Multi-track Drum Editing for Perfect Time - Overhead Sync'ing Problem

Hi,

I am attempting to edit drums in Sonar 5 PE, and I am running into a problem keeping edits in-sync between the closed mics and the overheads. Here is an overview of the situation:

10 drum mics, consisting of 8 closed mics and two overheads.

The first thing I did was put all of the closed mics "in phase" to the closest overhead mic, based on the recommendation of another thread in this forum ... no problems so far =)

However, now I would like to zoom in on each hit, and adjust it slightly to be "bang-on" the click track. There are two basic approaches as I see it. For example, let's say I want to move a snare hit slightly. I could:

1. Adjust just the snare track. Problem: This hit may now be "out of phase", but more importantly, the bleed thru to the overheads is going to make the adjustment irrelevant because the snare hit on the overheads is still wrong.

2. Adjust the snare and two overheads by the same amount. Problem: Now I have a gap in the overhead tracks. For example, if I cut and moved the overheads back by the same amount as the snare, there is now a blank space before the hit ...

Option 1 does not seem like it is going to work. Am I missing some third option here, or is there a way to deal with the gaps created by Option 2?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

You'd be better off mixing the drums down to one stereo file first. Then what I would do would be to copy that track to another track, line up the drum hit of the new track where you want, and use volume envelopes to make the two files work together. Let's say your main drum track is on track 1 in stereo and the other on track 2. Instead of lining up the exact same drum hit, but a little to the left or right of the other, it might be best to use a drum hit from somewhere else in the file that has a little dead space left after it, because you may otherwise find that you'll have some dead air time between the two drums hits with the envelopes if you catch what I'm saying. For instance, I've got a drum track I record 15 or 20 years ago that has a bolero pattern in it, and for some strange reason, this really good drummer friend of mine just could not for the life of him manage to play a simple bolero. So I had to go in later and use a drum machine to manually play along with him in certain parts, except I got the timing right where he didn't. A bolero has a drum roll followed by some slower hits done military style. Believe it or not, it was the simple military stlye that threw him so I left his rolls in and just re-did the military beats. I had to work hard at getting the drum machine snare pad tuned and EQ'ed to match his drum sound. When I was done, everything was fine except for one series of drum hits that I wished I had gotten a little better timing with, so I just copied my newly created drum machine track to another track, and lined up a different (earlier) series of hits under the one I wanted to replace and used envelopes to drop one out and the other in like so:



You'll notice the original drums are on track 1 and you can see all the volume envelopes I had to use to get rid of the beats I didn't want. Also, I replaced a single instance of a cymbal swell I didn't like on track 4.

This is what the end result sounds like. And please pay no attention to the scratch guitar track that was recorded direct way back when as a guide track. It was just there to give the drummer something to play to and sounds horible. Actually, the drums don't sound altogether great either, (you'd have a heart attack if I told you the details) but at least I think you can see that you can get these things to match up okay with a little work.

Drum Track (just 69-seconds).

Joe, that’s an impressive bit of editing! Thanks for sharing how you did this… I haven’t done any audio editing yet and am just now starting to explore the editing capabilities of Sonar and how (and when) to use these tools.

Ed, thanks for sharing the “cut, nudge, and crossfade” technique… I’m sure I’ll be having to do this at some point on future projects!

It struck me when reading this that it’s much harder to fix a live drumming blunder than most other instruments where you can punch in and out on the breaks. If I bomb in the middle of a song, it seems easier to just start over again than to try and fix it in post (unless there are sufficient drum breaks where I can punch in).

Very interesting thread guys, thanks.

Michael and Ed know that I'm mixing real drums for the first time, so forgive the 'drum virgin' question - just wanted to ask if I may - is gating ever used to remove the bleed signal from mic to mic, or is that part of the ambient sound of real drums completely essential to the mix?

I know that there are debates on this, but here's my preference: I like the bleed effect to come from the overheads (and room mics if available). For the individual spot mics (snare, kick and toms), I like to tightly gate them and I mean tight! This way they can be really be processed without collateral damage. James, remember about adding that 4K boost on the kick to get the tap? Well, you can't have any snare left in there of the deaf will be telling you to turn that harsh noise down; you get the idea.

So, after you've got you spot mic tracks all tuned up you bring them up in volume just enough to highlight the overhead sound; now you have a nice cohesive punchy drum mix.

An important item is that overheads are where you're cymbals are coming from and now you have the OH's doing double duty. No problem, put the unfiltered OH signal to the drum kit sub mix and do a send to a cymbal sub-sub-mix bus; HPF at around 750Hz, also dip a little at ~1.5K where ever the snare "rings" just so you don't have it double counted.

This approach has worked for me when I wanted to get in and really do some processing while still end up with them sounding like a natural live drum kit, just with everything all clear, crisp and punchy.

Ed, this is great stuiff... I'm gonna try remixing some of my drum samples this way.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

Wouldn't it be nice to have the perfect sounding drum room, where all you had to do was place two mics out front of the drums and got a perfect recording, a slight touch of natural reverb and all?

That would be nice! The advantge of having a permanent drum room at the house is that I can leave everything setup all the time so once I have the mic placement dialed in and a good baseline drum template to work with, everything should go smoothly and quickly moving forward,... theoretically...