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Lesson Info

Drum Editing - Beat Detective

Ah, but I'll get into how to use beat detective to do this now the same thing can be done the same thing could be done with you know with any platform um you know and also with elastic time but again it doesn't sound as good in my opinion so I recommend highly recommend me to take it for any analog drum production stuff um do that actually, um as far as the beat detective it's under you go under event and pro tools and you select be detective which I had it open already so close but uh this ah bar beat market generation is something that you would use if you are trying to create a, um beat markers for material that was not cool like not in just standard subdivisions like with sanders sixteen no's eighth notes things of that nature and it's like a custom grew or something these air two features this groove template extraction or two features I rarely use it's real it's used maurine commercial styles of music when you're only kind of create a custom group it's not a rigid sixteenth no, t...

hey know what you're still want to sequence uh you know, south material or other, you know quantas other analog stuff to something is not exactly, you know even think most having rock and metal you're pretty much going to be on standard so divisions, stuff or whatever the exception of quintuplets, whatever, there's no feature going tough, so anything with five couldn't tell what you're gonna have to do manually, which black has done that a few times between the very means drummer and, you know, that's, not what, but everything else had to do. Like said you've got your options for sixteenth note eighth no thirty second note and then all the triple versions of that the swing phil versions of that uh, yeah, let me get back to so the first day I use and be detective is the region separation feature now, like said, I've already done this section of the audio on dinner break or whatever, just so we can get through a quicker like I said, this takes an hour for two minutes of audio even with this that the manual quanta izing usually takes me about an hour per minute of audio on average. So it's a significant of this, like said it literally is half the time to use to be detective. Ah, well, I said I'll use there's ah, I know just from looking at this there's some sixteen notes to the clique in this material. So I'm going to analyze this section it's important to note that with the b detective and with doing this, obviously you see here it creates loads of regions so you don't you don't want to do any more than like a couple minutes of audio at a time or in a bog your computer down probably even the most the fastest, most crazy computers we've got a lot of tracks going on here we got a couple of kids couple snares and then this is a small kid you know? Some of the kids I record like blakes or just crazy we're running like twenty mikes and you know, thirty mikes or whatever and so it's like, you know, doing the quanta izing you can really create a lot of regions involved your computer down um so like they try to do this in and you know, one to two minute chunks and then consolidate what you're done consolidate the regions on I'll talk about that here in just a minute the it's a feature on pro tools it's turns all the separate regions in the one big long region exactly and you will you want to cross fade before you consolidate of course but then you can throw away all the small tiny region because you won't need this information anymore and up and then that makes you keep your system running smoothly but the region separation it's a simple is this like I used to analyze this the stuff is you know, with the closest mike's like the inside kick analyzed the top snare the toms and then the symbols um I was like where's my hat and it's it's all the tractor um but yeah and then the high hat and ride mike the room like I leave out because you memorize showed you earlier they're actually late later than the ah then the closer mikes so but I want to cut the region want to cut each beat at the closest mike and preserve the likes that preserve this ah this phase relationship that makes any sense and tommy you can you can chime in what I'm saying makes no sense but no yeah I'm sure because I have a tendency to ah assume that people know what some things are what unfortunately I'm not very up to date with your logic guy so because what I'm saying make any sense I just don't yeah with people watching it so they don't like it I mean if I if I had if I knew this program better off yeah I mean in all reality like said I mean I figure this out on my own you know it's not easy but it's not it's not rocket science you know just sit down and mess with it and just just think that the goal put gold contacts things put the drums on time do what you got to do to do that if the pro tools isn't working for me be detectives like acting weird on apart these are just tools and they don't work perfectly all the time a lot of these hooligans and like sound replacement pulling is that they weren't they worked perfectly like eighty five, ninety five percent of the time, which is great it's a busy time but there's the times like I said that's why I wanted to show you the manual quanta izing because you're going you might have a feel just be taken is messing up for whatever reason the algorithms not working so you're gonna have to go in and just manually pace the stuff and this this region separation feature which is the first thing to do is no ah no different because it's it works, it separates the region from most of stuff but not everything they accurately