How do you sync an old analog recording to a drum machine

[Cfrench007]

I recorded a few songs about ten years ago with an old Korg drum machine. I no longer have the masters of these recordings but would like to add a new drum track on top of the recording. How do you sync up a drum machine to an old audio recording? I just purchased "Music Studio 7" and dumped my old audio recording on to the hard drive. I imported the whole song onto one track and now want to add the drum track onto track 2. The old drum machine tempo will not match the Alesis SR16. Is there a way to get the two tempos to match up?

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

I don't understand...........

...what units are you trying to sync up? A portastudio with the computer? The drum machine with the computer? SR16 with a portastudio?

The SR16 can certainly be driven by the computer via midi.... but to have the SR16 sync to an analog multitrack, you'd have to stripe one of the analog channels with a SMTPE sync signal, and use a sync box. You lose a track on the analog multitrack this way (but presumably, you gain by then being able to drive multiple midi devices!)

 

[Son of Mixerman]

I no longer have the masters of these recordings but...

Oh Crap!

I just purchased "Music Studio 7" and dumped my old audio recording on to the hard drive. I imported the whole song onto one track and now want to add the drum track onto track 2. The old drum machine tempo will not match the Alesis SR16. Is there a way to get the two tempos to match up?

Only through pain and suffering. Once you have dropped it to the hard disk without a sync of some kind the result is a digital copy of a recording containing wow and flutter specs from your analog source. If you had the original masters with the striped track Blue Bear was talking about you would have some hope. The only way to redo it would be if you had pro-tool with a sound replacer plug in, but even then its still alot of work. You have 3 choices. You can try to do it the long and painful way of maing the drum track with midi and edit yourself silly over the next 6 months, or you can live with it the way it is, or you can use what you downloaded as a scratch for doing everything completely over.

SoMm

 

[Track Rat]

With what you've described, you'll never get the drum machine to sync and whats more, if you don't have the multi track with the drum tracks seperated so they can be removed, well that's another insurmountable problem. You can hand place drum samples in a multitrack by visually lining them up with the original track. It's time consuming for sure but takes hours, not months. I've done it many times.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Are the old drums still on the mix that you have? In many DAW's you can set a threshold and once the signal crosses that threshold it will send a pulse. You can use that timing to trigger other samples or establish a midi tempo for external sync. This can work great or horribly depending on the original music.

I would be suprised if Music Studio was able to do that. You probably need Sonar, Cubase, Logic or one of the more full featured DAW programs.

 

[Cfrench007]

Looks like I need to do some studying

Thanks for the input guys. It's been a while since I've done any recording. I still have my old Tascam Porta - One. It doesn't have a sync function. What I thought I would be able to do was dump the old song to the computer on one track and then on track 2, put down some sort of sync code for the drum machine. I guess you can tell I am very new at this. Too many new things to learn. Is this a good site to learn the basics? BTW - just ordered a sync box (MIDIMAN SYNCMAN) to help me. I have no idea how to use it but thankfully it comes with a manual.

 

[TexRoadkill]

If you are using your computer and a drum machine I don't think you will have much use for the Syncman. That is for syncing a midi device to analog tape. If you are already dumping the stuff into the computer than you dont need to synch the tape with anything. You just need to sync the computer and that can all be done with regular midi stuff.

The problem you are going to have is telling the drum machine what measure/beat it is supposed to be on. To do this you need to create a midi tempo map that is aligned with the original recording. Like I said earlier some programs are easier to that in than others.

One quick and dirty way to give it a good tempo map is to listen to the song and play along by hitting 1/4 notes on a midi keyboard while the song plays. This will give you a midi map of the beats to use in syncing the drum machine.

 

[Cfrench007]

Thanks - Texroadkill.

Do I set up a tempo map on an open track of a midi multi track recorder? That doesn't sound like it would be too difficult (that is if I can maintain the beat manually). I'll see what I can figure out this weekend. These Music studio computer programs are a little more involved that recording on the old Tascam.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Do I set up a tempo map on an open track of a midi multi track recorder? That doesn't sound like it would be too difficult (that is if I can maintain the beat manually). I'll see what I can figure out this weekend. These Music studio computer programs are a little more involved that recording on the old Tascam.

That's about it. Just tap along with the beat on a new track. Then later you can edit individual beats if you need to. Once you have a good 'click track' setup then you select all those beats and tell the program to Adjust Tempo to Selection (or something like that). You will tell it that you have, for example 160 1/4 notes = 40 measures. Then it will line up the Measure/Beat lines to match the beats that you have entered.

After that is setup you should be able to enter midi patterns that will line up with the old audio files. Hopefully the audio was transferred without too many timing fluctuations or it may never sound quite right.