Drum editing

[Leonard Smalls]

Just been in the studio for 2 days... We managed to record 5 songs in about 3 hours with drummer playing to click, but then spent the next 6-7 hours editing drums so they were in time. There were 1500 edits in one song alone...

Following day we spent redoing guitar and bass together (about 1.5 hours for 3 takes of 5 mins each), followed by about 2 hours guitar editing - including double tracking etc (5 mins on bass !) And a further couple of hours on vox and backing.

So what's normal for editing? I must add this was a quality studio which has recorded artists as varied as Van der Graaf Generator and New Model Army, and the engineer/producer was incredibly good...

[Stylon Pilson]

I don't have a huge amount of studio experience, but from what I do have, yes it's fairly normal nowadays to do a looooot of this kind of "nudging". The end result tends to be, in my personal opinion, technically superb from a production point of view, but utterly dull to listen to. Which has the result of making the studio look good, and the performers look bad.

S.P.

[Leonard Smalls]

16 minutes ago, Stylon Pilson said:

technically superb from a production point of view, but utterly dull to listen to

To be fair, he only moved kick and snare where it was off the beat, and any rolls and fills were stretched or pushed together. As a result some of the middle bits were much better because it was syncopated in a new and better way! And after we'd re-recorded bass/guitar it sounded tight-as against the pulled-in drums compared to any of the live stuff, as with kick/snare being rocksolid meant we were too, and fills sounded very organic.

So I feel the work was necessary due to the original speed wobbles - just wondering if the amount of editing was more than is usual? (i.e. 1500+ edits in 1 song!)

[Mcgiver69]

In my opinion it is getting silly, so much that the other day me and my band were recording some demos for our website and the drummer was complaining about his drumming because it wasn't up to a radio standard (by that he meant to the click) even though we played the demos live. We ended up discarding all recordings because he wouldn't consent to put the recordings in the website as he thought he played terribly. He asked me to edit the drums but because we recorded all at the same time it would've entailed me editing bass and guitars too which I wasn't going to do. 

Go figure.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Mcgiver69

[bertbass]

Whatever happened to that'll do and it may not be technically perfect but feels and sounds great!

[philw]

1500 drum edits in one song is way, way too many in my book. Sounds to me like you were fixing the wrong problem.

[roman_sub]

It does sound like the drummer didn’t play to the standard of accuracy that the tracking engineer/ producer wanted.

Moving kick, snare and time aligning fills generally sounds like your drummer was having timing issues that wouldn’t get better with more takes. If so, editing would have been a better use of time, rather than having drummer record more and more takes with the same issues.

Though, It is also possible the person doing the editing wanted a perfect metronomic, grid-aligned performance (and overdid the editing) - and maybe original drum performances were actually usable in their own way, but the character of drums was fundamentally changed as a result!

tough one to call without being there... if you’re happy with the result that’s what matters.

[MoonBassAlpha]

Do people use stretch markers to do this? I know you CAN use them, but are they used in practical editing?

[Erax Sound]

That sounds to me like the drummer wasn't up to it or prepared enough. I can usually edit drums for a song in about 30 minutes to an hour depending on length, complexity and how well they've been played to start with.

I generally operate on a "light touch" philosophy. If something isn't going to be a nightmare I'll try to leave it alone. 

I had a situation like this about a year ago. The drummer didn't get more than 4 bars in time of a couple of 3 minute songs. So, as the band insisted on keeping it, I went to work and got them something that was fine. That whole situation could have been avoided if they'd just got someone to play drums who was better. In this case it was more like 5000 slices per song.

More silly was that the guy forgot to play the drum intro. So, instead of getting them back, I got my 8 year old daughter to play it in 1 take and didn't tell them.

I like for things to still have their humanity and unless you're doing certain genre's of metal which require absolute accuracy, I generally don't do that.

If the drummer can't get it, it's quite often easier to edit rather than keep trying until everyone loses the will to live.

[ambient]

If you’d wanted like that, ie perfectly quantised, it might have been better to have worked a bit with a click prior to going to the studio. You’d probably have saved a bit of money. 
 

The thing is, you’re used to hearing perfectly execution on recordings. A lot of older records, even by big name artists, the timing is quite elastic. 

[Lozz196]

On 05/11/2019 at 11:51, bertbass said:

Whatever happened to that'll do and it may not be technically perfect but feels and sounds great!

Agree. We work to the same way as has been described above, with the tidying up etc, but I do sometimes feel that it’s sterilising the songs somewhat. Sure, you get a technically perfect end product but I do think it’s taking away some of the magic.