and I'll say one thing I have to do so I may not analyzing all the attack can you take this room out bottom snare I'm leaving out because it's a little later than the tops near that make any sense we'll capture that selection on my analyze it I'm using the high emphasis and I think I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think this is high frequency emphasis so I think it's analyzing the high frequencies drones which most of transit lives in the high frequency you know so it's analyzing that information from the source material and then almost select everything zoom in and you look at it see how the is preserved that relationship here and has cut the beat at the beginning with a begins there this is actually all from I have to fix this but the uh this calls it it it's weird to be detective like analyzes in order of the track so since you play this tom a little bit earlier than a snare it's still picked up the snares as the cut point losing it really easy quick fixes or whatever but you want to just you know george you know you mess around with sensitivity you know I'm assuming this one's like my machine my mind usually does best around like twenty four twenty five I think of the new pro tools is different I've heard it is a so far is the city I know the old pro tools illy was different was like the best sitting was like eight I don't know if it's relative that algorithm in the the processing bit rate and all that stuff but the goal is just to get it to drop yeah to get it cut up is actually sponsoring and since I you know mind works a twenty five mile will choose twenty five normally want to kind of look at it and make sure it's cutting up a cz much as possible but just to save time so we've trimmed all you say say justice pretend I looked through all that stuff and just make sure it was cutting is accurately as possible uh which I know it's missem stuff so let's go through and fix that before you actually quantifies the qan ties and beat it takes mexico region conform that's conforming it to the clique check performing the time before I even good and then that I want to make sure the region separation is accurate go back to my group and I want to cut you know, make sure the cuts are proper should I wanted to actually cut at the beginning that tom the very first thing is hit and that's this flat this this this difference is fine, you know it's a plan it's not always easy and keep the natural I said, if you program the drums, that wouldn't actually be there would be perfect on time and as part of the human element that that gets lost you know, these thies small flam z small flames there kind of is the character and gives it pushing pool. And so what I'm doing now is ah, I'm fixing that the cut points and if you notice I'm leaving the cakes separate uh, that's because it kicks the most isolated room and not so much with this style of music but thea with like metal, you really need to be able to move the case of double bass for you know, people get sloppy with kick drums or they just we had a question about that yeah actually when when you edit the kick drums separate from the rest of the kids are there ever problems with hearing the kick in the overheads yes that's a good point there sometimes there are ok and that's why you know you'll see an l levees course or whatever on creative live he does actually use trigger pads yeah if you got a drummer there's doing like a lot of shred double bass you know like intense just black metal you know just crazy stuff it's kind of good to either either tune your kick and use a soft mallet so that the bleeds not an issue because you know you're going to be moving the kids and you know you're never gonna be using triggers and or just use a trigger pad you know that's a very good way to deal with that but usually like said there's the if you get a drummer who's pretty solid or whatever you're not going to nose like said the drop that kick drums the more isolated drum you know you get a little bit of just a little kid work is not crazy off if it's usually so off that then it will be you know if it's so off that it is going to notice when overheads like I will know it like you're usually talking about anything like twenty thirty milliseconds arm or you can hear as a distinct flam and if it's that often you know from, say like a kick and stare that supposed to be together, if it's that off, then I just usually have the germ or do it again or all copying pace from a a comparable hit in the song that's that is more on, you know, there's a couple different work workarounds to that, but yeah, that is definitely something to look for to make sure you don't have faith, and sometimes you'll hear some editing artifacts in aa in recordings that really aren't ah ah problem in the mix, you know, that's another element you can listen to it with some guitars and see if it's going to probably have heard don't, you know, kill, switch, engage, for instance, I've got some of their isolated tracks from the guitar, guitar, hero leaks or whatever, and I could I heard in one of their hit songs that they had they changed the kick drum pattern is still on the over hit, you know, when you isolate listed over his by self is it's in the song that where the kick pattern was different and they were like, I guess they decided after the fact a list that's made to kick drum or simple so the simple find the kick drum, but you can't hear it makes so it doesn't matter you know and they behead the budget they could have retract the whole thing if they want to be there just like man listens to edit it you know so it's not really be it's not a big deal unless it's a big deal if you