Questions about editing real drums

[thomas1831]

I have just recorded a drummer who for the most part played ok, considering we plowed out 10 songs in about 10 hours including set up and tear down (we had very little time for tracking because of work schedules) I Have slip edited most of the parts with no problem but have run into a few huge obsticles. I plan on replacing all drums but cymbals and overheads. So here are a few questions I hope you can help me with?

Questions:

- His weakest link is his blast beat patterns his kick and snare hits do not line up at times. he is either early or late with them. how do you handle issues like this ? Hi pass the the overheads and move just the late hit and hope for the best? his cymbal hand is on with the click (china, hats or ride)

- How do you guys handle very soft kick hits when editing and sample replacing? he hits fairly hard until he starts doing fast kick roll paterns

- Do you convert the final kick/snare track to midi then adjust the velocities so they are all more consistent?

- If a part is way off on the kick or snare track, should I rebuild it with MIDI and just keep the overhead track?

- how do you handle missed hits ? say he flubbed a kick/snare pattern leaving out a hit or 2

I know most of you will say should have done it right from the begining and you can't polish a turd lol but for the most part these takes are pretty solid considering... but the mess ups a very very apparent once sample replaced. So any turd polishing tips would be very appreciated

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to help me out by answering these questions!

here is a blast example
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1064643/SKULL CLOUD 3.wav

 

[Via Noctis]

I say if you are planning on replacing the drums anyway. Convert it to midi and do the rest of the editing there. Just make sure you kill the snare in the overheads and cymbals. Either hi-pass, add a compressor side chained from the snare, or a waves L series limiter.. or all 3. If the cymbal hits are on and you are successful getting rid of the snare in the overheads, then you should be able to move the snare where ever you want. Obviously not ideal, but I have done it before.

 

[ShipwreckSoundWorks]

Honestly, I can't offer too much advice. I don't see the point in NOT replacing the cymbals. That's just me though. Do you have quality samples to do so? If so, I would just do that man. I don't see the point in going through all the trouble with some fucked up tracks. If they had been done correctly, it wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Colin M. St. Claire]

I've had the same issue with blast beats. I just had to edit the kicks separately and HP the fuck out of the OHs. But yeah it sounds like you should convert to midi and go from there.
Don't worry, somewhere deep in that turd is a delicious piece of corn just waiting to be found.

 

[JeffTD]

Edit kick separately from hands. Hands are ALWAYS your priority. Kick sound in the OH and rooms get lost with the processing we do in Metal.

 

[sbwakfk1]

If you are going to edit drums you should always move ALL of the tracks together. Editing just the snare/kick/toms/etc and leaving the rest of the tracks alone will always create ghosting and no amount of filtering/compression/expansion/gates/whatever will ever fix that. Use something like Beat Detective in Pro Tools to align them to a grid. Drag your fades around and crossfade. If this doesnt work then the performance is too bad to be fixed and they need to be re-recorded. For "velocity" issues I always add a kick and snare sample just to provide more consistency in the sound, not always to affect the way the snare/kick sounds. Sometimes I even add a sample of the drummers snare/kick back in with itself to create consistency.
Hope that helps