So.. has anyone tried this trick?

  • Thread starter Thread starter VSpaceBoy
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The process you outline is a solution to a very specific problem. I wouldn't say it's universally applicable to every snare drum track.

Personally, if the drummer is good, varying volume hits may match the vibe of the track. The technique is one of many small editing tricks that you need to learn but also know when to utilize. Most anyone that has done recording awhile will recommend that you never normalize, anything. The reason is that you could be raising the noise floor of the sound. That said, if it works for the track you are working on and there is an obvious problem, it may be just the thing.

There are no universal secrets to tracking, editing or mixing. Just a boat load of possibilities that you learn to master and apply when necessary.

Actually there is one universal secret, track it right and the song comes closer to mixing itself. If you can learn how to do this, patching techniques and tricks are not required.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Oh, man, if I really wanted to bitch slap you, you'd feel it so hard it would rattle your ancestors :rolleyes: . Why the hell are you taking offense at this thread? I'm not even bitch tapping you.
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I didn't say YOU were bitchslapping anyone. I was reffering to arbitrary song listener's making fun of engineering band-aids, vrs the song itself. Much like ppl making fun of Kurt Cobain for having no musical talent while he was writing hit songs.

SouthSIDE Glen said:
I did answer your question..
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When?
My Question was: " I came upon this post and thought it seemed like a neat idea and was wondering if anyone has tried it with or without success." Which post of yours was a answer to my question?
 
I give guys.. I just thought that maybe I stumbled upon a trick that would be helpful to me and others. I wasn't aware that I would get the "just don't suck" thread started.
 
VSpaceBoy said:
I give guys.. I just thought that maybe I stumbled upon a trick that would be helpful to me and others. I wasn't aware that I would get the "just don't suck" thread started.
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I dont claim to be an engineer,dont even want to be.Home recording is my
hobby,and a useful tool to present ideas to my band.
That being said,I do understand what my job is as a band member when I
go into a pro studio to record.For starters,I am going to hone my skills in the
rehearsal studio,rather than expect an engineer to do my job for me.I am
going to take the time to know the sounds I want from my amp before hand
and how to dial them in quickly.I'm going to make sure that bandmates with
no studio experience understand how it works and what is expected.
My band(or the band that I am fortunate enough to be a member of)went
into the studio this past sunday.We recorded 7 tunes in 5 1/2 hrs complete
with overs and ready to be mixed.
A band should have as good or better work ethic as the person recording them.Rehearsal is where you fix shit,studio is where the work pays off.
 
SHEPPARDB. said:
I dont claim to be an engineer,dont even want to be.Home recording is my
hobby,and a useful tool to present ideas to my band.
That being said,I do understand what my job is as a band member when I
go into a pro studio to record.For starters,I am going to hone my skills in the
rehearsal studio,rather than expect an engineer to do my job for me.I am
going to take the time to know the sounds I want from my amp before hand
and how to dial them in quickly.I'm going to make sure that bandmates with
no studio experience understand how it works and what is expected.
My band(or the band that I am fortunate enough to be a member of)went
into the studio this past sunday.We recorded 7 tunes in 5 1/2 hrs complete
with overs and ready to be mixed.
A band should have as good or better work ethic as the person recording them.Rehearsal is where you fix shit,studio is where the work pays off.
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VSpaceBoy said:
I just thought that maybe I stumbled upon a trick that would be helpful to me and others. I wasn't aware that I would get the "just don't suck" thread started.
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:confused:
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Yeah, that is one of my favorite tricks and definitely the best advice that guy could give. Guaranteed success.

G.
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Depends on the drummer, though. I had a "real" drummer in here recently, but I ended up volume-enveloping every snare track on every song because of inconsistancy.
 
