"Hothead" Old recording drum help

JohnnyAmato

New member
So I've decided to put my first ProTools/Superior Drummer recording on hold for a bit, as I finish writing the lyrics. So I'm spending some time going through my group of 40 songs or so that I did on my Tascam with the old drum machine (Boss DR-770). Basically, I'm just going through the mixes one by one, so I can get them as solid as possible and be done with the group for good. Thanks to all who have given me mixing tips recently on some of them. But there are two or three songs I would actually like to do the drums over with SD. This one, "Hothead", is one of them. The drums are terrible, but I like the song and the guitars, and would hate to re-record it from scratch.

I know how to send the individual tracks from the Tascam to ProTools, but they wont be lined up meter-wise with the click track because when I did all of these recordings I would do all the drums on the drum machine itself, then just record the finished drum track to the Tascam on a stereo track. I would wait a second or two, the hit play. Meaning I never lined them up with the Tascam's click. I feel it would be very difficult to line up each track individually with ProTool's click, if I could select them all at once and move them as one I'm sure it would be easier. Should I even bother to try, or will it be too difficult? I just wanted some input before I start importing tracks to ProTools. Anyone ever done this before?

I decided to post this here because I would also like some input on the guitars in this mix; rhythms, leads, bass.

Hothead (Demo) | Johnny Amato
 
Maybe you can use Beat Detective to make PT put the click in the right place. I haven't actually used it because, well, I avoid the grid. The "All" group makes moving everything together easy.
 
I've done it, but with Tascam 4 tracks only. How many tracks do you have? Which Tascam unit?
I have a focusrite 18i8 so it had enough line inputs. At that point, it's just a matter of line-out on your Tascam into the line-in on your interface. It will record them all at the same time so no lining up needed. It's the only way to do it correctly and avoid wow/flutter (i.e. timing) issues. If you don't have an interface with enough inputs for each track you need to get one and the 1/4" cables or a snake. That's all there is to it.
 
Thanks Nola- I have the 2488neo, and all 24 tracks are used on this tune. I think I get what you are saying, but all I have to do is export the tracks right out of the Tascam and drag them each to a track in ProTools. They will all still be perfectly lined up. I'm just concerned that it will be very hard to line them up with the ProTools click, so I can re-do the drums with SD from scratch. Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you're saying. Sorry if I sound like a moron, a lot of this stuff is new to me, I've been doing recordings on stand-alone units for years and I've only had ProTools for a few weeks.

Boulder- I've never heard of Beat Detective, is that in ProTools, or something else entirely?
 
Thanks Nola- I have the 2488neo, and all 24 tracks are used on this tune. I think I get what you are saying, but all I have to do is export the tracks right out of the Tascam and drag them each to a track in ProTools. They will all still be perfectly lined up. I'm just concerned that it will be very hard to line them up with the ProTools click, so I can re-do the drums with SD from scratch. Maybe I'm not fully understanding what you're saying. Sorry if I sound like a moron, a lot of this stuff is new to me, I've been doing recordings on stand-alone units for years and I've only had ProTools for a few weeks.

Boulder- I've never heard of Beat Detective, is that in ProTools, or something else entirely?

Oh, it's digital? In that case I don't know how to do it. For analog you have to do what I said above to transfer in time.

Maybe import just the stereo mix and see if you can get the drums to lineup to that. It will save you time b/c if you can't then you know not to bother importing all 24 individual tracks. If you recorded it to a fixed tempo and know the tempo I don't see why you wouldn't be able to re-program the drums to be in time.
 
Yea that's probably the best idea. It will be difficult and time-consuming, still debating if it's even worth it. There's some crazy rolls in the tune, but it's only two minutes long.
 
Boulder- I've never heard of Beat Detective, is that in ProTools, or something else entirely?

I'm pretty sure it's in PT. You import all your tracks, including the old drums, then run Beat Detective. There are videos that show you how. I think it will create a custom tempo map of your song. Then mute the old drums and use the tempo map to build the new drums. I've never done this, just watched it being done.

