Does anyone else use DP to edit Drums?

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:57 am

I was just interested to hear if anyone else used DP to Quantise Multitracked drums.
I do it myself but was wondering if anyone had any tips to make things faster or better way to work.
I spend alot of my working day doing this and any help to speed things up is always helpful.

Heres what I do

1.Beat Detect the kick drum track
Dp usually does a pretty good job of this automatically but i check through each beat myself just to check(This is quite easy using the cursor keys to jump to each marker and apple+alt+ent to play that slice.

2.Group all my drum tracks, select them and choose to 'create soundbites from beats', from the mini menu I then pick the kik drum track that I have previously 'Beat detected' as the 'use beats from'

3.Repeat steps 1+2 for the snare track.

4. Now that I have my multitracked drums all sliced at the kick and snare hits I quantise to the appropriate setting.

5. I now go through the track and manually move any hits that have been quantised to the wrong beat.

6.Once I am happy that everything is in the right place, I am left with small gaps of scilence between each of the soundbites. At this point I would like to use the DP function 'Smooth Audio Edits' but since it does work properly(Please Fix This MOTU!!) my only option is to select all of the soundbites and then close the gaps by hand. Unfortunately this causes DP to crash(Please fix this MOTU!!!) so my only option is to do one track at a time..

7.Crossfade the cuts, I now do this 1 track at a time as the time taken for DP to perform a fade is ridiculous..

8. Finally I merge the soundbites.

Spikey Horse · Post by **Spikey Horse** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:47 am

I keep meaing to try this DP audio quantizing malarky but I always end up just re-recording if I think the timing sucks (it's me on drums so no offfence ever taken

).

I'd like to try using for more creative uses too (rather than fixing stuff) but I tend to use BFD for doing weird stuff as I can programm/manipulate MIDI much more quickly/easily.

Must give it a go though.....

BTW what version of DP? I thought I read the Smooth.A.E feature was fixed now - maybe I imagined that.

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:21 am

Spikey Horse wrote:I keep meaing to try this DP audio quantizing malarky but I always end up just re-recording if I think the timing sucks (it's me on drums so no offfence ever taken ).

I'd like to try using for more creative uses too (rather than fixing stuff) but I tend to use BFD for doing weird stuff as I can programm/manipulate MIDI much more quickly/easily.

Must give it a go though.....

BTW what version of DP? I thought I read the Smooth.A.E feature was fixed now - maybe I imagined that.

Likewise, I prefer using a MIDI Drum Kit with BFD, the realism is perfect enough for me and much easier/faster to edit without artifacts...

I used the beat deteection adn editing when DP 1st released it. Worked great but it was way to much work and time on that. I can get a guy to play the session over quicker than I can sit and edit the tracks.

MIDI is just to quick, so I prefer that method. Hart Dynamics Kit with BFD has been an awesome solution.

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:24 am

V 4.61
Smooth Audio Edits Doesn't work for me unfortunately

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 10:30 am

Unfortunately I can't ask that the bands who book into the studio to Play on a MIDI drum kit, some of them might actually attack me for suggesting such a thing!
They want to do things old school but want the end product to sound new school... don't get me started!

Spikey Horse · Post by **Spikey Horse** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:23 am

alpha wrote:Unfortunately I can't ask that the bands who book into the studio to Play on a MIDI drum kit, some of them might actually attack me for suggesting such a thing!
They want to do things old school but want the end product to sound new school... don't get me started!

- yes I can see the uses, working with other people and especially when you can't re-record.

Instead of asking them to play an e-drum kit you could just use acoustic MIDI triggers on their kit or an audio to MIDI plugin and then assign the MIDI to BFD and quantize the f**k out of it, that way they get to play their kit ............ and you get to eliminate their original performance. It's win/win

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:35 am

alpha wrote:Unfortunately I can't ask that the bands who book into the studio to Play on a MIDI drum kit, some of them might actually attack me for suggesting such a thing!
They want to do things old school but want the end product to sound new school... don't get me started!

Well as long as they are paying you for your time to edit why rush. Collect the money.

Or offer to them that they can replay the performance.....

Yes there are the arrogant artists but there are tons of humble professionals who want their performance to sound great and are willing to put in a little additional effort to get it there. Like replaying a take

If they want to do it old school Rplay it

That is old school

I know drummers who are freaking human clocks. SUPER PRECISE and SWEET, not precise and mechanical.

To ammend my statement. I suggest it to everyone. They never get pissed they either so Nah, not my style or hmm lets see what it sound s like. It's all in your presentation. I generally do it by playing a track that was tracked with MIDI drums through BFD.... That usually stokes their flames....

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:06 pm

It's not that the drumming is always badly played, but i've never seen/heard a drummer who can play a whole song and stay exactly on the beat.I apreciate that it is exactly that which can give feel and groove to a drum track, but if the drum part is not totally quantised it makes adding other instruments (on MIDI tracks for example) more difficult.

giles117 · Post by **giles117** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:03 pm

alpha wrote:It's not that the drumming is always badly played, but i've never seen/heard a drummer who can play a whole song and stay exactly on the beat.I apreciate that it is exactly that which can give feel and groove to a drum track, but if the drum part is not totally quantised it makes adding other instruments (on MIDI tracks for example) more difficult.
To be honest that is precisly the reason I started this thread, I don't have anyone in the studio who can advise me on the best way to do things.
This time last year my boss had me working 7 days a week quantising the drums BY HAND using AUDIODESK! This really ended up making me ill so much so that I had to take time off due to serious migraines..
We recorded the click track into audiodesk from an Atari running Cubase as an audio track I then had to maually cut each beat (You can't group tracks in audiodesk or even shift+select multiple soundbites. I used the 'little green stick' to line up the hits with the click track one beat at a time, one track at a time..
My boss told me that was how everyone did it and to shut up moaning about it. When I saw the review of DP with beat detection I jumped with joy!! But my boss wouldn't even look at it.
Anyway I'm on my own now and I just want to make things sound the best that they can, i'd love to know step by step how you go about doing things.

