Hi everyone,

I have a question i hope you could help me out with.

Recently i received a song, all seperate live recorded tracks.
First thing that was recorded were the drums. The recording engineer says he recorded the Drums with Click Trak, in Protools.
But the drummer was sloppy. Kicks too late, snares too early in general.
Even completely slowing down in breaks, wich wasn't supposed to happen.

We specifically asked for a click Trak, keeping in mind that this track will be remixed in the future by computer Nerds.
Placing their tight beats where the sloppy drums were.
And because of the bad drums, now all other instruments are not in time aswell.


Sould the engineer:
A. After recording correct the drums by editting?
B. Leave the sloppy drums as they are?
C. Advise us to get a better drummer before we continue recording bass etc?

I would like to know your point of view, Maybe you can eloborate a bit on why?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

Your tracks will only be as good as the original recorded material. I would rerecord the drums with a seperate click track then tweek till happy

 

If a drummer can't lay down parts that are REASONABLY tight with the click, then you have a major musical issue in your recording process. Let's face it- a lot of drummers might be "good enough" for the stage, but in a studio setting their flaws are much more obvious and devastating.

Probably not coincidental that so much music today is made WITHOUT acoustic drums (at least ones played by a human). Who wants to wait around for that rare capable drummer when you can start making music now?

 

I think that first and foremost you should try to get the best possible "take" you can achieve in a given environment or time-frame. Then, you can try quantizing it. It's tempting to be relaxed and think you can fix it all later but it will never be like a good performance (and it's also about how much you respect the material...). I know because I've seen it with an engineer who cut, copied and pasted kicks (from the actual more relaxed/amateurish/whatever recording) to emulate a tight double-kick performance in a metal track. Needless to say, it sucked ass and donkey balls. Better to re-record (at least to an acceptable level) and save yourself all the crap. Focus the extra effort on the performance.

(If you don't have a better drummer/resources/extra studio time, work with what you've got, ofc...)

 

I think the problem is drummers who never practice with a metronome, when every musician should be doing it (including drummers.)

 

C. IS YOUR BEST OPTION . (Assuming that this is your first time facing this problem)The best thing to do is to get a better drummer failing that in case of financial problems or another drummer not being available ,you could first determine the BPM of the song and create a click track...a Rimshot etc would do.Next take the main riff that is used throughout the song and flex it in Pro tools.In case of bleed you could use some plugins to gate the sounds of each track and maybe use a transient designer to bring back some of the lost attacks or sustains etc .Once you have taken each section and flexed them to tempo.....I suggest flexing the hats first.Next you could use Drumagog to replace some of the drums tracks that you are not happy with.The main thing is you should have knowledge of drumming and I assume you do so it will be easier to flex the drum breaks.Pro tools has the options for you to edit everything like Flextime,Quantize etc.You could send me the hats and Bpm and I will flex it to tempo to get you started.Hope this helps,All in all take it as a challenge and fix it whether you get a better drummer or not.Cheers mate.I may be rambling on but this is what I would do.

 

D: Get real musicians and never think a engineer is responsible for the bands lack of coherent hearing.

 

Even if you flex/warp/quantize the drums, all the other musicians were playing along to the drummer (who probably always slows down/speeds up in rehearsals). The effect will be that the other musicians "become untight" on the recording. Editing the drums means editing on the rest. It's horrible.

Sometimes it's better to leave the drifts (as they are playing "naturally") in. For crappy drummers, click can be more harmful than helpful (and throws them off selfesteem-wise and playing-wise, since they start to focus only on the click).

A good drummer (tight, click-friendly, dynamic, etc) from the get-go will for sure make the band better, without the other musicians realizing it (or thanking him/her for it).

[insert drummer joke here]

 

Sorry but a drummer that can't play in time with a click track should try another job.. however it seems a bad idea to record drums alone without bass guitar

 

Ask the drummer who is also an engineer: May I listen to your drum file, just a rough mix? You may be able to find the tempo that comes closest to matching what you have, sync that as best you can, then go back and move the notes/hits that sound off the beat. It may take a long time, depending on how much you want to fix each note that seems out of place. Other than that, get better basic tracks. Some drummers play well live, but get them in the studio with a click in their cans, and they fall apart. When I record drums here, I usually keep two or three solid takes. I work with the best one, and use the others to fix spots in the 1st I don't like. (hope I didn't make same error on all 3 takes) Don't make me start on false humility, it's the opiate for the mediocre. (yeah, I play at least that well---lol) I used to get a lot of work in real studios because I showed up prepared, and usually got my tracks done in a a few takes. I still do my personal practice to click tracks or steady loops. playing along to world beat stuff, etc. Oh yeah! Drums be just too much effing fun!---- And a post script--Audition has a feature that analyzes a track and inserts beat markers. You might be able to use those markers to set keyframes, and you can stretch or shrink those. Never tried working that way, but it just occured to me. Anybody ever tried anything like that? Sounds like a lot less hassle to just record a new one.

 

Thanks everyone!! Option C it is.