At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Malcolm Boyce » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:22 pm

Other than for obvious "electronic" or heavily edited stuff, I don't recall ever sample replacing or even augmenting my own drums on my own drum tracks. I make it sound right, play it right, and record it right. Unfortunately, that kind of control doesn't exist for most of what I record, and not just for drums.
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:40 pm

sean.boyer wrote:Yeah, I can totally get behind that. It's just not for me, for my projects (now CLIENT projects are a whole different story. If someone else is paying me, I'll stand on the desk covered in coco powder weeping into a cereal bowl of wet news paper strips and banana slices while playing a keytar that's been glued to the wall with my nose, if it's what they really want. That said, I'll sure as hell try to talk them into instead simply getting someone who can play piano to sit down and play the piano, but hey, they're holding the $$gun$$, so what ev'.)

dielaugh

sean.boyer wrote:Lucky for me, I get to do almost all the recording for my own bands, and I have the pleasure of setting them up however I want, and using whatever methods and practices I deem appropriate during tracking and mixing. The other band members will give me their input, and I will consider it, discuss, and when applicable, concede to their direction.

We should all be so lucky. I'm curious to see how your methods would change when the clock is on and the clients are bat-shit crazy. I have no doubt you'd make it work beautifully, but it's a whole different story that can only be solved with an iron will and a bottle of good scotch.

sean.boyer wrote:I've heard a few recordings where the snare had been sampled, through out the whole song even, and I never noticed, and still can't hear it when I listen even though I know, so I guess it can be done, and done transparently.

It can be done very transparently, I do it all the time.

I've also heard some local recordings where I'm expecting the drums to sound real, and I hear a bad stock snare sample that's loud, annoying and isn't even adjusted for dymamics. You can image how awesome that sounds on fills. So I ask the drummer what the deal is with the obvious snare sample. He is all pissed off, he hates it. So I ask him where he was when the mix was revealed and why he didn't say anything then. I never really did get an answer... :roll:

So they spend X thousands of dollars and then just let the engineer run amok? Interesting way to work.

sean.boyer wrote:That's me though. I don't begrudge anyone else for whatever things they do, as long as they sound good.


Same here... but when they don't, I still have to bite my tongue for fear that I come off as a snob... facepalm
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby sean.boyer » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:48 pm

I guess I'm lucky in that I haven't worked with any clients who felt they knew better than me, and demanded me to preform incredibly crazy demented sac-religious jargle. I am EXTREMELY lucky for this.
I try to make sure that when I'm working on the clock, that the musicians are focused on their tones and performances, and not so much on my technique.
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:55 pm

Malcolm Boyce wrote:Other than for obvious "electronic" or heavily edited stuff, I don't recall ever sample replacing or even augmenting my own drums on my own drum tracks. I make it sound right, play it right, and record it right. Unfortunately, that kind of control doesn't exist for most of what I record, and not just for drums.


I have augmented, even when I play it right and record it right.

Sometimes, I just wanted to have the best of two types of snare drums tuned completely differently. I might record a 5x14 maple snare drum tuned fairly tight for the beds but also know that I was going to add a 8x14 brass tuned down so low that it's barely holding any tension as a sample augmentation. mayeb I liek what he combination of both of those gives me. It's no different to me than blending a kick in mic with an kick out mic... or blending a direct bass tone with a bass amp that's all distorted. I'm not necessarily sample augmenting because something need to be "fixed." I was going for something specific and adding that augmentation will only take a few minutes after the beds are done.

It's not always the case though, we just finished beds for Dylan Farrell's new CD and there won't be any augmentation of any kind going on there simply because it wasn't needed based on what we were going for. Some of my favorite drum sounds in recent memory actually... for anything that I've played on anyways.
"Volume automation takes time. You don't got that kinda time. You could be getting naked with somebody somewhere." -Slipperman

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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:56 pm

sean.boyer wrote:I guess I'm lucky in that I haven't worked with any clients who felt they knew better than me, and demanded me to preform incredibly crazy demented sac-religious jargle. I am EXTREMELY lucky for this.


Let me know if you ever want a change of scenery. :lol:
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Malcolm Boyce » Fri Jun 15, 2012 6:14 pm

sean.boyer wrote:I guess I'm lucky in that I haven't worked with any clients who felt they knew better than me, and demanded me to preform incredibly crazy demented sac-religious jargle. I am EXTREMELY lucky for this.
I try to make sure that when I'm working on the clock, that the musicians are focused on their tones and performances, and not so much on my technique.

