pt drum edits, some quick tips clue me in?

[joeymusicguy]

so i've been messing with drum editing on pt 8 hd 3

i tried three methods last night

first method was tab, b, conform, smooth

it went alright, but a lot of parts in the song were shifted early or late because quantize can only do "nearest note" which is no good in my world. thats why i edit drums manually on cubase. especially because drummers switch from straight to triplet all the time, at least dotted can be handled in straight

second i tried beat detective
this was ok, but beat detective is kind of pointless to me. i feel like beat detective is for lazy people. and its not that acurate! it quantized the whole song, but shifted the entire thing by like an eighth note. some other parts were shifted in the wrong direction, etc. and once again BD doesnt handle switching from straight to triplet on the fly

third i tried tab, b, manual move, per hit

this was the best, because the computer didnt have control of where the hits were goin to, I was in control. the problem was, i dont know pro tools well enough to know how to quickly execute the moves, when you hit tab and get your 0 point, then hit b, you're left with a new region to move, by looking on the screen you can see where this hit needs to be. at this point i need to know some more options... so far i know these are the options

slow:
use the smart tool the whole time, grab the region, either quantize or move it

slower:
switch to the grabber tool, grab the region, drag it

slowest:
switch to the grabber tool, grab the region, press alt+0

so, does anyone have any tips on quickly executing the move after tab, b?

 

[greyskull]

joey.. heres a rough guide i posted before.
you gotta be careful and follow some simple guidelines really..

Always select in grid mode, and always from the beginning off the bar.
Do not make a selection over a tempo change, that'll throw it out.

The best way ive found is to do it in sections of the beat, and do fills separately.
then it can be a case of trial and error with the different quantize settings and making sure you have no false triggers.

The best way to stop this is (well this is how i do it anyway. no idea how to use collection mode, still after all this time. terrible!).


Ah-hem

Have two edit groups. One for all the drums, and one for just the kick snare and toms.
When making a selection, use the shell edit group (i normally call it drum bd or just bd)

Select using drum bd. Then open up beat detective. (apple+8)
Seperate (i use 5-10 ms region pad)
Then turn on the all drums edit track select down.. using the shorcut, which off the top of my head is ; in key command focus.

Then switch to the conform tab on the beat detective window
work out what setting you'll need - its normally 1/4 or 1/8 for simple beats, and generally 1/16 for fills, but beware triplets!!
then hit conform..

Listen back (yes WITH the annoying gaps) and check that it all sounds good.
If not either undo and try a different quantize setting, or failing that check for false triggers and try again.

If it REALLY wont work, sometimes shifting the region manually earlier or later so its generally close to the grid can help too.

Then once you've done this through the whole song (Yes AGAIN!) duplicate the playlist as a backup.
Then open up beat detective again (apple+8)
Go to the edit smoothing tab
Choose Fill and crossfade and a time around 5-10 ms (sorry you gotta experiment)
Then choose fade.

Then while it does that Depending on the speed of your computer you should have enough time to Put the kettle on and have a cigarette (absolutely mandatory)

Now listen through the whole song again to make sure the fades havent caused any glitches by crossfadding in the wrong place..
Fix any dodgy fades..

When this is done...
Save as 'drum edit done'
highlight the drum regions from the end to the begining - the easiest way is to click the last one and press shift+enter
Then consolidate the regions ( Alt+shift+3)


you can stop there, but i would also do the following to keep the session size down, and to help Pro tools run smoothly....

Save the song as 'drum edited' or something
Then delete any unused playlists (you have these backed up in an earlier session)
Go to the region list on the right and click select unused after a heavy Bd session this can take a while, so dont panic if you get a beach ball of doom.
When you can see loads highlighted, click clear in the region list. then choose clear NOT delete

After this do a save session copy as and choose a path for the new cleared out session
Select copy all audio files and tick dont copy fade files

Voila nice tidy Tight drums, and a nice tidy session.



You are right, beat detective isnt that smart at times and can pull things the wrong way. especailly triplets. they REALLY fuck it up.
you can't highlight the whole song and expect bd to get it right.
it takes a bit of practice to get used to its quirks; but once you do its DEFINATLY the fastest and most accurate way of quantising.

also if your insane enough to go own the tab B route; the best way is to seperate the whole song in that manner or with B.D and then highlght a section and +0 to quantise.
but seperate the song first otherwise it'll take a life time to do.

Spend more time with B.D,
How are you using it? bizarely, i swear it learns after a while.