VSpaceBoy said:
I give guys.. I just thought that maybe I stumbled upon a trick that would be helpful to me and others. I wasn't aware that I would get the "just don't suck" thread started.
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OK, OK, if you really want a comment of the procedure, if I understand it correctly what it's suggesting is to trick the normalizer by asking it to normalize the entire signal based upon the levels of signal only where there is "silence". By doing this, it will automatically try to normalize the silence to 0dBFS (or whatever you have the normalizer set for.) Since it's silent, the normalizer will mathematically try boosting the signal fully. But since silence is zero signal, zero multiplied by even infinity remains zero. But since it's applying normalization to the entire track, the drum hits are also fully normalized yielding the result.

The problem with that method - if I am interpreting it right - is that you have to have complete silence everywhere except the drum hits for it to work. Otherwise, any noise whatsoever - in fact any thing that's not total silence -will also be evenly normalized to full volume.

One could gate first to get rid of intervening volume, but what you'd wind up with is a track with a bunch of square waves on it; everything would go from -infinity to zero and back again, with no natural attack or decay. Plus any noise or bleed that is occuring *during* the snare envelope would be equally boosted along with the snare.

It's up to you to determine wthether the result would actually sound any good (have you even tried it? Why not try it and see for yourself if it works or not?) But it seems fairly straightforward that hitting the snare with even intensity - which is the very first thing they teach you in music class...we're not talking about virtuosity here - is a far better solution. Which the original poster concluded also. I just tried making it quick by cutting to the real answer without having to connect all the dots.

G.
 
Sometimes these threads take on a life of their own, and spiral out of control. Somebody says something, someone else doesn't like their perceived tone or implied lack of respect, they repond... the other person responds back... pretty soon you get this thread.

I'll backtrack to the top:

VSpaceBoy - thanks for relating that technique/trick. It's one that I haven't ever tried or thought of. I may never use it, I may never want to use it, but maybe someday that will be exactly the technique I'll need to salvage a particular situation.

The way I look at it, having one more piece of technical knowledge in your repertoire can never hurt - unless we are talking about knowledge of how to make weapons of mass destruction - which clearly we aren't. It's only music. No animals were harmed in normalizing these snare hits.

So, once again V., thanks for sharing.

(I can't believe I'm acting like the voice of reason. I must be getting old...)
 
Glen, I'm afraid you got that wrong. This is not about normalizing silence. Basically, the first step acts as a kind of gate and chops up the audio track into hundreds of small sections NOT containing silence. On a snare track, these would be the individual snare hits. If you now select to normalize them, they will be normalized individually (which is complete crap IMO, because the tansient levels of consecutive snare hits you might hear as equally loud can vary dramatically). Without the chopping up, the normalizer would just search the loudest peak and adjust the whole file accordingly.

I hope I got that clear.

David
 
nessbass said:
Glen, I'm afraid you got that wrong. This is not about normalizing silence. Basically, the first step acts as a kind of gate and chops up the audio track into hundreds of small sections NOT containing silence. On a snare track, these would be the individual snare hits. If you now select to normalize them, they will be normalized individually (which is complete crap IMO, because the tansient levels of consecutive snare hits you might hear as equally loud can vary dramatically). Without the chopping up, the normalizer would just search the loudest peak and adjust the whole file accordingly.

I hope I got that clear.

David
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Yeah, you explained it better than I did. But the end effect to the snare is really pretty much the same, if you think about it a bit. You have individual samples (so to speak) that are all normalized to the limit with no consideration given to the context in which they appear - i.e. there is nothing to normalize them against. They are still being normalized compared to nothing, which is the same as normalized referenced to silence. The end result will be artificial attack and release slopes along with all other signals such as noise and bleed being normalized only within the sample, causing a potential pumping effect in the bleed.

And you're right, equal voltage amplitude does not necessarily mean equal apparent volume. Especially when one is talking about trying to correct poor playing technique where the wimpy hits will have quite a different character from the solid ones or the ones inclduing rim hits.

G.
 
I have used similar techniques before in big studios (the HD rigs). The only difference is that we would normally use the strip silence function for quantization.