can hear the mixing I'm sure people everybody's heard there's david lee roth isolated try it sounds it sounds awesome but it's just so much stuff it's into makes you would never know yeah that's yeah that's a thing like when I was younger I thought that you know you have recording environments everything is isolated and it's supposed to be perfectly clean and I used to think I was doing things wrong by having some bleed from headphones and the vocals and and that's in a professional big budget recordings I mean obviously want to minimize that kind of stuff but it's it's all your problems rightly tommy remembers we recorded my parentsbasement and and uh you know we recorded all live in the same room talking to drums in the middle the room, the answer in the same room and about the size of this yeah and you know, obviously the sound quality is their demo type you know I don't have beer whatever but the sound quality mean as faras isolation was there was never a problem you can't hear it maybe in the headphones you might want to hear a little bit goes guitar stuff you know it's a little different something like that but it was you know, I learned early on that it worked wolf that material that style yeah, it is kind of strikers will be aggressive and rolling certain styles you know, dave matthews, I think they try kind all together in one room and, uh three styles and what I'm doing here like said I'm double checking to see how the this region separation it missed this tom because it was a quiet you know, it's like a lighter tom hit this tom track here see how the tom was hit a little earlier than stare and I would just leave that I'm not like I was zooming way in and, you know, cutting the drums like, right on the sample, I'm believing, believing it kind of, you know, I mean, this is still going to sound precise, you know? But this is one way and I'll show there's a setting and be detective that kind of preserves a natural type organic field to the drum performance just let me know if I'm being too long knew this good way need to move ahead there's stuff I think is essential for people to know and it's like thea do education sessions and everybody asked these thieves same process questions and this applies to drums that applies to stuff him could talk about later we will get our quanta sizing and stuff you know so I don't have to reiterate later so we get a question in a real situation do you kwan ties the whole song by default or just sections of the song that you feel needed so like if it sounds really tight on let's say the verse do you do you just automatically kwan ties it anyways you don't yeah just so you don't have to do with anything down the line when they suddenly guitar maybe feels weird and you go back and you realize it's the drums or something like that yeah there's a couple of you know there's a couple scenarios like said sometimes I get records to mix uh that track they were tracked to a click track but weren't kwan ties so everything is not on times I don't want quantifies the drums and then have to go back and quantifies everything vocals and all that stuff so I might just tighten up the kicker quantities a certain part of the drums that sounds kind of kind of all for whatever um usually for the projects that I do you know you know let's look unless the client comes in with the reference and I hey I want our how one on record sound like an old black sabbath album we're not kwon ties you know if you know because that's part of that sound is is not perfect and whatever you know but if you bring me anything relatively modern and it's pretty much spot on time, I just in my mind like, ok, we're just gonna kwan ties, you know, even like said because most of bands I have that unless they just are adamant that they don't want the quantities I look we want because it is a lot of hard work to get it spot on time uh, you know, and, uh uh, it's a lot of hard work to get it on time like they tracked back in the day and this is bizarre. Ah, but, you know, a lot of people like bt band, we do everything natural, organic, you know, in blake tracks for days, you know? I mean, it's just over and over and he's stabbing the snare drum and screaming and yeah, it's, like most bands, don't have that time and, you know, you know, budget toe just burn the clock and do it over and over, even back in the day, people who spend a year on record, yeah, in the studio they ride it recorded black albums six months tracking I just didn't nobody can afford to do that. Yeah, under ideal circumstances would be awesome if everyone could just get up predict, but, you know, like part of the modern thing is I said everything's, you know, custom being on time and the's air tools to help make it quicker, like, get a solid take like tommy did good dynamics to focus on the stuff that I can't fix. And now, like said, I can easily fix thea, you know, the timing issues or whatever, you know, like most of us would sound fine unedited, you know, it's obviously pretty close as it is or whatever, but, you know, it was a few kids here, here and there a little hitter behind, like, you know, if we were gonna like, hey, whatever goes this is what's going to the final product, I would have been, like, let's redo this part because this is a little ahead, you know? We don't have to do that, you know, um, you know, plus there's other reasons like that in cases like this song doesn't have any sequence material, but in case he ever decided to do a techno remix it's ready to go, you know, or say, somebody wants to use the song for commercial now, like, hey, we want to use this verse riff under beneath this show or something, and but we don't