Learn about Groups in PT. They are control groups, something like VCAs on a console but more versatile. It links all sorts of parameters across any custom selection of tracks. There's always an "All" group available but you can make a Group for any subset of your tracks. For example, if you group all the drum tracks then you can grab the fader of any one track, boost it by 2.3dB and all the others in the group will follow.

This is different from a submix bus. Control groups don't act on a submix of some tracks, they act directly on the track controls.
 
Thanks Boulder, great info. I will definitely mess around with it. Hopefully it doesn't end up being super easy, I'll want to re-do the drums on all my older recordings. Eek!
 
Cool tune-Great guitar playing and guitar tone. Guitar players will notice that "cliffs of dover" influence, bass could be a bit more prominent, like I can't tell if there is a bass or is it the chunky rhythm guitars....As far as your issue with getting these into pro tools-as long as you know the bpm of the song you should be good, just import the parts and you should be able to drag right onto the grid or have pro tools detect the bpm. It sounds like a single tempo all the way so should be easy to do.
 
Thanks Strat. Kind of a wierd song idea that just came out of me one night, it's in Eb but played in standard tuning. Did the rhythms on a 2001 USA strat decked out with the David Gilmour EMG pick-up set-up, I think the leads were done on my '97 Jeff Beck strat, but I don't remember. I'll turn that bass up some and see how it sounds. I'm probably going to hold off on attempting to re-do the drums on this particular tune. I have a few other recordings that will have vocals, so I'm going to attempt it with those instead.

Thanks Boulder, cool vid and watched a few more that popped up, too. I watched a bunch on basic operations when I first got ProTools a few weeks ago, and still do occasionally, but for some reason it never occurred to me to check YouTube for drum/timing vids. From what I've been watching, it seems I will have to line it up manually best I can with the PT click. I know my tempos, so that's not the issue. I just hope I can line them up to the exact millisecond, I'll try.
 
From what I gather you simply line the first beat of the waveforms to the first beat of the click track, then set the tempo to whatever makes the click line up with the audio for the rest of the song. There are tools to help with getting the exact tempo. It should be a fairly simple thing to do.
 
Just thought I'd revive this thread, because after re-doing the drums on a few easier recordings first, I'm finally attempting this one. Thanks for the help from all who chimed in, as it is not too difficult to line things up with the grid in ProTools. The OP is still the original version, with all the machine-gun drum rolls from the old drum machine. And if I thought the first few easier tunes I re-did the drums for were tedious, this one takes the cake, holy crap. Trying to match every hit on every roll, I feel like a surgeon. I'm seeing midi-dots in my sleep.

No need to comment on the mix, since I'll be re-mixing from scratch once I'm done with the drum track from hell :facepalm:
 
Great playing as always. The guitars have a bit of harshness to my ears, and as mentioned the bass could come up. Otherwise, no nits to pick.

If the original is digital, I'd say that makes it easier. That's because the time should be consistent throughout. Just render all the files and import them into your DAW at the right tempo. Everything should turn out fine. If it was tape, there may be little inconsistencies in the playback that complicate things. If would first try syncing your recording to the DAW, then play the parts into the DAW one by one and see how well they line up. The alternative would be to bring all the guitars in as a stereo mix, which means fewer tracks to line up but less control.
 
Thanks Robus. The transferring part is easy, also pretty simple to line the tracks up to the beat. I already re-did the drums for four older recordings recently. This particular one is tough because of all the crazy rolls in it, not hard, just time consuming. I'm actually just about done with it, I must be getting better because it didn't take as long as I thought it would.

I'm remixing it from scratch tonight, when you say the guitars are a little harsh, are you referring to the rhythm guitars or the leads? Or both?
 
I thought the guitars sounded pretty good. If you de-harsh the rhythm, I wouldn't do it by much. Maybe a real thin notch - 2-3db - around 2400hz. They did have a little solid-state/static-y upper midrange to the.

Great playing as always.
 
Back
Top