I'll agree with southside that if you can't play it right (at least if you are trying to put out a professional product) don't play it at all. There is only so much turd-ness that can be polished (and your right Vspace, 99.8% of people won't hear it)

but if you just want a product for self-satisfaction, don't worry about this trick...the time & labor you will put into it will not be rewarding in the end...not to mention that it takes a lot of experience to use these functions right.
 
Okay, so I'm not gonna read all of this bullshit. :p

I read the first couple of posts.

I used to do that exact thing to my drum tracks but instead of the "remove silence" thing I just used the clip slice tool and sliced the clip between every drum hit. I didn't have a compressor or anything...nor did I know how to use one. Unfortunately everything sounded like shit anyway, so it didn't help much. But hey, everything was loud!
 
nessbass said:
... the normalizer would just search the loudest peak and adjust the whole file accordingly.
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not really... normalizing searches for the highest peak amplitude which may not be the loudest.
 
Ok boys...can we move this to the mic forum? That seems to be where all the fun is these days..... :p
 
Wrong.

with traditional or "peak" normalization, audio progs scan a file for the loudest peak and amplifies so that the peak attains the loudest level.
but if you do it while mastering, the songs will still vary in level because our ears respond to a songs "average" level.

RMS Normalization uses AVERAGE levels..



Keiffer said:
normalizing only sets each peak to the same peak level and does nothing about leveling average level. a compressor properly set is a much, much better tool.
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after reading my post again, holy shit that sucked... could have been said much better... but still what's wrong and who would normalize while mastering...
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
It doesn't happen often because I work with people who know how to play. Yeah, there have been occasions where I have had new clients come in who's skills have been marginal. And I have made the recording sound as good as possible, and they haven't come out badly. But I never have used any processing tricks to change the performances.

...well, let me take that back a bit. I'm not advocating direct-to-disc recording or anything like that. Of course there are post-production techniques like using the vocals fro take 3 for verse one and take 2 for vers two and stuff like that.

What I'm talking about is stuff like pitch correction or the normalization trick brought up here where the purpose is to not pick the best performance, but to alter the performer. That I won't do. If the client listens to my product and asks, "How come the snare sounds so uneven?" I simply tell him, "Because that's how he played it. If you want, we can re-track it, or I can play the drums msyelf with my digital beat matchers, pitch correctors, multiband compressors, and so on, but either way it's going to cost you extra money." It's a simple as that. And you know what? When that has happened, they've basically said, "Oh, OK." and they usually figure it will be a lot cheaper to practice some more before they come back into the studio so they actually sound worth recording.

Then why are you asking how to make your drummer sound like a pro musician on a pro recording? Why don't you accept that the drummer sounds awful and let it go at that?

You want to sound like a pro recording, there's only three realistic ways to do it:

First, practice your ass off on the instruments being recorded before you hit the record button.

Second, practice your ass off on the instruments doing the recording before you hit the red button for keeps.

Third, if you want to sound like a pro recording, stop using "this is homerecording.com" as an excuse.

G.
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I don't know, it must be nice to have the luxury to just do it all your way when you get someone that isn't up to the level you were hoping for... I guess I understood your post to implicate you expected the musicians you recorded to be studio-musician level players...it didn't really seem to imply just a drummer hitting his snare at a certain basic competency.

In any case, I fully agree with Vspace Boy that just because someone can't perfect his performance, or has mastered or even remotely mastered his instrument that they aren't worth or worthy of recording...it's actually usually quite the opposite, for the entirety of music history there have always been 2 groups of musicians: performers and composers. Generally the people who perform are not skilled at making good songs and the people who compose might not be the master of their instrument...

There are hundreds of examples of people who can't play worth crap who make world famous songs, so it seems unrealistic to expect musicians to perfect their performance before going to record (it sure would be nice...maybe for you as the engineer)

Anyhow, I can understand the desire that the performance you record is as good as possible, rather than slicing and dicing to make things happen, but hey, sometimes you just gotta work with what you've got until one is in a more established position like you must be ,SouthSIDE Glen.
 
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