Perceivable latencies when tracking drums

N

Notyelf

New member
Greetings all!

My band is recording an album, we are a rock/metal band, with a bit of technical feel to a good portion of our music. Maybe not prog-level, but in that realm. I am the singer and guitar player.

My engineer and I are having a disagreement as to what 'human feel' is when it comes to variance to the drums being on the click. The drums have been tracked to our album already, and there are some sections, particularly technical ones, where the beat is off by 100ms or so. I find these sections very hard to track to, as they generally 'catch up' to the beat and are fairly precise. When I say precise, I am generally talking 20-30ms feels fairly precise to me. 50ms seems OK, but anything beyond that feels 'off'.

Unfortunately we cannot re-track the drums but may be able to fix it here in there, but my engineer is saying this is natural 'human feel' and that I need to learn to track to it.

I am not the greatest or most precise guitar player in the world, in fact, I am constantly practicing because I feel I am sloppy for our style of music :D. So I opened up my DAW and put the BPMs at 440 so I could compare nearly every note in the section we are recording, and tracked to that. 100% of my notes were within 10 to 20ms. To me that still felt 'human' and didn't feel like a robot or anything to me.

So my question is, what is the tolerance for 'human feel'? I imagine it is going to vary from person to person, but I would think in recording there has to be an acceptable limit?
 
I think a lot of what makes something human is the fact that no one else will do something exactly like you will do it. Nobody's time is perfect and that's what makes it human. In a recording situation where you are not tracking at the same time as the drummer, its best to follow the click so you are both aiming for "perfection" rather than having a vague time reference.

I feel like the only way you'd be able to pull off the technical parts of the song without editing the drums is by listening and practicing to the section over and over til you nail it. But you shouldn't have to do that. Your engineer should want to help you get the performance down how you want it and it seems like the best way to do that would be to edit the drum tracks (which sounds off to you anyway) and have you track to them.

If your engineer wanted a true natural human feel, he probably should have tracked the drums without a click. Or tracked the whole band together.
 
The whole situation sounds like a degree of laziness on the part of the drummer and engineer. If the takes aren't up to snuff, they should be retracked (assuming some mild nudging in the DAW can't correct the issues). You shouldn't have to compromise your performance because of their slop.

Now, if you were both tracking live and that's where the performance took you, as a result of what you were both feeling at that time, it's another story. But for studio recording of the nature you describe it needs to be as close to the click track as possible, as musicgeekandlvr explained.

In the context of this situation, the 'human feel' thing is a cop-out. It's an admission that the drum track isn't tight enough, otherwise you wouldn't be calling it anything else but "good" or "tight". "Human feel" comes into play when a groove is played consistently a certain way, where it deviates consistently but stays within the pocket. 1/4 and 1/8 note accents may be 'off', but still sound/feel good. It sounds like the drummer is losing time and catching up eventually. That's when you stop the recording, clear the track, and try again.
 
Thank you both for your responses, both are very helpful!

I should have clarified the human feel statement as we are not recording live, but having natural human variances and not just punching in drums exactly on the click with zero variance. These responses are both helpful, thank you!

I do think we can resolve in the mix, but yes you are right, we definitely need to work on some performances. I wasn't there for all the drum tracking so I didn't get to weigh in, and frankly I felt like both the drummer and engineer were a little loose on what they called 'good'

Not much I can do now but make the best of it!
 
Notyelf said:
... I felt like both the drummer and engineer were a little loose on what they called 'good'

Not much I can do now but make the best of it!
Click to expand...

That's exactly what it sounds like.

No one has to perform over music they're unhappy with. If it matters, then push back and refuse to add your tracks until they're corrected or, if necessary, retracked. "Making the best of it" only signs off on this behavior as acceptable. if your name is going to be put to this recording then you have every right to have input. If that's not the case, well hell I certainly wouldn't work another second on the material/with those artists. Life's too short. This isn't 'rough', it's called having standards.
 
If the drums sound good, then that is human feel. If they sound off, then it isn't.

The best drum grooves are still very consistent. The groove and feel has more to do with how one instrument pulls or pushes against another. For example, if the snare is always just a bit behind the hi hat (consistently), the feel will be laid back. If the snare is a bit ahead of the hat, it will feel more urgent.

Having the tempo vary in an uncontrolled manner is simply bad drumming. 100 ms is an eternity, depending on the tempo of the song. If he is that far out and then finds his way back to the click, it really should have been re-done.

However, if you need to track to those drums, turn off the click and follow the drums. It's a recording, so it is exactly the same every time you play it. You should be able to follow the drums.
 
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