How to fix off-beat drums without re-recording?

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hailtotheking

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I want to clean up some timing issues in a multitrack drum recording done with 4 mics (kick, snare, overhead, and hi-hat). It seems that this is an impossible task, though there seem to be tools out there that look like they're designed to help (i.e. time stretch/compress tools). Can I get some pro advice?

The big problem for me with adjusting the timing of off-beat drum hits is dealing with microphone bleed. For instance, if I have an early kick hit and I edit the kick track to fix the timing, I still hear the early kick hit coming from the other mic tracks. I imagine that this timing effect will be even more noticable after adjusting mic levels during mixing or if I had originally recorded with room mics far away from the kit (15 ft). I want to avoid these timing problems and it seems to me that the best way to edit this is to adjust the timing in all mic tracks so all kick hits are moved up in time by the same amount. Anyone know of a way to do this so that I'm editing the kick at the right start and end points in each track and so I'm not screwing up the timing of the other instruments (snare, hi-hat, crash, toms, etc.)?

I've looked into a ton of other possible solutions and it seems like re-recording and punching in over the off-beat sections is really the best way to completely solve the problem but.. is this really the only recourse? All these stretching tools I've been reading about seem to promise a fix to timing problems long after a take is recorded, but maybe they're intended to work only when no bleed is present.. I dunno :confused:. I really want a way to fix the recording I have without re-recording since I'm pretty far away from the studio and may not be able to get another performance from the drummer. I'd love to hear some ideas on how I can really solve these drum timing issues with mic bleed. Thanks a lot.
 
Are you saying that the drum track is off-beat in the sense that the tempo isn't steady (ie; speeding up, slowing down, etc...)???

Or do you mean in the sense that the drums are off within themselves (ie; snare and hi-hat aren't hitting at the same time when they should...)???

I'm assuming it's the second one because of what you said about moving individual drums as opposed to shifting the whole track. If that's the case, I can't see how that would be a workable drum track. That's just bad drumming. You might be able to fix it, but the time it would take to shift everything piece by piece and part by part and then still maybe have a shaky drum track might not be worth it.
 
Yep, it's the second one. I'm not too worried about matching an exact tempo, mainly fixing drummer mistakes. Imagine a hi-hat recording that's perfectly in time then imagine the kick comes in too early and too late relative to the hi-hat from time to time. The reality I'm facing is pretty similar, except every drum instrument get a bit off from time to time :). I'm thinking I may be able to fudge it by searching for 'good measures' in the overall recording and using them to overwrite the 'bad measures'. I think that'll work for most verses and choruses where there is a lot of repetition throughout the song, so hopefully there some solace there for me. But I think I may be outta luck when it comes to fixing off-beat notes in sections that only occur once in the song (say, a one-time drum fill). I hope not, but I'm probably fighting reality on that one... :)
 
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SONAR 6 has "audio snap" feature which might be able to clean this up. Check out YouTube and search for SONAR Audio Snap. I think ProTools has something like this as well.
 
hailtotheking said:
Yep, it's the second one. I'm not too worried about matching an exact tempo, mainly fixing drummer mistakes. Imagine a hi-hat recording that's perfectly in time then imagine the kick comes in too early and too late relative to the hi-hat from time to time. The reality I'm facing is pretty similar, except every drum instrument get a bit off from time to time :). I'm thinking I may be able to fudge it by searching for 'good measures' in the overall recording and using them to overwrite the 'bad measures'. I think that'll work for most verses and choruses where there is a lot of repetition throughout the song, so hopefully there some solace there for me. But I think I may be outta luck when it comes to fixing off-beat notes in sections that only occur once in the song (say, a one-time drum fill). I hope not, but I'm probably fighting reality on that one... :)
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yeah, I forgot to mention that. You can use the drum track as a sort of sequencer and loop parts that are good, and/or copy the good part of one chorus to the bad part of another, etc...
 
I've heard a lot about AudioSnap from the CakeWalk forums and have watched the videos but I'm not quite sure it can do what I want. I was thinking, if AudioSnap was able to analyze each track for kick hits and give me a 'time-stretch' marker for every kick hit, then I'd have 4 markers for each off-beat kick hit that I could slide (one per track). If I was able to slide all 4 markers by the same amount of time then I'd be able to solve the timing problem for the off-beat kick hit in all tracks. Problem is, I think adjusting those markers to time-stretch the kick would screw up the timing of the other on-beat instruments (snare, hi-hat, etc). Haven't really thought that one through (my head spins everytime I try to imagine it) but it's got me interested enough to try it out by downloading a Sonar 6 demo. I wonder if anyone has tried doing this with AudioSnap yet... Thanks for the suggestion.

