Time Aligning Drums

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skullsession
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RE: Time Aligning Drums 2008/05/07 08:19:08 (permalink)

ORIGINAL: mr. moon

Hi Folks,

Here's an excellent article which goes into time aligning drums after they have been recorded to increase their impact and depth:

Time Align Drums (link)


Be sure to check out all the pages (7 in total), but pay extra close attention to the info on page 6, as it details how to get the drums in phase with one another if you have a mic in the kick. ...The answer may surprise you, it sure did surprise me!!

-mr moon


Hmmm.....how do you suppose they went about this back in the days of tape?

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Spaceduck
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RE: Time Aligning Drums 2008/05/07 09:36:31 (permalink)
Great article, thanks for this!

But he says one line at the end which I wish he would've explained. On the last page he says:
Anytime you mic the same thing from two different distances, delay the close mic to the distant mic. For example, delay the sm57 that is right up on your guitar amp to the condenser mic you placed a few feet back in the room.

What's the rationale behind this? Instinctively, I would do the opposite. I would move the distant signal ahead to match the close signal, thereby staying truer to the original source (less latency).

In an extreme case, consider miking a huge room with 50'-100' between the close mic and the distant mic (like they do in big band setups). If you delay the close mic to match the distant, the end result would be delayed almost .01 second--a noticeable lag which will sound like the drummer's sloppy.
post edited by Spaceduck - 2008/05/07 09:41:14
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mr. moon
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RE: Time Aligning Drums 2008/05/09 10:26:10 (permalink)

ORIGINAL: skullsession


Hmmm.....how do you suppose they went about this back in the days of tape?




Personally, I don't think they even cared about most of it, except for proper phase settings (kicks vs other drum mics to get them all in phase with one another). This is probably one of the more "nit-picky" techniques that we now have available to us that they didn't back in the analog days.

If they did worry about it, they probably used delays on the tracks to get them aligned "by ear" since the slip-editing trick would not have been available to them.

It is a good question though, if they did edit things to this meticulous detail in analog. Seems like a lot of work, but so does trying to create another "Bohemian Rhapsody" on analog gear (24-track tape), which they apparently had 200 takes on alone, working 12 hours a day to just track, let alone mix...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Rhapsody

Food for thought!

-mr moon

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