conforming a song to a grid

[chrisosaki]

Hey all,
I had some old friends over and we tracked 2 guitars and a bass to some pre-recorded drums. The pre recorded drums were not done to a click track but the drummer is quite good at holding down a solid groove. The drummer is also one of the guitar players who tracked so its fairly tight all in all.
I will be re-recording drums, soon, to this music and would like to get whats there onto some kind of grid so I can erase the current drums and record to a click.

Any suggestions on the best way to get all guitars, bass and drums onto a grid lined up to a click. The drums are only 2 mic- kick and overhead if that makes a difference. Although, would be curious if the same would apply to multi mic.

With my limited knowledge I thought about elastic audio on the drums and then somethow have the guitars and bass follow my position changes?

any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

cheers

[Glenjb]

One way is that you can use cmd+i to identify the beats throughout the song and it will conform the grid your your song. Get Measure 1 Beat 1 straight and go from there. Try doing beat 1 of each measure and see how it sounds with a click. You can use tab to transient to help find the beats. Might need to get more detailed than beat 1 of each measure as needed.

It takes a minute but you will keep the feel of the song.

[Dizzi45Z]

I've made two videos about this. Hope they help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrZI99gEpKo

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9kZikzETjM

[chrisosaki]

Thanks guys! Dizzy, I watched your videos and they are really helpful. So, if I apply your method to drums, guitar and bass I would just work with the drums and the other music would follow along as I go retaining pitch etc?

[Dizzi45Z]

Originally Posted by chrisosaki

Thanks guys! Dizzy, I watched your videos and they are really helpful. So, if I apply your method to drums, guitar and bass I would just work with the drums and the other music would follow along as I go retaining pitch etc?

In your case where it sounds like the drummer was pretty solid (although not with a click), I would just tempo map (beat map) the drums to the grid. Because the guitars are tight to the drums, then that should put everything on the grid.

If you wanted to straighten out the tempo (after the drums are tempo mapped), then you would need to turn on elastic audio on all tracks and then make sure all tracks are Tick Based. Once you do that, then all of the tracks will conform to any tempo changes you make in the tempo ruler. As long as you are not using "Varispeed" for your Elastic Audio mode (I recommend sticking with Polyphonic, Rhythmic for drums), all of your tracks will maintain pitch too.

With that in mind, any time you turn on elastic audio, you add risk to hearing artifacts from the audio being stretched. Sometimes it is more audible than other times depending on how bare the arrangement is and etc. So in most cases, if you can get away with not using elastic audio, that would be my first choice.

So in your situation, as long as the drums are tight and the guitars are tight to the drums, I would just beat map the drums. Then when you re-record the drums later, the drummer will need to follow any of the slight tempo changes that were originally made by the original drum tracks.

[chrisosaki]

In your case where it sounds like the drummer was pretty solid (although not with a click), I would just tempo map (beat map) the drums to the grid. Because the guitars are tight to the drums, then that should put everything on the grid.




So when I beat map the drums, all other tracks (guitar&bass) will move with them? Just group them all together?

[Dizzi45Z]

They shouldn't, unless they are tick based. Make sure they are sample based.

If they are already tight to the drums, you shouldn't want them to move. Right?

[Glenjb]

Originally Posted by chrisosaki

So when I beat map the drums, all other tracks (guitar&bass) will move with them? Just group them all together?

This method actually moves the grid to fit around your song, not your song around to fit the grid.

[chrisosaki]

I see the difference now. Thanks guys! Now if I have to actually move the tracks around a tad to fit the grid would the process be similar?

[Dizzi45Z]

Once the grid is lined up to the drums, then it will be easier to see when the other tracks aren't lined up to the grid. If the tracks are off, then you can either edit the audio by moving the clips around, or you can enable elastic audio and quantize the clips or move the warp markers by hand to stretch the audio so that it lines up where it should. I don't have a video on elastic audio yet, but there are quite a few already on YouTube you could look up.