 

[jval]

i don't understand the problems.. i think you just have to mess with it more and get used to a new system. Like I said before I'm using a combo of manual cutting / dragging and beat detective. I can get an average length, semi-technical metal song on the grid in about an hour. It just takes time to learn the daw and develop a strategy just like you did with cubase.

 

[joeymusicguy]

i don't understand the problems.. i think you just have to mess with it more and get used to a new system. Like I said before I'm using a combo of manual cutting / dragging and beat detective. I can get an average length, semi-technical metal song on the grid in about an hour. It just takes time to learn the daw and develop a strategy just like you did with cubase.

hmm

well its hard to develop a strategy when either there are too many limitations vs work flow, or all of the limitations are not fully understood

so i decided to post my methods and reasoning, to find out if i what i need are in or out bounds of the limitations

on cubase, in steps:
click to cut
drag audio within new region
repeat

on protools:
tab to hit
cut at hit
grab mouse, select new region
drag region
repeat

its double the amount of work

what i am trying to say is that the methodology of "move hits to nearest points" simply will not work for me. i need to do this manually. but i guess if there's no easier way to move the hit then there's no easier way!

i can already think of an easier way but i dont know how to do it

i would be after making the break point, the new region is automatically selected, from there quantize could be used, and then if off, nudge could be used

can anyone tell me how to make the new region automatically selected via key command?

 

[greyskull]

id have to be there to show/explain it to ya joey.
if your in england ever come visit.

 

[joeymusicguy]

option shift return does what i was asking

now to build custom key commands to do this easily

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Nice, it seems like you finally found your comfortable way of working on PT

 

[ahjteam]

now to build custom key commands to do this easily

What, can you make custom keycommands in PT8? or are you using some third party program for that?

 

[joeymusicguy]

What, can you make custom keycommands in PT8? or are you using some third party program for that?

just found out you cant

crippleware

 

[Ermz]

I honestly can't see where the problem is. If PT is giving you this much grief, just do your editing on Cubase. It would be the most arse-backward, reverse-role usage of DAWs I've ever seen in my life, but if it works for you, then so be it.

If you're into cutting manually with tab + b then cut up the hits for an entire section. Once you're done with that, select them all, alt+0, make sure you've got your quantize set to a desirable value like 1/8ths or 1/16ths then just hit enter. I usually just keep it on either value for the entire song so I can blaze through, make all my cuts, select all the regions just hit alt+0 and then subsequently Enter right after and be done. If any hits are stupidly off, then just adjust the regions by hand with slip mode and let quantize do the rest. Get it into the ballpark yourself then use quantization as the finisher.

I'm no ProTools wizard in the least, but I absolutely fly through the edits whichever way I end up using it. BD or not.

And yes, BD doesn't do all the work for you. You need to make sure the part is prepared for BD to handle it ahead of time. I use it primarily for longer, simpler beat passages. Other guys like Murphz have elaborate ways worked out to get it to do exactly what they want on the first pass, but you'd be best off asking them about those.

 

[joeymusicguy]

dragging the regions in grid mode seems to be the way to go for the sloppy guys

alt + 0 at the end seems to be better on the talented folks

sorry im such a basher guys. i am going to make a video in a few days that shows you exactley how easy it was for me on cubase.
using pro tools means you have to play by their rules, didn't exactly expect it to be that way! sorry i feel so crippled!

 

[DestroyTheColossus]

Not that it helps much because it seems that you are opting for manual editing as opposed to beat detective, but James Murphey gave a really good tip in a thread a while ago that would help with the problem you had with the song being quantized to an eighth note off.

When you are using Beat Detective, make sure to go through the song before you quantize to check the markers and see that they are going to be moved to the correct beat. If one is off, for me, it normally throws off the rest of the song, and adjusting that one marker to the correct beat fixes the following markers. It's like beat detective goes "oh ya... my bad. I fucked up." and fixes itself.

 

[Ermz]

Have you thought about using a hybrid approach at all, Joey? For instance you can use BD to do all your transient splits, then jump in and move any overly errant hits by hand, and finish it all off with quantization. I sometimes do this on longer, more elaborate parts.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Not that it helps much because it seems that you are opting for manual editing as opposed to beat detective, but James Murphey gave a really good tip in a thread a while ago that would help with the problem you had with the song being quantized to an eighth note off.

