Helpful ReplyAnybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums?

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ChuckC
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2017/07/31 00:52:19 (permalink)

Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums?

I have been using Sonar since 8.5 PE and have been recording, producing artists other than myself since about 2010.   I need to start quantizing some of the ... "Lesser qualified" drummers I record that struggle to stay with a click.   When I am trying, I do not want to go elastic audio, I'd rather cut all the cut all the clips up (preferably grouped as I record 13-14 drum mics) and quantize them that way.  
1) I can't find a setting in audio snap to make the point where it will cut and cross fade the clips ___ ms before the transient?
   Sometimes, it is cutting them off and splitting in the middle of a transient. and it's driving me crazy.
 
2) Is there a way to Highlight say Kick, snare, toms, and hats...  use those to find all transients (cut markers)  then apply these markers to The overheads, Ride, and room tracks getting them all to cut at the same time?
 

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THERAPSMITH
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 01:21:12 (permalink)
I saw this posted today on YouTube 
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Jesse G
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 01:23:18 (permalink)
Here are several for Sonar on Youtube.

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ChuckC
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 02:17:42 (permalink)
THERAPSMITH
I saw this posted today on YouTube 


Thanks For that.  It did help some, though... He is doing the elastic audio method rather thank cut up,  quantize, and crossfade. Which, I believe has gotta produce fewer artifacts.
 
Jesse, 
Thanks man, I will look through your list there though I have searched through Youtube already and found mostly old videos that are outdated and half-assed methods.

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ChuckC
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 14:32:43 (permalink)
I found this video, he is running into many of the same problems here and made a feature request, though he says in the comments that he never actually submitted it to the bakers here...
https://youtu.be/MzX_nrjdGY4

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Sylvan
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 15:59:56 (permalink)
ChuckC
I found this video, he is running into many of the same problems here and made a feature request, though he says in the comments that he never actually submitted it to the bakers here...
https://youtu.be/MzX_nrjdGY4

Thanks ChuckC, I am the guy who made that video you referenced...ha ha. I do have some updated info on this whole thing along with some new workflows in SONAR that have sped up this most tedious of tasks.
 
I will make a new video on that shortly, very soon.
 
For a quick overview I can say that all the cutting and crossfading can indeed be done with automated processes within SONAR. However, the lack of accuracy is still the big thorn-in-the-side for Audio Snap. Audio Snap still does not correctly detect the start of transients like it should. If that one thing were fixed, this would be a near perfect tool.
 
In my updated video, I will demonstrate a few different workflows for slicing and dicing multi-track drum tracks for quantizing with and without the use of Audio Snap. All of these include the automation of filling the gaps and crossfading after quantizing is finished.
 
The new video will be more concise and to the point.
 
Thank you for referencing that...
-Charles

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ChuckC
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 16:24:37 (permalink)
That would be awesome Charles!    I have shy'd away from quantizing drums partly as I didn't want to pull the "feel" out of a drum track, and partly being lazy and figuring that when it becomes the biggest issue in my productions then I will take the time to tackle it.   Well,   Drums that fluctuate in time too much absolutely kill any feel, and the time has come for me.   When I listen back to a band I am working with & like everything in the mix other than the timing...  I need to take it upon myself to find the way to fix it.   I need to stop letting stuff like that get out my door.
Obviously this is for future productions, The drums need to be locked to grid BEFORE the rest of the band lays their tracks so this won't help the projects that are all tracked but, I can make the improvements for the future!

ADK Built DAW, W7, Sonar Platinum, Studio One Pro,Yamaha HS8's & HS8S  Presonus Studio/Live 24.4.2, A few decent mic pre's,  lots of mics, 57's,58 betas, Sm7b, LD Condensors, Small condensors, Senn 421's,  DI's,  Sans Amp, A few guitar amps etc. Guitars : Gib. LP, Epi. Lp, Dillion Tele, Ibanez beater, Ibanez Ergodyne 4 String bass, Mapex Mars series 6 pc. studio kit, cymbals and other sh*t.
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Sylvan
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 16:48:00 (permalink)
Yeah, I used to think the same thing: I don't want to kill the "vibe" man. Well, I have come to some realizations since then...
 
Fixing drum timing issues does not kill the vibe, but rather saves it.
 
There is still a very human feel (it was still performed by a human.) The natural fluctuation of velocities, etc...
 
When a kick and snare strike at the same but are slightly off (maybe the kick comes in 10ms before the snare) you cannot quantize independent of each other. In this case, you would need to choose one to quantize and let the other live how it lives. All thing have to be moved together to maintain phase alignment and bleed cohesion. So in the se cases you still maintain %100 of the human performance.
 
The old attitude I had was espoused from laziness and from drummers that were afraid they would be exposed if having to learn to play to a click. So everyone would use the blanket excuse of "not killing the human vide" as a way of continuing to hide from all that.
 
The truth is that a pro-level musician needs to quit hiding from that and face it. Staying on time is paramount in high-quality productions, period. The is nothing for it. Convince you clients to face reality. They will be better musicians for it. And your productions will be more pro and better sounding.
 
As engineers, we need to quit being lazy and face it too. Just accept it and get it done. You will be happy you did and more bands will want to record with you. That = more clients and more money.
 
Taking time with pre-production, giving the drummer demo tracks to practice to etc... will help him/her prepare so when they come to track, they won't be a deer in the headlights.
Take time to track in detail, not letting things slip by. Getting it as close as possible in tracking will save you headaches later.

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Sanderxpander
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/07/31 18:52:11 (permalink)
The other day I loaded a 13 mic drum recording in Melodyne Studio, first let it make a "constant tempo" and then selected all and quantized to 90 percent (because I was lazy and wanted to see how much I'd need to fix). To my (rather great) surprise, it worked perfectly. No artifacts and even stuff like small rolls that I thought would get messed up were fine (I didn't specificy "16ths" or anything but used "auto"). All I had to do was export and reload into Sonar.
 