I strongly disagree......

I tend to track live drums and add sequence percussion on top of it. the MIDI works great for me. the beauty of beat detection is via the conductor track you can make the lock the MIDI to the exact tempo of your drum traqck compensating for the normal ebbs and tides of a drummer. A very tight drummer plays on top of a click or percussion sequence and IME (experience) sounds great. I tend to do a LOT of live recordings with MPC tracks palying underneath and I do enough live concerts with the same. it has never been a hassle or an issue.

The conductor track is my total friend as it does not seek an average temp (like when you are in tempo slider mode) but the actual tempo of the drummer.

I have used it successfully many times

Lety me add this as well...

I often track a full song then add the drummer later and adjust seq to soundbit in conductor mode to tighten things up to the live drummer.

Spikey Horse · Post by **Spikey Horse** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:14 pm

Why not 'tweak outside the box' (sorry) by leaving the drums alone and rearranging conductor track to match it instead.

ie by dragging the barlines or beats .......or by using record beats.... or a mixture of the two record beats + fine tuning by dragging.

There are many reasons why the drummer has to play to a click but if everything that relies on MIDI sync or conforming to the grid happens AFTER the drums are to be layed down then this method should present no problems..... as long as the drummer is up to it!

(and you're happy to have a project you can't use loops in etc)

I like playing to a rigid click track sometimes becasue I can really push and pull the beat and so on, or lock right up to it and know exactly what my timing refereence is. So I'll do it that way for those reasons. (or just to save time on a quick project etc)

But I also love to play very rubato styles of drumming and also use takes recorded during improvisation. If I need the grid to match the timing I will use record beats after recording the drums. Or I'll record a rough version on guitar/piano/ drums to get the timing feel - then do record beats and then use the click from that to start laying down the drums and the rest of the track discarding the original performance. I love this feature, it works really well - it's the best of both worlds - (apart from one post I put here once when it was freaking me out - but I've sorted that now!).

Does that answer anything?

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:29 am

Thanks for your replies, I know there is no right or wrong way to do things it depends on the engineer and what they find works best and also what is most suited to the band and the style of music that they play.
I will read up on how to make the grid fit the drums rather than vice versa as this sounds like something I should definitely be using. Can you suggest any links which might help me when learning about this, obviously I will start with the manual but any other help would be great.
Just out of interest, if you are using just audio-MIDI triggers on the kit how do you get the cymbal sounds?
The thing I like about cutting up the actual audio is that I can still use the overhead mics and room mics along with samples..
Thanks again for your help

Spikey Horse · Post by **Spikey Horse** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:50 am

As well as the DP manual I think Motu.com has some examples in the DP pages.

If I am recording with acoustic triggers and want to trigger cymbal samples then yes I have to use V-Cymbals pads instead of real cymbals.

Often I just want kick/snare MIDI data from the drum kit performance for layering with samples so I just use triggers on those two - for cymbals and percussion I don't own I often use a v-pad set up to hit during recording and then I assign the notes later to whatever samples later.

I wasn't really being serious about using triggers to replace an *entire* acoustic kit!

yofo · Post by **yofo** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:54 am

I don't really get what the big deal is , I have had great luck quantizing live drums with DP 4.6 ! What I do is Quantize and then listen. If there is a problem spot then I un do the quantize and manually shift & fix the area where the problem was. Then quantize again the whole thing. Sometimes I just quantize spots , either way DP is amazing.

alpha · Post by **alpha** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 11:51 am

yofo wrote:I don't really get what the big deal is , I have had great luck quantizing live drums with DP 4.6 ! What I do is Quantize and then listen. If there is a problem spot then I un do the quantize and manually shift & fix the area where the problem was. Then quantize again the whole thing. Sometimes I just quantize spots , either way DP is amazing.

I'm glad to hear that your having no problems, I would be interested to hear exactly how you do things.. Do you work using the same method I described above? How do you go about edge editing the gaps between the soundbites?
Don't get me wrong what DP does is amazing and I use it everyday to work on paying clients work, I just want to know how everyone else works as I feel I can always learn and improve the way I work.

Astia · Post by **Astia** » Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:50 am

Hi Alpha!

I hear You all the way. I‘m using the same method to quantize multitrack drums as You are and I totally agree about the issues with Smooth Audio Edits, closing gaps by hand (=crashing when selecting too many bites) and also the time it takes to do cross fades.

I totally understand the ppl who would rather just do another take than edit the drums. It just always isn‘t possible yo improve the take by re-recording it.. Altough in metal / hard rock(what I mostly do) there are very good drummers but still when playing double bass drum parts the snare usually isn‘t exactly on the kick. Turn up some high frequencies to snare & kick for proper sound that goes with the genre and it doesn‘t sound too good when they are flamming. If I want to use samples on tracks that are not beat detected, it sounds like the triggering has failed big time.

BDE is a great feature but it still needs some developing.

But..
rather than complaining, I‘d like to thank Motu for it because at least for me the editing nights have gotten a LOT shorter after BDE was introduced