When you are using Beat Detective, make sure to go through the song before you quantize to check the markers and see that they are going to be moved to the correct beat. If one is off, for me, it normally throws off the rest of the song, and adjusting that one marker to the correct beat fixes the following markers. It's like beat detective goes "oh ya... my bad. I fucked up." and fixes itself.

word, but my argument was by doing it my way stuff like that didn't happen.

i guess i didn't come across very well. i learned how to edit drums in minutes because i understand all the concepts at hand. i just dont know all of the keyboard short cuts and sometimes not sure how to look them up

like "select from current position to the end, only regions you're working with" not sure how you search for something like that lol.

but i stumbled on it and all is well
at any rate, back to experimenting.

thanks for the back n forth people!

 

[joeymusicguy]

Have you thought about using a hybrid approach at all, Joey? For instance you can use BD to do all your transient splits, then jump in and move any overly errant hits by hand, and finish it all off with quantization. I sometimes do this on longer, more elaborate parts.

ive thought about it, havent tried it

what i want to know is
lets say i BD it and then i come across a really badly messed up triplet part

what should i do? when im looking at all the edits / regions, it looks like a mess and im afraid to move anything

 

[Ermz]

Okay, had that exact same concern as you. The only way to use BD effectively is over large, simple sections, or across smaller ones, provided the parts are complicated and interlaced with a lot of fills. I will usually use BD for the simple 'beat' bit between those messed up parts, and then go in for the messed up ones using the alt+b approach. I will usually make ALL the cuts before I do any quantization, so that way I have it all cut up, the simple beat, the fucked up fills, the messed up kicks and whatever. Then alt+0 can be used in segments similar to how they were cut up, with settings appropriate to each part. If a part is REALLY messed up, i find it's quicker to just go in by hand and slip/grid it that way.

It basically boils down to BD not being great for fill type parts. It doesn't give you much fine control, and you HAVE to adapt a sort of hybrid approach if you plan to be using it on a regular basis. Using a combination of all the tools PT gives you will provide the quickest workflow. It's something you will get a feel for yourself over time - of that I have no doubt.

Also, triplets will fuck with you. That's just how it is when using a batch process. Just cut your BDing short before the triplet bit, and do it separately. Conversely you can just use BD to make cuts at the triplet notes that land on straight beat values and quantize based on those (hence dragging the entire region... not always the best option, but it lets you BD across a larger area).

 

[jval]

I think you just feel crippled because you haven't spent enough time to be used to it. I remember reading somewhere that you spend 2-3 hours editing drums for a song in cubase... to me that seems like way too long.
I don't blame you though... i know it sucks having to change your workflow especially when you're busy. I bet if I tried to edit a song in Cubase now I would give up after 10 minutes.
And yes if the drummer is really sloppy, it's often easiest to just quantize manually. but you could always cut down on time by at least using beat detective to make the cuts for the entire song first, rather than tab, B all the way through... that just sucks.

 

[joeymusicguy]

i dont have any projects to try this on right now but

lets say you did bd and told it there were only whole notes in the song, align all the whole notes, consolidate

now do half notes

then quarters
then eights
then sixtenths

i know doing "that" manually in cubase, would produce better results on anyting "auto"

will BD work like i think it does, in pt, doing this?

 

[joeymusicguy]

I think you just feel crippled because you haven't spent enough time to be used to it. I remember reading somewhere that you spend 2-3 hours editing drums for a song in cubase... to me that seems like way too long.
I don't blame you though... i know it sucks having to change your workflow especially when you're busy. I bet if I tried to edit a song in Cubase now I would give up after 10 minutes.
And yes if the drummer is really sloppy, it's often easiest to just quantize manually. but you could always cut down on time by at least using beat detective to make the cuts for the entire song first, rather than tab, B all the way through... that just sucks.

i can't get a solid go go go vibe going on

when im tabbing, i reach the end of the edit window a lot, and it wont automatically scroll unless i skip a hit, i've tried every scroll mode
it will eventually end up (every 3 or 5 hits) with the edit cursor blinking all the way on the right side of the edit window, and i can't even see what the next audio is from the transient.....

this bugs the SHIT out of me

another MAJOR thing that is killing pt for me right now, is moving the view around the edit window

in cubase, i click my scroll wheel down, and hold it, this turns my cursor into a hand... just like if you had a peice of paper on a desk and your hand on it, you drag around and the project view follows your hand... same as if you started moving the peice of paper around on the desk...

how the hell do i do something like that in protools? i can't deal with these scroll bars

 

[Ermz]

Just use Shift + Mousewheel to scroll sideways and the mousewheel alone to move vertically. Otherwise get one of those track balls and set it to give you free motion everywhere.