I could probably do this within Sonar but I haven't really dug into how the Sonar/Melodyne tempo thing works, nor tried to transfer 13 4 minute tracks to Melodyne with ARA.
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Sylvan
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/08/06 22:47:49 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby Zargg 2017/08/09 14:55:54
I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to make a quick video series on the different methods that I use for doing this. I know the upload quality did not come out well. Perhaps later I will do it with more effort but at least this will shed some light on this for now.
 
 
Check out the videos here
 

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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/08/09 03:52:23 (permalink)
Sanderxpander
The other day I loaded a 13 mic drum recording in Melodyne Studio, first let it make a "constant tempo" and then selected all and quantized to 90 percent (because I was lazy and wanted to see how much I'd need to fix). To my (rather great) surprise, it worked perfectly. No artifacts and even stuff like small rolls that I thought would get messed up were fine (I didn't specificy "16ths" or anything but used "auto"). All I had to do was export and reload into Sonar.
 
I could probably do this within Sonar but I haven't really dug into how the Sonar/Melodyne tempo thing works, nor tried to transfer 13 4 minute tracks to Melodyne with ARA.


As a drummer, I struggled with using Audio Snap for years.  I just found it unreliable, anti-intuitive and unpredictable.  Now that I have Melodyne Studio, I don't even touch Audio Snap.  While Audio Snap could be a great tool, it's never been implemented properly IMHO.  This is one of the few areas in an otherwise excellent DAW that needs to be ripped out and started again.
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Sylvan
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/08/09 16:03:58 (permalink)
Yes, I have pointed out a few areas that could be improved in Audio Snap. But it is close, it is almost there and I am not giving up. 
 
Also, it depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to fix vocal timing I would not use Audio Snap at all. I would use Melodyne or Vocalign. For keeping absolute phase relationships when fixing timing on acoustic multi-track drums, I would use Audio Snap to help automate some of the tasks.
 
If Audio Snap gets a little love and becomes accurate on transient detection, and allows different groups to be created after slicing, I would use Audio Snap for all drum timing correction all the time.

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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/08/16 20:58:38 (permalink)
...

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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/09/06 15:20:24 (permalink)
Sylvan
ChuckC
I found this video, he is running into many of the same problems here and made a feature request, though he says in the comments that he never actually submitted it to the bakers here...
https://youtu.be/MzX_nrjdGY4

Thanks ChuckC, I am the guy who made that video you referenced...ha ha. I do have some updated info on this whole thing along with some new workflows in SONAR that have sped up this most tedious of tasks.
 
I will make a new video on that shortly, very soon.
 
For a quick overview I can say that all the cutting and crossfading can indeed be done with automated processes within SONAR. However, the lack of accuracy is still the big thorn-in-the-side for Audio Snap. Audio Snap still does not correctly detect the start of transients like it should. If that one thing were fixed, this would be a near perfect tool.
 
In my updated video, I will demonstrate a few different workflows for slicing and dicing multi-track drum tracks for quantizing with and without the use of Audio Snap. All of these include the automation of filling the gaps and crossfading after quantizing is finished.
 
The new video will be more concise and to the point.
 
Thank you for referencing that...
-Charles


Have you seen this? https://accusonus.com/products/regroover

It slices/dices multitrack drums into discrete pieces. I picked up a free copy of the lite essentials version as a giveaway from Focusrite, but haven't tried it yet. Looks interesting.

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Sylvan
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Re: Anybody know of a good tutorial for Audio snap and quantizing live drums? 2017/09/06 15:43:37 (permalink)
Billy86
Sylvan
ChuckC
I found this video, he is running into many of the same problems here and made a feature request, though he says in the comments that he never actually submitted it to the bakers here...
https://youtu.be/MzX_nrjdGY4

Thanks ChuckC, I am the guy who made that video you referenced...ha ha. I do have some updated info on this whole thing along with some new workflows in SONAR that have sped up this most tedious of tasks.
 
I will make a new video on that shortly, very soon.
 
For a quick overview I can say that all the cutting and crossfading can indeed be done with automated processes within SONAR. However, the lack of accuracy is still the big thorn-in-the-side for Audio Snap. Audio Snap still does not correctly detect the start of transients like it should. If that one thing were fixed, this would be a near perfect tool.
 
In my updated video, I will demonstrate a few different workflows for slicing and dicing multi-track drum tracks for quantizing with and without the use of Audio Snap. All of these include the automation of filling the gaps and crossfading after quantizing is finished.
 
The new video will be more concise and to the point.
 
Thank you for referencing that...
-Charles


Have you seen this? https://accusonus.com/products/regroover

It slices/dices multitrack drums into discrete pieces. I picked up a free copy of the lite essentials version as a giveaway from Focusrite, but haven't tried it yet. Looks interesting.

Thank you for sharing. I can certainly see how many people could find this very useful, however I think it is aimed at a different purpose. The drum editing that I do doesn't require me to isolate different "layers" of drum loops. I have recorded my own multi-track drums, discretely recorded to their own tracks already. What I am trying to do is tighten up the timing of a real human drummer on a real acoustic kit.
 
If Audio Snap had a more accurate transient detection mode and SONAR was able to create new groups when Audio Snap splits clips, that would be the perfect solution for what I and others are trying to do. As of now, the methods I outlined in the three videos I made show a good combo of manual workflow intertwined with Audio Snap to get this job done.
 
This product you have shared is a great solution for those working with drum loops and if I ever do anything like that I will reach for this. Thank you.

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