Sometimes it's not a case of them scrutinizing your technique, but having certain expectations of the outcome that are unrealistic unless you take a certain approach. Like a drummer playing with greatly exaggerated dynamic range, and then expecting a huge, in your face snare back beat come listen back. When it's easy to just make it happen, than argue what's acoustic or "real", you do it.
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It just fills Forum pages..." --compasspnt

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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby sean.boyer » Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:24 pm

Yeah, now we're getting somewhere. I've had a few situations where I've been handed drum tracks that were recorded in a small drum room, close mic'd, NO ROOM MIC, and I'm asked to "make the drums sound big and open". Well, not really gonna happen guys... There are some filthy tricks to try to "open them up" a bit (verb across the drum buss, compressing OH's, etc) but I've never been able to make that sound "real". You want a big open drum sound, ya gotta track 'em big and OPEN!

I'm sure the same thing happens with guitar all the time. Kid plays a tele into a twin and wants it to sound like a Les Paul through a JCM 800 turned up to 13. Sure.
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:59 pm

sean.boyer wrote:Yeah, now we're getting somewhere. I've had a few situations where I've been handed drum tracks that were recorded in a small drum room, close mic'd, NO ROOM MIC, and I'm asked to "make the drums sound big and open". Well, not really gonna happen guys... There are some filthy tricks to try to "open them up" a bit (verb across the drum buss, compressing OH's, etc) but I've never been able to make that sound "real". You want a big open drum sound, ya gotta track 'em big and OPEN!

I'm sure the same thing happens with guitar all the time. Kid plays a tele into a twin and wants it to sound like a Les Paul through a JCM 800 turned up to 13. Sure.


Sammy P and I were chatting last night about this very same kind of thing. We were talking about the hypothetical "We want our guitars loud and IN YOUR FACE!!!!" "Alright why did you print loads of reverb/delay/ect to this track to tie my hands with then?"

It's lack of vision in general which kind of takes me back to a comment I 've sen online lately. People posting drum sounds out of context and asking everyone to tell them if they are awesome sounding. The amateurs will chime in with their critiques, but the people that know better will say, "Are these drums supposed to be in a song, what's the context?"
"Volume automation takes time. You don't got that kinda time. You could be getting naked with somebody somewhere." -Slipperman

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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Mathieu Benoit » Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:59 am

So Andrew, speaking of editing, sample enhancements/replacements and such... Nick and I have discovered a very interesting use of that Flux plug-in. I'll let Nick explain the details since he came up with it.
"Volume automation takes time. You don't got that kinda time. You could be getting naked with somebody somewhere." -Slipperman

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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby macrae11 » Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:52 am

Mathieu Benoit wrote:So Andrew, speaking of editing, sample enhancements/replacements and such... Nick and I have discovered a very interesting use of that Flux plug-in. I'll let Nick explain the details since he came up with it.

Yeah bittersweet is a cool little plug. Kind of a poor mans transient designer. I've used it for all kinds of stuff, feeding verbs, changing envelopes going into compressors, adding "reverb", and of course modifying transients.
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby Nick H. » Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:54 am

Mathieu Benoit wrote:So Andrew, speaking of editing, sample enhancements/replacements and such... Nick and I have discovered a very interesting use of that Flux plug-in. I'll let Nick explain the details since he came up with it.


Well, I was editing a metal song that had a section of very straight time; quarters on the snare at a fairly comfortable rate of speed, maybe 120BPM or so. I had sample-enhanced the snare drum and in the section in question it sounded very unnatural. Generally I will use variances in gain to 'humanize' these enhancements, but in a case like this, where the snare is just a consistent back-beat, I don't think I would expect to hear much movement in terms of snare volume. Rather than volume, it's largely tone that I think you expect to hear fluctuate slightly in a snare, as no drummer will hit the head at precisely the same spot each time. My solution was to create an aux input snare bus within the drum subgroup, and automate the flux plugin on the snare bus to subtly vary the tone as the song plays. To my ears it sounds quite realistic, but I'm probably not objective. Thoughts?
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Re: At what point do you stop calling it 'editing'?

Postby macrae11 » Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:01 pm

Great idea. If it sounded good it probably is good. I typically get around that issue by using multiple samples of the same snare. Usually 3 or 4 is all it takes but your solution works even if you don't have access to multiple hits. Can you post a sample?
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