drum editing tips

Foreverain4 wrote on 8/20/2004, 10:34 AM
share any tips that you might have


i typically will edit out the tom tracks where there are no tom hits. this reduces the risk of introducing phase problems between the overheads and the tom mics... i begin by grouping the tom tracks together. i then start from the end of the song and work my way back to the beginning. i chop after a hit is faded out, then right at the beginning of the transient. the reason for goin from back to front is cause when you split evens, the evens to the right of the curser are automatically selected. then you can just hit delete. you dont have to individually select and delete each event... after i have gone through and chopped the tom sections, i go back and edit each group that is left a bit more precisely (deleting events where no tom is played, etc) .


anyone else have any tips?

Comments

Geoff_Wood wrote on 8/20/2004, 3:45 PM
Sounds pretty laborious. If you are anxious about extraneous stuff in the tom tracks, why not noise-gate them to cut out the crud ?

But even better, why not do your drum tracks simply with a b-drum mic, and a stereo pair of overheads - adjusting position to get the sound you want before you record. Maybe throw in a snare mic if the snare is particularly vital to the music.

I've always ended up with better results that way - muli-miking drums usually ending up a 'mash'.

geoff
Foreverain4 wrote on 8/20/2004, 11:25 PM
it actually is not that laborous. it only takes about a minute to edit the toms on one song. it is pretty visible where the toms are played...

Cold wrote on 8/21/2004, 12:52 AM
I also eddit toms.
If I'm using a bunch of mics I will also often phase align the spot mics to the oh's.
Occaisionally I'll trigger samples (drums, tones, white noise, cowbell, etc.) and lay these underneath the original drum sounds.

Ask Pipe for advice, or do a search, He's recorded a ton of drums.
Steve S.
MrPhil wrote on 8/23/2004, 2:07 AM
This will of course alter the overall sound of the drums a tiny bit when the input from the toms pop in and out of the mix. Especially if there are phase problems. They will occur as soon as the toms are hit.
But that is the same as if using a gate.

The real thing you should look into is the phase problems. What happens if you switch the phase on some or all of the tom channels?