want in the vocals, of course it is that they can just grab it, loop it and it's all perfect they have to do no work and you're more liable to pick up and use the product then say somebody who wasn't kwan ties no man we're going to do much work to get this tow actually work and luke properly so they feel like, well, let's find another rock band or whatever unless you're aerosmith or somebody that's kind of how they work but I've gone through like said, I've already done this qantas all this but the first minute that the first thirty second I've gone through and made sure all my regions were trimmed properly they're not one hundred percent but they're close enough for their demonstration here but like said now means almost said there's two different tools purchases has the read you know the be detective has a tool called region conform uh, which uh works I like the actual to go under the event you go under event operations going to kwan ties this one works better to me just select audio regions it works better than the region conform I don't I don't know why I don't know why it's different but I like and show both and with my system and I think they fix this or change this with the newer versions of pro tools, but with region conformed the audio has to be to the right of the click or right of the grid for toe work let me see if this one does this so well we'll see okay these are obvious eighth notes to the click some will select eight news let's do these four beats capture selection and see what happens let's see this thing comes up and it just jackson up let's undo it if I notice everything to the right a little bit we set my nudge like ten really like ten milliseconds or something you know joel this now if I noted to the right of the clip same for beats eighth no capture selection conform and it worked bizarre way put it back the way it was less likely is first these forty four beats and use this one audio regions they worked this this was just better I mean so all you guys looking at home just ah I know that this one's better and used that way I know it sucks to have two things open but whatever me maybe did you design if you watch this fix it maybe you have I don't know we'll see that you know like since all these a wraith but it's just you know randomly grab it was what I'm doing making sense here and have you do this like I said I'm doing it all visually just because you know I've been doing this like a million years but I recommend listening to what you're doing that stuff doesn't get I said you can look until the things they're going on time to me and if you know a little bit of theory on here is like I said here's the sixteenth, that relative to the clicks on what? Change this to sixteenth graphical beats here and it moved into the proper sixteenth and should measure should measure at one twenty five, I think yes, he has won twenty five the computers just doing work force now, like said, for instance, there's their settings you can this the strength setting and I just had it on one hundred because I honestly forgot that talk about that. But you can reduce this and this will make it a little more random let's do it extreme just for demonstration purpose way put it off time. If you do that, this shouldn't be exactly one twenty five anymore. Should be like what it is. Okay, I see what's happened like it's still a little off the click you said him saying if you do this, if you reduce the strength they you do one hundred percent strength is gonna put it it's gonna put it all on the clip. So by produced this you like said you have ah more natural type of a little bit of pushing pool like preserves what the drummer did more so he likes it already kind of lift some natural element in there by not chopping it up so precisely. Yeah, you're leaving, leaving some of the natural flam zone there and and things like that. So and this is you know, before you consolidate you khun quantifies it filling cross fade listen to it and we like, you know what? That's too rigid. Yeah. Let's ah, let's go back through and this is this, like, undo it a little bit, you know? And you can do that, you know, all this is, like, kind of educated guess stiff one. So, like I said, keep thea uh, keep the original just in case you want to revert, missy with this like, say, we got a theme that it's almost grab all this stuff tommy played close enough to where we could just so we could move through obviously with metal or anything that's changed. If you could change in time signatures, anything of that nature you're gonna have to do in smaller chunks like, you know, a lot of people, they'll do like a feel and triple it, you know, the whole songs and foreign and his feels and triple it or whatever. And so you will have to change sittings for those parts, but since this is straightforward, able tio kind of rock it out get a cdc style ban you could probably kwan ties all the drums with this feature in a bout with one click if the germer was solid because there's no you know there's almost like this mostly ages eight minutes okay, so this is where I think this is where I left off and for those of you watching the you know there's ah creative live has tons of other um you know, awesome talented producers who have gone through drunk want izing problem or dip nineteen and have different takes on and stuff in terms of ah you know what tools and things like that to you so you could definitely chicken check out that stuff but I but pretty much that's it so we've got got you know, this is kwon ties than the last thing you notice how like he creates these gaps and obviously if you listen to this it's gonna be glitchy sounded when we