Manually quantizing audio drum tracks. How do you do it?

[timvdwest]

Hey all,

Was fixing up a lot of drum recordings lately and was wondering what techniques everybody uses to get the drums on click. Here are some questions, I suppose it will make it easier:

1. Do you ever move around any part of your drum recordings, if yes, how much of it?

2. What program do you use (if you do quantize) to do this?

3. What part of the transient do you line up with the beat marker? (ie. which part of the wave sits exactly on the click - the first trough/crest or inbetween)

4. What length of crossfade do you use when cutting it up?

5. Anything I missed that you would like to elaborate on.


Hope we can all share some insight into this.

Cheers!
Tim

 

[timvdwest]

As I started this poll, I may as well explain my technique first.

There is a lot of talk about quantizing drum tracks and people saying that you shouldn't do it, but I really disagree with that and getting your drum tracks perfectly on click really binds a song together for me. It also makes life a lot easier for recording the rest of the instruments. I use this technique, however, I do mostly record rock and pop/rock so I am only really refering to these genres (I suppose metal too!) I just wouldn't attempt to this this to a jazz track unless it was seriously f'd up.

Anyway - I've had three drum tracks that I've been getting in order the last few days. What I did first was to get each track (kick, snare, etc) combined into a single wave file so it is easier to work with (so I don't have a bunch of punch-in's and edits).

I then import these raw drum tracks to a new project and group all the tracks together, so when I cut one track i cut them all.

I'm not sure how to mark up the beats in other software, but in Samplitude all you do is turn your grid on and set it to beats/bars and make sure your tempo is set correctly.

Now we are ready to start cutting. I zoom in to mainly the kick and snare and start checking how they line up to the grid, if the kick for example is too far off the beat marker I cut the track just before the kick signal and also just before the next kick and move the piece so it aligns properly. I also have auto-crossfade mode on, so when i cut it, it automatically adds a 10ms crossfade to smooth things out.

For the kick I move it so that the beginning of the first trough touches the grid and for the rest of the drums I normally just align the grid to the first peak in the signal. This is maybe being a bit too super-precise, but I found it just makes things easier, and I always then know whats going on.

If a gap is created between two object I will just pull out some of latter object and let the auto-crossfade do its job when it connects with the other object.

I just go through the whol track now doing this and when I'm finished I export to the seperate tracks again to a new wave - so I dont have 200 little slices to deal with.

You also must be very careful you aren't moving and object too far (rather use a different take then) because you can end up with weird sounding cymbals if you're not careful. Always listen back carefully piece by piece and make sure everything sounds ok. You might want to just solo the overheads so you will hear immediately if you have screwed something up.

I also wouldn't suggest this technique if you are recording in 16 bit, because you are definately going to lose some quality because of all the little math equations that are being done for the crossfades. I haven't had any trouble with 24 bit waves so far, so use 24+ bit recording if you can.

Thats it in a nutshell, if anybody has tips or suggestions for me or that i'm doing something completely wrong please just let me know

Oh, and sorry for my grammar and sentance structure - I'm not exactly an author.

Happy editing!

 

[RAMI]

I aswered "No. Never".

 

[noisewreck]

I answered "Yes. I use a software program to do it for me." Although if I was doing rock or metal or any kind of "live" recorded music I'd most likely not mess with the track. If the track had serious issues I'd fire the drummer and hire another one.

In my case I deal with breakbeats or drum loops, and oftentimes I may layer 3-4 breaks/loops, which will necessitate some sort of quantization otherwise combining different breaks with different feels will result in a trainwreck. So, what I'll do is first ReCycle the loops, then import them into a Cubase project. I will then extract the groove of one of the loops and apply it to the rest of the loops. That's it.

 

[Dogbreath]

I almost never do anymore. When I used a sequencer, I'd quantize the tracks before I dumped em into my daw but I learned how to play the drums since then and I just go over it til it's a good take.

I'll still do a little nudging on a kick or snare that's a skosh late or early but it's only a nudge. Like if it's a snare hit that needs tweaked, I'll nudge the 2 OH's and the snare tracks til they sound right. If I have to nudge em too much, I just re-track it.

And sometimes, leaving a little bit of "slop" (for lack of a better term ) makes the drums seem more real and less mechanical. Just depends on how bad the oops is.

My 2c...........
Kel