Quantizing Drums

Quantize, edit, adjust, bump...do whatever it takes to get the song sounding it's best. It's your music, do what you like with it. I would steer clear of asking others if they think it's okay to do something that improves the net end product but might not be "cool" or "proper". Shit, most of the songs you love are probably comped together from 2 or three takes at a minimum. Studio time is expensive and precious, even if you are doing it yourself. The hours and minutes of your life have value even if it's not monetary.

There are a lot of people in this world who will tell you all about how you are doing it wrong, how if you don't do it the way they think is best you are cheating/ a hack/ stupid, whatever. It's your music, I assume you started to record yourself to learn and have fun and maybe get lucky and crank out some magic. Take everything on this site with a huge grain of salt and watch out for the minions. They don't care about you or your music.
 
cafehonda said:
Quantize, edit, adjust, bump...do whatever it takes to get the song sounding it's best. It's your music, do what you like with it. I would steer clear of asking others if they think it's okay to do something that improves the net end product but might not be "cool" or "proper". Shit, most of the songs you love are probably comped together from 2 or three takes at a minimum. Studio time is expensive and precious, even if you are doing it yourself. The hours and minutes of your life have value even if it's not monetary.

There are a lot of people in this world who will tell you all about how you are doing it wrong, how if you don't do it the way they think is best you are cheating/ a hack/ stupid, whatever. It's your music, I assume you started to record yourself to learn and have fun and maybe get lucky and crank out some magic. Take everything on this site with a huge grain of salt and watch out for the minions. They don't care about you or your music.
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Lol. And you do? :facepalm:


Yes, telling someone to play better is always the wrong advice. Because, you know, if you just play better, you won't have to spend hours and hours of that precious, expensive studio time moving drum hits around. Just think of how much more you could get done if you just fucking played better.


Anyway.......yeah.

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COA23 said:
Recording a song just to get the drum hits then setting each hit where you want them.
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That is shit. Please don't do that.
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. And you do? :facepalm:


Yes, telling someone to play better is always the wrong advice. Because, you know, if you just play better, you won't have to spend hours and hours of that precious, expensive studio time moving drum hits around. Just think of how much more you could get done if you just fucking played better.


Anyway.......yeah.

---------- Update ----------
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Lol. I like you.


That is shit. Please don't do that.
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I don't plan on it. The only way I wouldn't do live drums for this next project is if drummer is off to college and doesn't have much time to come around.
 
Greg_L said:
Okay, let's backtrack a little....

Were these drums recorded to a click track?
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They will be. There will also be scratch guitar tracks recorded to a click. Might even record the scratch guitars to some drum samples so it can be as on point as can be.

I'm preparing for a future project. Probably should've said that in the beginning.
 
cafehonda said:
Quantize, edit, adjust, bump...do whatever it takes to get the song sounding it's best. It's your music, do what you like with it. I would steer clear of asking others if they think it's okay to do something that improves the net end product but might not be "cool" or "proper". Shit, most of the songs you love are probably comped together from 2 or three takes at a minimum. Studio time is expensive and precious, even if you are doing it yourself. The hours and minutes of your life have value even if it's not monetary.

There are a lot of people in this world who will tell you all about how you are doing it wrong, how if you don't do it the way they think is best you are cheating/ a hack/ stupid, whatever. It's your music, I assume you started to record yourself to learn and have fun and maybe get lucky and crank out some magic. Take everything on this site with a huge grain of salt and watch out for the minions. They don't care about you or your music.
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I appreciate the advice to do what I'd like with my music. That's exactly what I plan to do, and try my hardest to record performances with no computers playing instruments. That's how we want to do it. :)
 
COA23 said:
They will be. There will also be scratch guitar tracks recorded to a click. Might even record the scratch guitars to some drum samples so it can be as on point as can be.

I'm preparing for a future project. Probably should've said that in the beginning.
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Okay. If you can, and it works for the song, I'd highly recommend you record everything to a click. Or at least the drums. You can then record everything else to the drums. Once the drums are done to a click, they can become your click track. When you record everything to the drums, then even little minor timing fluctuations get hidden because everything is being recorded that way. A downbeat that's off the beat a little doesn't seem so bad when the bass and guitars follow along. That's human. Those are the little quirks that make things seem organic and natural. Not a bunch of slop shit pieced together. That's not natural, and neither is perfectly precise robot drums.

So I think you're on the right track. Record a scratch guitar to a click, and then drums with that. Then everything else you wanna keep to the drums.

Some dummies will say that click tracks are too structured and whatnot, but they're stupid. Using a click track doesn't mean you have to stay rigid on the click. It's just a guide. You can meander around and fall back in line when it suits you. And of course, if you ended up just having to move a wongo hit around, the click will be your guide.
 
If you are talking about nudging a late kick or a flubbed tom, it is possible to do it pretty well, and it can save lots of time if you have an otherwise great take.

If you are talking about working through an entire song and making everything align to a tempo map, you are getting ready to waste an ungodly amount of time and the drums will sound bad.

Humans play off tempo. Good drummers can lead the tempo (copeland) or fall way back into a pocket (bonham). Aligning everything to a grid destroys that feel. And if you are "fixing" a beat on a pocket drummer, you aren't going to be lining it up to the tempo map - you'll be lining it up late or it will sound bad.

My recommendation is that you have your drummer play to a click and practice until he or she can perform it dead-nuts before the red light ever comes on - it worked for me. :) Then if there is a little flub here or there you can easily fix it in post. Don't plan to be fixing broken stuff before you ever start.

edit: tl;dr: what greg said.
 
I do this, even if the drums were not tracked to a click I do this (just a few more steps if the drummer didn't track to a click).

 
Guitargodgt said:
I do this, even if the drums were not tracked to a click I do this (just a few more steps if the drummer didn't track to a click).

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Hmm. This is a new one for me. I might have to try this out on one of our jams. I practice editing techniques on jams sometimes. I find it a good way to learn.
 
Supercreep said:
If you are talking about working through an entire song and making everything align to a tempo map, you are getting ready to waste an ungodly amount of time and the drums will sound bad.
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Right...this is what I thought the OP was after...all drum hits aligned to the grid, perfectly.
That will sound weird...though it does get used, I think, like maybe in modern Metal or some EDM, etc.

The thing is that these days you CAN do that pretty easily, and it doesn't take an ungodly amount of time. As I'm sure you guys know...many DAWs have auto-transient detection, auto-quantize features, and once you set that, you can pretty much tell the drum hits to all align to the grid with a few mouse clicks...and you can also make the hits follow random offsets relative to the grid.

I know in some other forums, lots of guys who do engineering/mixing for $$$ were glad to see those features. I think mostly because they get jobs from artists who send in crappy drum tracks, and the engineer/mixer is expected to perform miracles...so that stuff makes their work easier...regardless of any morality/ethics perspectives.
 
I think it's weird that you guys stress so hard over such things.

I also disagree with you though. Drums that are in time and on a grid sound good, especially if the drummer played them that way.

I would also like to say that usually when you're editing drums you aren't taking the time to align every single thing perfectly. Kicks, snare hits and toms yeah maybe, but I don't stress over cymbals so much as to robot the performance.

TBH I don't think it's possible to take an acoustic performance and grid it to a point where it sounds inhuman. I'm ready to stand corrected of course.
 
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