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Editing Drums

Lesson 6 from: Toontrack presents: Studio Pass

Ulrich Wild, Brendon Small

Editing Drums

Lesson 6 from: Toontrack presents: Studio Pass

Ulrich Wild, Brendon Small

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Lesson Info

6. Editing Drums

Next Lesson: Drums Q&A

Lesson Info

Editing Drums

Because we are now in the land of super duper editing uh because we are here's here's the thing that happens with brennan he gets not with the doom star requiem because that's already mapped out completely mapped it but generally speaking once the drum takes her done and we're done doing uh guitar and main guitar rhythm guitar overdubs and base overdubs you take that back home yes and you lupin three hundred times and you decide a section is not worth dealing with or you want to extend one or whatever right? Um there's something musically that's unfinished yes or something or another you you need to like work on the actual arrangement of it you go in with song you chop out a whole section of it sometimes um and that is really annoying when you have a drum track that is not gritted because you're edits will get all messed up because you're not like this is that we're not in a perfect, gritty kind of world. So for you I grit this thing so you have an easier time editing and frankly joe f...

or myself because I'll have to use your time dealing with what's coming back right? The the brutality that happens here is I'm actually going to show you that I'm just simply ignoring the life kick tracks ever I'm done placing samples where we know the kicks should have been played precisely it's it's a tedious process you want it is actually yeah we're actually going in and I grabbed a kick sample um my personal favorite one which everyone it could be and here we are I have this track here a black tide I think why that symbols called that I don't even know um so we have the d m five which gives us all the kick it's because it come both kicks were triggered into the same box and spit out as one hundred so it's not too different that's not too ones but you see the main kick in the left kick um that gives us an idea of which you know which foot played what you can see that we already started ah queuing a little bit so we can ah you know here better what's going on um but here we are with that with our kick sample and we see and I usually do it um going grid set my grid up appear to sixteenth notes sometimes eight something quarters just depends on the on the style of music and you know it's fast on this one but here we go we see that this kick well it's off ever so much in a human leeway of that it should actually have been played here this kick should actually have been played here and come on it's not it's not let me do it good this way and this kick should have been played has actually really spot on almost there it was played there this one was played here so so you can see that this is really fun for brendan to watch this one night this is when I leave I miss for calling one was out handles business walks the dog getting some things make you know one one thing I think a lot of people that you know if your guitars and you're watching this I think it's amazing how that cake you know you have a favorite kick butt hearing it by itself is sometimes an interesting thing because it just sounds like a spoon hitting a phone book that's the kick kick of choice and it's a nice kick it'll do the job because we can really security attack it's relatively pleasant to listen to you and so I'm not going to bore you guys by doing a whole track here but you can see where this is going is going to this? Well, you manually manually placed all those kicks in there and I still have the old tracks there just in case I had made a mistake and jeans going to yell at me for doing it wrong which has happened yes s o now all of a sudden way sound a lot more solid thie kicks every kick hit is, you know perfect if you will if perfection is if grid, it is perfection and write. This is perfect. It's definitely committed whatever it is. It's. Definitely great. Agree at this point. Um but now, because the whole drum kit has basically been, like, demolished and destroyed by having two kicks gritted and ally feel for the drummer, we have two great the rest of it. And the beauty of that is that we go in and we slice each individual drum hit by hand on the way we do that is, um, first off what we do. We, as you may have noticed or not, the kick tracks have been decoupled from the group. And we have now a group that has on lee, um, drums and no kicks the drum, no kick group. Because we're not dealing kicks anymore, it's. Just the rest of the drum kit. Now, um, do you have a tab to transient command, which people like to use and so do I. So you place your cursor and you press tab and it tabs over too. The next thing that it thinks is ah, transient. And then you separate region, which is command e and he goes the next one command e next one, so there is another drum being it's yeah it's it could be a snare had could be high head head could be anywhere where things something happened on the drum kit that's worth noting sometimes you get a good wrong with drama like oh yeah you good ghostie ones in there yeah and you know, like this one it doesn't it's not crucial at this at this juncture to have it be absolutely perfect because we're going to go in and really tweak the heck out of this um there is a mode and they I'm sure they moved that around for me uh it is that that lets you use simple one key strokes a supposed to do in command e l the timing just he'd be and it will do the same thing and that makes things a lot easier but anyway, so we go in and we I made myself a note over here which one was which um so this whole drum take I went through and a sliced it how long does that take you? You know depends on how many hits on how long a song but you know, forty five minutes to an hour or so it's not so bad. The real work starts now after I'm done yeah, so basically, uh it's going just looks black like that yeah, but when you zoom and when you zoom out um come on, give me something good here here you go in order to really demonstrate you know it goes it goes relatively fast because you go to have be tab tab the tabby tell you know, I mean, you just go through it and it just it just it's mind numbing and you make mistakes and this is an undo button comes in and, you know, it's, uh, you get the idea anyways, but what we do with the important thing is that that goes from the front to back