super quantize??

[joeymusicguy]

lately i've been doing a few productions where i am dealing with real drums and quantizing them manually by hand (cut, slip, crossfade).

and i've been wondering... with recently metal productions being so spot on yet still having real drums (usually cymbals are the only thing left), i question the "pocketing" techniques being used.

take devil driver for instance. clouds over california.

the kicks and snares are in fact samples (steven slate it sounds like), and they are perfectly on time.

i've taken time to sit down and pocket a drum track until the wave forms are at least within 1 ms of the grid. with a good drummer, this is easily accomplished (and the guy was very good).

even so, when i completed this, the faster sections weren't exactley 100% to the grid like you hear on more recent metal records. and yes i cut every hit, even on 16th triplet notes. and to be fair to the drummer, he was well within 5ms range to nailing every passage.

so i've done that and then programmed the same type of section which sounds a bit different. it has the quality that i am hearing in perfect productions, the exactness to grid. and these guys (like jason) are pulling it off very well. even though there's a minor mistake here and there (a cymbal edit flange at the end of clouds over california!!), the basic model of replaced kick and snare with the original quantized overheads works perfectly.

the one thing i am having trouble figuring out is how to achieve the exactness to grid and make it work with the quantized overheads. if i keep the overheads and put the kick and snares in midi form so they are snap to grid, i end up hearing the old beats here and there in minor spots (super tiny, like less than a quick fallam). are these guys just that good at pocketing drums and i need to step it up somehow? or is there something else going on i know nothing about?

i was looking at the rockband rip of the devil driver song and the snare hits were so small in amplitude on the overhead track, and that could maybe be the only thing im missing, getting that snare and kick out of the oh's as much as possible.

i should also mention i've had success with making the oh's work with regular manual quantize and beat replace by using a transient modifier to get rid of the snare transients in the oh track. i havent had success doing this with quantized oh and grid drums (kick snare toms).

 

[AdamWathan]

Yeah, you want your overheads to pick up the bare minimum amount of the kit other than the cymbals. Angle the overhead mics towards the cymbals to reject as much snare and kick as possible and highpass them at like 600hz or so to get rid of even more.

 

[joeymusicguy]

Yeah, you want your overheads to pick up the bare minimum amount of the kit other than the cymbals. Angle the overhead mics towards the cymbals to reject as much snare and kick as possible and highpass them at like 600hz or so to get rid of even more.

i've had a little bit of better luck if i high pass at 400 hz and a dip at 200 hz.

i havent tried covering the kick drum yet which would probably help.

 

[colonel kurtz]

i guess it's times like this that PT HD reigns supreme over cubendo or even PT LE...$5 says they used beat detective to quantize the OH's and kick/snare tracks all together

 

[JeffTD]

Andy's mentioned that he'll sidechain the snare to the OH track to 'duck' it out every time the snare is hit.

 

[Erkan]

Andy's mentioned that he'll sidechain the snare to the OH track to 'duck' it out every time the snare is hit.

I tried that on my own songs, and no matter what setting I use, you can still hear the ducking too much and it is god awful to hear But then again, I'm the type who likes more natural/acoustic drum sound (or atleast, these days I do).

When people want to quantize real drums 100%, it feels like they're killing the purpose of it. Why not just record with a Roland TD-12 and have it auto quantized?

 

[Aaron Smith]

I have that DevilDriver .mogg as well, and one of the first things I noticed was how little snare was in the overheads. I would strongly second the opinion that a big part of achieving what you're after is physically keeping as much kick and snare out of the overheads as possible when mic'ing up the kit. Andy's trick with the limiter works quite well for sucking up that snare, too. I haven't figured out a sneaky process to eliminate the kick drum attack from the overheads, but again, I think a lot of it comes down to how you set up the OH mics.

 

[dani]

this is right approach - you want to keep the rest of the kit out of the overheads. infact, you want no kit picked up in the overheads. the best way to do that? simply record overheads and the rest of the kit seperately. mute the rest of the drums with practise pads, or whatever else you'd like to try, and record the OH track(s), then record the rest of the kit without any cymbal hits!
then you can quantize all you want, with no odd sounding ghost hits!

