And yes, I want to learn how to do all this myself. Just need some help is all.

sounds like you don't have music production toolkit/multi track beat detective. in which case, you would be better off using a work around/doing it by hand. You MUST edit the drums as a group, or the phase relationship between the drums will be FUBAR
search the forum. i wrote one such workaround.

 

[darthjujuu]

sounds like you don't have music production toolkit/multi track beat detective. in which case, you would be better off using a work around/doing it by hand. You MUST edit the drums as a group, or the phase relationship between the drums will be FUBAR
search the forum. i wrote one such workaround.

yea man grouping is critical...it really seems like you're rushing the learning process when you still don't have an underlying grasp of how drum edits work. guys, back me up here, kids gotta learn to do it by hand to understand the under-the-hood workings before you can really get serious with BD. reaper is free to try, just dive right in.

 

[Downwards]

sounds like you don't have music production toolkit/multi track beat detective. in which case, you would be better off using a work around/doing it by hand. You MUST edit the drums as a group, or the phase relationship between the drums will be FUBAR
search the forum. i wrote one such workaround.

No, I unfortunatly do not have the toolkit/multitrack beat detective.

yea man grouping is critical...it really seems like you're rushing the learning process when you still don't have an underlying grasp of how drum edits work. guys, back me up here, kids gotta learn to do it by hand to understand the under-the-hood workings before you can really get serious with BD. reaper is free to try, just dive right in.

Ok, I understand now why grouping the drums before editing is important for stuff recorded with actual mics, but what about drums that were triggered, and the trigger signal, or "tick" is just replaced with a sample? Becuase it's a just going to have a sampled drum sound over it thats prerecorded, couldn't I technically edit each drum individually to the grid, and THEN apply drumagog with the sampled sounds, and not have any phasing issues, and then just group the cymbals(they were recorded with 2 overhead condensors and a mic for the hihat), and edit those together?

But I did watch the Reaper video Adam did. Good video by the way, so kudos to you for that! And slip editing in Reaper to me seemed like a more logical, controllable way to edit drums. I mean, yeah, your eyeballing it, but like Adam said, BD works on a set tolerence, and a lot of time, particularly for technical metal, it makes the wrong guess.

Only question is, can you output Reaper to a Digi 002(since it acts as your PCs sound card), so you can listen to the tracks to make sure you didn't put the wrong hit somewhere, or do dyou have to do it in silence, and just hope you got it right? And how would you do it with a kit triggered with Drumagog, since it's a plug in, and the actually audio is just a "tick"?

 

[darthjujuu]

No, I unfortunatly do not have the toolkit/multitrack beat detective.




Ok, I understand now why grouping the drums before editing is important for stuff recorded with actual mics, but what about drums that were triggered, and the trigger signal, or "tick" is just replaced with a sample? Becuase it's a just going to have a sampled drum sound over it thats prerecorded, couldn't I technically edit each drum individually to the grid, and THEN apply drumagog with the sampled sounds, and not have any phasing issues, and then just group the cymbals(they were recorded with 2 overhead condensors and a mic for the hihat), and edit those together?

But I did watch the Reaper video Adam did. Good video by the way, so kudos to you for that! And slip editing in Reaper to me seemed like a more logical, controllable way to edit drums. I mean, yeah, your eyeballing it, but like Adam said, BD works on a set tolerence, and a lot of time, particularly for technical metal, it makes the wrong guess.

Only question is, can you output Reaper to a Digi 002(since it acts as your PCs sound card), so you can listen to the tracks to make sure you didn't put the wrong hit somewhere, or do dyou have to do it in silence, and just hope you got it right? And how would you do it with a kit triggered with Drumagog, since it's a plug in, and the actually audio is just a "tick"?

i have a digi002 and i use reaper more than protools, it works great!

you'd still need to keep everything grouped, unless the drums were silent e-drum pads or something, because overheads aren't just cymbal mics, they're supposed to pick up the entire kit. if you quantize each individual track, you'll have the snare in the close mic and the snare in the overheads out of sync, as well as alll the other bleed to/from all the other mics. it'd be a jumbled mess. and if your drums ARE totally silent, and you're just miking cymbals and the rest is samples, you should definitely just go 100% MIDI for the drums and slip edit the cymbals by themselves.

 

[Downwards]

i have a digi002 and i use reaper more than protools, it works great!

you'd still need to keep everything grouped, unless the drums were silent e-drum pads or something, because overheads aren't just cymbal mics, they're supposed to pick up the entire kit. if you quantize each individual track, you'll have the snare in the close mic and the snare in the overheads out of sync, as well as alll the other bleed to/from all the other mics. it'd be a jumbled mess. and if your drums ARE totally silent, and you're just miking cymbals and the rest is samples, you should definitely just go 100% MIDI for the drums and slip edit the cymbals by themselves.

No, they aren't totally silent, but I was gonna use a high pass filter on the overheads, and the hihat mic to try on get rid of the the "real" sound of the drums out of those mics. But It makes sense to edit it all together.

Another question though. Can you take the tempo map made for said song in pro tools, and import it into Reaper, so you don't have to go through, and make a tempo map all over again? If so, how do you do it?

 

[darthjujuu]

No, they aren't totally silent, but I was gonna use a high pass filter on the overheads, and the hihat mic to try on get rid of the the "real" sound of the drums out of those mics. But It makes sense to edit it all together.

Another question though. Can you take the tempo map made for said song in pro tools, and import it into Reaper, so you don't have to go through, and make a tempo map all over again? If so, how do you do it?

just bounce a blank MIDI file (you may have to make one blank region of MIDI to enable the option) and then import it into reaper and itt'l import all the tempo info

EDIT: while we're on the subject.... to move your drumtracks out of protools for editing, just get all your comping done, consolidate, then select all + ctrl+shift+K

 

[Downwards]

just bounce a blank MIDI file (you may have to make one blank region of MIDI to enable the option) and then import it into reaper and itt'l import all the tempo info

EDIT: while we're on the subject.... to move your drumtracks out of protools for editing, just get all your comping done, consolidate, then select all + ctrl+shift+K

I created a new midi track, and a small blank midi region, but I when I go to "bounce to disk", it doesn't give me the option to export as midi. Just wav, aiff, mp3, etc. What am I doing wrong?

 

[darthjujuu]

didn't mean to say bounce...just file > export > MIDI

 

[JeffTD]

Regardless of how fully you're going to replace the samples, you need to edit it all as a group. VERY RARELY does a drummer completely fuck up a snare or kick + cymbal hit - you can be almost sure that if you quantize a kick that has a cymbal hit at the same time (besides in super quick double bass passes, and blast beats), the cymbal will line up as well. Not to mention phase coherency... just edit everything by hand as a group. It'll save you a shit ton of headache down the road. I've tried almost every method of drum editing at this point - slipping by hand is by far my favorite, and I edit more drumtracks in a month than any sane person should ever edit.

The only things I ever ever ever edit separately from the rest are the kicks, and 99% of the time, I convert those to midi and quantize to the grid anyway.