BTW - I have Ableton Live Lite 5.2, Cubase LE, and Sonar PE 5.2. Price tag on ProTools is a bit too steep for me to experiment with unless there's a demo available...
 
Fix the timing on one track with time stretch or whatever, and during that period use volume automation to mute that part of the other track(s) that have the bleed.
 
What Sweetnubs is saying is that the best way to have good drums is to record good drums. There's no substitute for a good (or bad) performance. If you can, I would re-track the drums until they're in time.

Beyond that, sometimes I'll take the best 4 bar section from the chorus and the 4 best bars from the verse (and whatever other different parts you have) and just paste the loops all the way though.

Good luck.
 
Mixxit12 said:
Beyond that, sometimes I'll take the best 4 bar section from the chorus and the 4 best bars from the verse (and whatever other different parts you have) and just paste the loops all the way though.
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You should be ashamed! Tisk, tisk. :D
 
Mixxit12 said:
What Sweetnubs is saying is that the best way to have good drums is to record good drums. .
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That's already been acknowledged, along with the suggestions you made. He was asking if there was a way to fix the drums OTHER TAHN re-recording them.
 
hailtotheking said:
if AudioSnap was able to analyze each track for kick hits and give me a 'time-stretch' marker for every kick hit, then I'd have 4 markers for each off-beat kick hit that I could slide (one per track). If I was able to slide all 4 markers by the same amount of time then I'd be able to solve the timing problem for the off-beat kick hit in all tracks.
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With the 6.2 update to Sonar, this is really easy.

You'd start by enabling Audiosnap on the kick track, and finding the transients (tweaking the threshold so it's only finding true kick hits, and none of the bleed.) Then select the whole track and use the "Add Transients To Pool" command.

Next, enable Audiosnap on the rest of the drum tracks, but instead of searching for transients, just use the "Apply Pool Transient Markers" command. Now all the drum tracks have the same transient markers, based on where the kick drum hits are.

You could slide the markers manually, but it'd be much easier to use the quantize command at this point, because that ensures all the markers move by the same amount.

hailtotheking said:
Problem is, I think adjusting those markers to time-stretch the kick would screw up the timing of the other on-beat instruments (snare, hi-hat, etc).
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Ya, it will. You'll have to play with it to find a good compromise.

I've had good success by using the transients from the kick and snare, and quantizing to somewhere between 60% and 70% ... The result isn't perfect, of course, but with the rest of the tracks mixed in it usually sounds decent.
 
I guess it could be done the old fasioned way. Cut up the individual sounds and move them around. Use the wave forms from the other tracks to get everything lined up. This is the hard way, but it's the way I do it.
 
Yeah, maybe this is silly of me but when I used to do computer recording it seemed like that was the only method that could really produce decent results. (placing every hit by hand and then adding some different EQ to different parts, adjusting volume, etc.) It's just too perfect when you let the computer do the looping. Check out "Airbag" by Radiohead... great use of sampled drums in that song. It's just about 10 seconds of drumming pasted and messed with through that entire song.
 
RAMI said:
That's already been acknowledged, along with the suggestions you made. He was asking if there was a way to fix the drums OTHER TAHN re-recording them.
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Actually he asked if re-recording and/or punching in was the best solution. It is, if that's possible. If not, he should do what you and I both suggested (or try the Audiosnap thing).
 
The real answer here depends on what kind of micing techniques you used. If each mic has lots of bleed from the others then you are going to be pretty limited in your options. Ideally, with little or no bleed, you could just put a noise gate on each channel. That way you could manually cut/paste each hit if needed getting it right in the sweet spot. If you have lots of bleed and no gating though, cutting and pasting is going to leave you with some really strange clipping here and there and depending on how much editing you plan to do, you will end up with a really shotty sound. If you have a lot of bleed, you're going to be pretty much limited to finding the measures thast are good and trying to repeat them, but unless you were recording to a clicktrack, that probably won't do you any good either. Hopefully the micing technique was better than the playing technique and you can use the first option I described. Just my $.02. --Matt
 
I've had to do this many many times with a certain band.. The only way I got natural results was to take a good part of the song and copy it and put it in place where it should be.. I've done this to add parts the drummer "forgot to play" freakin kids not being organized in the studio! I've also used this to fix a bar that wasn't played perfectly. There's only so much you can do before resorting to retracking..
 
Cut up the hits, load them in a sequencer, and resequence the whole damn thing... and change the performance while you're at it :D

Do some funky filter sweeps, reverse hits, stutter, machine gun... Tell em it's the NEW way of doing things.
 
Mixxit12 said:
Actually he asked if re-recording and/or punching in was the best solution. It is, if that's possible. If not, he should do what you and I both suggested (or try the Audiosnap thing).
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I stand corrected. I thought he said re-recording is not an option.

We're on the same page. :)
 
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