Multi Tracked Drums

[beigenoise]

Hey y'all...
here's goes nothing. Trying to explain this idea I have had might not be so easy, but see what you make of it.

The aim is to get a multi trakced drum recording warped to fit with a click track without the drummer having played to one.

Obviously the easy way would be to mix the drums in stereo and then warp the resulting file.
However, for various reasons, if you have gone to the trouble of recording multi tracked drums you may want to keep the separate tracks until mixing. Seeing as you would probably need the drums to be in time before you started to program / record over them this mix down would also have to occur fairly early in the creative process.

This technique works only where there is a reasonable drummer playing pretty close to the desired tempo and in a regular time signature.

Firstly take the Kick drum mic recording into ableton. Warp this to the desired tempo as per usual. Click the save button in the inspector to create an .asd file.

Now save session and close ableton.

In the folder in which your drums recordings reside you will now find the .asd file you have just created.
e.g.

If the kik drum recording was called: "mykickdrum1.aiff" then the .asd file will be "mykickdrum1.asd".

So at the moment we have a warped kick drum at the desired tempo.

Let's say there are three other mics recorded. Their files are called

"mysnaredrum1.aiff"; "myoverheadL1.aiff" and "myoverheadR1.aiff"

you need to create .asd files for these files. If you were to individually warp them within ableton it would be impossible to line each mic p so that when the parts were played together you got back exactly the same phase relationships between the signals recorded by each mic (since, for example, the snare drum sound recorded by the overheads mics will be slightly "later" than that recorded by the snare mic).

To get round this we use the "mykickdrum1.asd" as the master .asd file. Create a new folder. Copy "mykickdrum1.asd" into it. Rename this as "mysnaredrum1.asd". Repeat the process for all separate ".aiff" files creating a folder containing three ".asd" files with the same names as our three recordings.

Now copy these into the same folder as the ".aiff" files. Re-open your session in ableton. Import the snare and overhead signals. Ableton uses the .asd files you just created, and voila a warped into time drum track.

I realise that this method may kill the drummer's groove etc, and is more an interesting experiment than anything else. But it does work and could prove useful..

[dirtystudios]

isn't there a button in the clip parameters to just replace the clips audio file with another audio file, keeping the asd settings intact? i've never used it, but i think that's what it does.

k

[Guest]

word, ds. In the end bro, you should just have the drummer play to a click if you/he can. Its not easy, and I dig your workaround approach, but it seems like a lot of extra work with possibly mixed results, where playing to a click is pretty automatic.


Ryan

[beigenoise]

indeed,
I agree click track is the best solution. But if say you wanted to use a four bar section of 8 bar etc, it might work. More of an interesting observation than a suggestion that it is the perfect solution..
cheers

[Guest]

and your going to have a lot of problems with overhead mics mixed/warped with the closed mic drums. Live will try and warp as it sees fit.

Also bear in mind Live doesnt have Automatic Delay Compensation so any plugs you use on some of the drums could also give you phase problems with the overheads/cymbals.

What you want to do is do-able. But your perhaps giving yourself a few headaches. DONT forget to simply cut and paste good sections of the drum track. There will be a few no matter how bad the drummer is.

[electra]

Check out Liberator live Drum loops from P5audio.com. They are multitrack (11 tracks) and very easy to use and in a lot of styles.
http://www.p5audio.com/index.php