play a little bit and we can't we've got the volume down you know, down in here so you can hear loudly but I'm sure that those kind of glitchy sounding those of you at home I've already filling cross made but the next the next thing we got to do in the final thing in the quarter our next final thing in the quanta izing of drones with pete detective is the filling cross fade feature so we've got to basically hell these splits almost selected and it's moving and we use this phil and cross fade you'd use fill gaps and then cross fade it manually yourself but I just usually use this and the default is like five millisecond that sounds fine to me you'll look and see what it does you zoom in do you think his processing the phase this takes a minute but what is done? You can do that oh yeah yeah I mean it's still like say you look a highlight in all this and did it all of it but I think what it's done I'm not sure exactly what's happening but I feel like it's just copying and pasting some of this way form and somehow it knows what it's what the transit of the information is and what the actual residents because with drums like with symbols particular symbols just white noise in essence you know it's a little tone and pitch in there but it's probably white noise so just so you don't have the transit of the symbol in there you know you can copy paste the white noise and it's undetectable you know it's not detectable by you know the human ear whatever so it's it's just somehow it's sze deciding what what parts of the way formed a copy and paste in to fill in those gaps that it sounds natural for us to listen to it yeah, instead of instead of the whole likes an elastic time stretches and compresses the audio and it's like if you haven't you know a pretty wide gap like some of the you know, drummers who aren't a solid to the clinton might have quite, you know, off subdivisions and then they have, you know, a few beats that aired radically stretch you would hear that it would sound like, you know, like we're you know and you can hear it in the final mix like, you know of mastered records and I'm like they did it with elastic time or that was logic or, you know, q base I could tell I can hear like they didn't his ah be detective whatever kind of crazy but like I said, I've already done this portion of the double check to make sure all this great uh likes it the final step and drum quanta izing is just the consolidation let's pretend like, you know, we've listened to let's pretend that we've listened to this whole song like, ok, this thing is perfect all the quanta I zings accurate I'm pretty confident that most of its good and I can fix it if not so uh the list let's just say it's good and then we want consolidated under the edges edit feature here this region consolidation in pro tools I'm sure other platforms is the reason logic have something like that I think so many bowels yes or something you know something like that but basically we want to take all of these little these little regions yeah it's back up so these little regions have created crazy amounts of actual files in our file virtual file cabinet here and that get too many like you doing like a between a very to me you know, they have, like seven minute albums, eighty minute records or whatever and it's like, you know where the camp it all it was just a computer would just be like old school you know, commodore speed uh, well I said I just used a short cut highlighted the whole section and I'm consolidated as you see what used to be the separate regions are now just big fat fool regions and if you've double checking like, ok, I'm satisfied the drunk want husband correct and you go under this ah, the region and the region controls here and just select unused and it's going to go in here and find all the unused parts and like I said it, we're gonna be able to throw him away. Um and I recommend ah, so you just like, clear I recommend remove and don't delete him from the hard drive in case you need to revert back to an older pro tools session or something like that or back up that way you know you're always safe says this ideal to keep like I mean I what I'm recommending I don't actually do a lot of times I actually do throw it away but it's only because every night after sessions I make two copies of everything like I have everything backed up in triplicate so worse case in here I'll lose like a day's worth of work and to those watching or whatever and listening whatever I recommend you do the same thing there's makesem software systems that automatically bankable super hard drugs I don't use one of those whatever but like said every every night sometimes having dinner breaks all like do a heavy amount of editing or, you know, a lot of tracking like I'll just you know, there's a lot of time and money invested my end and for the client and you did it if you don't want to lose stuff and we all know how the computers are stuff like then there were not using what nasa has you know nasa has cool stuff it doesn't crash like a computer crash on the space station, they will have auctions and it's not good reference and that's always comes someday we'll get there yeah, I want it able whatever nasa uses for the audition there's a basic so that it does not crash no but yeah so in theory are drums are off quantifies it in time. Like said, I mean, just pretend we listen to it. And we're satisfied with the health tied it is, or how loose it is in that kind of thing. And, you know, I'm satisfied the cooking clients for identified. So, yeah. So if the drums air quantifies to the solidly to the clique, um, then we should be ready to start tracking everything else.