on this song and then I work my way backwards, uh, it's, just these last but last one's over over here and and sometimes on this like, you, probably a lot of folks in hell I'm gonna lay it just used beat detective for this as like, well, I would if it would work but this, uh, the beat detective just looks at me funny and goes, like when I was supposed to do with this is too many hits there's like you've got double kicks with triple of tom's over it was like, what do you want me to do about this? You know, so you got to do it by hand and the, uh then we zoom in and you start driving this thing, so we know that this snare hit all like the whole drum kit including the room and the snare and the high hands and all these mikes they don't want to be separated from one another now because the way we recorded the drums are two kicks actually were I knew that I was going to do this so I isolated them as much as possible uh uh level wise or bleed and onda cross talk wise from the rest of the kid by bullying and put a little blanket over them and and just really using them basically just as triggers knowing fully well that the actual kick sound is most likely not going to be used right and to not have to to have his little kick sound in the room mags and bleeding into the symbols interest there and everything else you isolate them yeah. What? Like you put a blanket over like the little contraption and stuff like that you could do okay? Yeah, and so, um but the rest of the drum kid that's all bleeding into each other you have to treat it as one. And so we moved the whole thing where they're trusting the land over here to where we would think that's near should have been because it be now grit the snare now you're getting everything out and so now this is where your key where you're wonderful key commands comeback in um I think this is the one my left and right arrow lets you navigate to the now that I had not have this one placed I'm ready to move on to the next one and this one she'll be sitting here with this kick now aiken put that back into the grid world and I do that just keep doing this and so next one we have to move backwards in time a little bit this one too little backers and time um we just work a way forward back into the front understand the reason to do it this way is if you were to do it from front to back if you move this over here you know, you know if you knew of kind of shot yourself in the foot by going over this you know so it's like if you go the other way if you if you go this way you're you're transient is still visible over here so that's why I go back with defense just a friendly little pizza um so then you do that and you're old thing kind of looks like was it twelve? Yeah this one and it looks like this the whole damn thing is just all over the place, you know? And it sounds terrible because there's gaps and overlaps and you could actually really here in some places that it just sounds terrible yeah because you know, like phil's got a listing you had nothing it was just but this is you see, that appear, I save it because I'm out of place where if I mess up on the next go around, I gotta back up and I don't have to start over and re slice everything and move everything again. Um what I mean, just to describe this section just total misery. Yeah, yeah, I think this is the boring misery. This is why it's, good to have a comedian in the in the lounge. Because we're done you when you guys doing in there? Yeah. If I had to do this, I would literally kill myself on dh. This is why I don't want to do it. Because this is this is not creative. That is terrible. Boring, busywork. It's absolutely worth throws you could do to yourself. It is, but I am a massacre just as well. Life is a massacres, folks. Yeah, that so now, what do you say we need to? We need to unruly these things. Right? Um, sanjay, you have to go in and make sure that we're all this is this is back again from the front to the back of the song. Because that works better that way, and so you know, we make sure that all right we're all our hits or good it's fascinating I'm sure you guys were like just you speak detective to just get this over with so you do that to the whole thing that the whole thing and they got through and and then it looks like this and that's beautiful and then we cross fade on the way we do that is you select all of it command f and we give ourselves I usually do the pre supplies meaning like it give me the cross strait right before the edit as opposed to on the editor after the edit I do equal power the standard curves and for drums I'm usually somewhere in the four to six milliseconds not forty six but you know, you get the idea, you know, but at least you don't go in and across every individual I know how crazy is that? Yeah, why yourself off the hook in that way I don't know I don't know what do you think that's a little lazy um I thought so for a while but then I almost got a life. Yeah, okay, but now it's now we're pretty much happy with this drum take it except for the possibility of jean coming in is like, you know what I want to change the drum roll over on the it sounds like we here. Can we hear it without any of the extra instruments, just the isolated drums? Sure, just to get a sense of, like what the room sounds like and and what that whole ad, it sounds like, two were like kicks, maybe just play like a couple bars, just sure, so people get that that's. What double kicks without any music sounds like like an old typewriter. Exactly. Um, waken solo, some of these drum sounds that are really just very, um, basic at this point, because they are, you know, they're there, honey queued. All right, come on, really seriously, all right, that the's air overhead tracks still get enough kick drums in there. But later on, we will e q out all that low in because there's no room for it. But all the heavy bass and low end and guitars and the charity was going on.

Ratings and Reviews

John Thaxton
 

I love Brendon. He has always treated fans super well. There's so much wisdom to be gained from listening to him about workflow and music in general. Great class!

Aaron Thurtell
 

Being someone new and looking into recording songs, I found this class very informative and in a way essential, the idea of recording seemed over whelming and I had no idea where to start, being a fan of Brendon small and Ulrich Wilds work on Dethklok and Galaktikon I found it very enjoyable and must for any fans of Brendon small looking into how he goes about making a record

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