 

[wishtheend]

Does anyone have any pictures with some overhead setups that would show off what the best type of angle, location, height etc is for keeping the kit out of the OH's? I assume close micing groups of cymbals will be a huge part - but how close are people getting, and where are they pointed at, or angel towards?

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

I make drummers play the drums and cymbals separately. It sucks at first but they always get the hang of it within a few tries and then it's pretty painless editing for me.

 

[HeadCrusher]

I can imagine it's pretty difficult to confince drummers to record their tracks that way!

 

[Erkan]

I can imagine it's pretty difficult to confince drummers to record their tracks that way!

Hehe yeah, I would guess so. Especially drummers who play fast intricate things, I guess they're kinda dependant on hearing everything on the spot.

 

[joeymusicguy]

i guess it's times like this that PT HD reigns supreme over cubendo or even PT LE...$5 says they used beat detective to quantize the OH's and kick/snare tracks all together

i already "quantize" all the tracks in phase

nuendo has all the editing features that protools has except for having an external time stretch plugin

 

[joeymusicguy]

I have that DevilDriver .mogg as well, and one of the first things I noticed was how little snare was in the overheads. I would strongly second the opinion that a big part of achieving what you're after is physically keeping as much kick and snare out of the overheads as possible when mic'ing up the kit. Andy's trick with the limiter works quite well for sucking up that snare, too. I haven't figured out a sneaky process to eliminate the kick drum attack from the overheads, but again, I think a lot of it comes down to how you set up the OH mics.

i think you're right, will have to experiment with this next session

 

[joeymusicguy]

Hehe yeah, I would guess so. Especially drummers who play fast intricate things, I guess they're kinda dependant on hearing everything on the spot.

yeah man, i am pretty certain this would be impossible.

suprisingly its easier to convince the drummer to play his parts and convert that to programming rather than asking them to do something really odd while tracking.

but lately i've been forcing my self to use the original tracks, because programmed drums just sound too stale for my recent taste.

 

[joeymusicguy]

for the record, i sat down with the moog and my steven slate samples (i bought the 2.0 package), and couldnt match them up

i could have swore that kick was 10, but its not

i found a few snares that were close in character, but none of steven's snares packed even close the amount of punch in that snare.

whats up with that steven?

 

[broken81]

Andy's trick with the limiter works quite well for sucking up that snare

So are you just side chaining your original snare track to a limiter and thats it?

 

[joeymusicguy]

So are you just side chaining your original snare track to a limiter and thats it?

i use a transient modifier

take out some attack, add some sustain

good to go

 

[Uladyne]

With how crazily quantized drums are nowdays, and how "fake" we sometimes try to make real drums sound, it seems like just programming drums would be a faster, less painful, albeit less exciting and less glamorous means to the same end. I guess the drummer would be pretty pissed if he was never on the records, though. At least with quantizing and replacement he can still at least say, "Hear those cymbals? thats all me."

Seriously though. Sometimes I hear a record and its like, "dude, they might as well have just programmed that shit." Am I alone in this? Sometimes I feel like Drumkit From Hell and the like sound more realistic (with clever programming) than alot of real drum performances on major releases. It's almost like drummers have been relegated to the very important task of merely providing visual stimulus at live shows, and therefore retain the right to be on the records. Maybe I'm just crazy.

 

[joeymusicguy]

With how crazily quantized drums are nowdays, and how "fake" we sometimes try to make real drums sound, it seems like just programming drums would be a faster, less painful, albeit less exciting and less glamorous means to the same end. I guess the drummer would be pretty pissed if he was never on the records, though. At least with quantizing and replacement he can still at least say, "Hear those cymbals? thats all me."

Seriously though. Sometimes I hear a record and its like, "dude, they might as well have just programmed that shit." Am I alone in this? Sometimes I feel like Drumkit From Hell and the like sound more realistic (with clever programming) than alot of real drum performances on major releases. It's almost like drummers have been relegated to the very important task of merely providing visual stimulus at live shows, and therefore retain the right to be on the records. Maybe I'm just crazy.

actually you're right, but unfortunatley there's not much i can do to change it. sure i could start doing things more naturally, but then again im not ross robinson.... and no one else is going to join my giant pirade to fight perfection. so i go with the flow of production trends, like most people who want to keep making money do, and in some small ways here and there, i do my own shit to keep it unique.