Printing drums before moving on...

[Perishh]

Hey guys, was just wondering how many of you print your triggered/ sample replaced/eq'd/compressed drum tracks before continuing with tracking the rest of the instruments?

I have read a few posts where people say they do this but it left me confused. At first I thought it meant you get the drum sound you are happy with, then print the entire thing as a stereo .wav so you can remove the old seperate tracks and plugins to save CPU for the rest of tracking. Then you continue on with set drums that remain unable to be changed throughout the rest of the recording. Correct me if i'm wrong but i'm sure this musn't be the case?

Lately I realised you must print each track individually, for example the snare sound with samples, eq's and plugins... then delete the inital recorded snare and so on with all the other drums... This way you can go on without having any plugins on the tracks, but can still re sample the snare, toms and kick at a later date if you need to.

Can someone please help me clear this up? I feel like I could be missing a good technique for drum recording...

Thanks

 

[greyskull]

yep print the triggers after having edited them before bass.

 

[Seth Munson]

I'm in Pro Tools and unless I wanna have a shit load of CPU wasted I dont have a choice but to print them.

Edit: now that I think about it, I pretty much print/bake everything now. guitars, bass, drums, vocals edits, effects.. pretty much everything.

 

[Perishh]

so do you make sure not to put anything on it that you could possibly want to remove later? i'm mainly thinking about OH's here... like reverb and EQ.

also... does this mean you just print the perfectly triggered/sampled snare and toms as individual tracks?

I have done a few recordings and have never done this. I fiddle with sounds too often i thought this method could really detriment the final sound if I cant constantly be changing it to fit the mix.

 

[amarshism]

I don't print until I'm 90% done on the rough mix. Eg, everything is tracked and I know these are the sample I'm going to use and the gtr/bass tones um gonna use. Most of my post processing takes place on auxillaries so I leave them there for later tweaking and print the gogs, amp sims etc and realign. This frees up more CPU as things like podfarm and drumagog chew through the most of it.

 

[Seth Munson]

Well I always have backups, so I can go back to the drum session and reprint if I need to. Idk I feel pretty confidant in the edits and adjustments that I do and the way that I look at it is, if we recorded it once we can record it again but I have never had that problem.

And I usually figure outthe mix before I even start tracking, then after things are tracked, edited and printed, I start tweaking and perfecting the mix from there. And to be honest I don't have too much time to keep tweaking and retweaking, I have more and more bands to record. I just have to do it the best that I can within the timeframe we have for the project.

 

[Seth Munson]

I don't print until I'm 90% done on the rough mix. Eg, everything is tracked and I know these are the sample I'm going to use and the gtr/bass tones um gonna use. Most of my post processing takes place on auxillaries so I leave them there for later tweaking and print the gogs, amp sims etc and realign. This frees up more CPU as things like podfarm and drumagog chew through the most of it.

Exactly this

 

[amarshism]

It just makes sense. Make sure your edits are all sweet, as after I print I usually remove from the session. In fact I've gotten into the habit of allowing myself one fuckup. So I will print my selected samples and keep my edit tracks inactivated for when I finally here that one thing that I mustve kept missing, or don't realise until the gtrs or bass are edited. Then reprint. Adjust any samples that haven't been suiting. I usually mix as I go bit by bit as I hate listening to shitty raw stuff so its a little easier to hear if my selected tones be it for drums, gtrs, or bass, suit. Usually the samples are alright but at this time I might add another sample to blend as I'll hear it missing something. I also usually tune the toms to suit the song whilst printing.

Where you working out of perish (soz forgot your name)

 

[Perishh]

I'm thinking of doing the old 'save as' trick as soon as I have printed my drum tracks, and in this new save deleting all the actual recorded audio and just using the printed tracks. that way if there is a problem with the tracks later on i can load the first project, make any adjustments and then re print into the new one. I have had CPU issues with pops and clicks in Cubase before so i can see this technique being a godsend.

@ marshy... all good dude. Its Alex. I have set up a home studio. 2 Rooms, a control room and a recording room. Been aquiring all the gear over the last year and a half. When you gonna open up your own studio dude? Should pool our resources ahaha

 

[amarshism]

Pm me your number, I'd love to come check out your setup. Finding locations is a bitch in the city.

I was watching undercover boss and totally just remembered.

 

[amarshism]

Name that is. Save as is a good idea. And don't be such a lurker.

Double post.

Cunt.

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

Related question-

when using room samples (slate z4, etc...) are you guys printing those too?

 

[Seth Munson]

depends, I bake all the room samples in with the drums

but I do use z4 on their own sometimes to make some things pop and I dont bake those ones in

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

depends, I bake all the room samples in with the drums

but I do use z4 on their own sometimes to make some things pop and I dont bake those ones in

yeah I hear you... for some reason I just like keeping my main snare on it's own mono track and having the room stuff on their own stereo tracks, I'm just wondering if I should print the room samples instead of just running them from the plugin.

 

[Seth Munson]

do whatever feel right to you

this is just what I do and what I have gotten used to.

either way you are still saving CPU by having them printed than in the plugin

 

[amarshism]

Set all your room samples up and mix them into a stereo aux then record that track so your left with a stereo room to process just like the real thing.

 

[Tim HLAH]

when you say "print" the track, are you talking about bouncing it down to a new track or something else? could someone please explain how i could do this in cubase?

 

[amarshism]

Yes. I'm not sure how in cubase but you could just record to another track if there's not a render function.

 

[greyskull]

i bake all the samples into separate room/close mic tracks whether my own samples or slate.
got no problem bouncing/submixing, committing compression etc. Grow some balls and do it.

i do the same with any soft synths as well

this is all by the way a left over from running pro tools on a G4 back in the day where VI's were even more of a session killer than they are now!

 

[Perishh]

when you say "print" the track, are you talking about bouncing it down to a new track or something else? could someone please explain how i could do this in cubase?

I use Cubase and I mean exporting an audio mixdown of a track back into the project/pool so it has all plugins/edits/eq's on it without actually having them on the tracks plugins... if that makes sense. It then just becomes a .wav file with all the effects written into the audio.