Using Elastic Time in a real world session.

[StudioRat81]

Ok, so I have a few question about integrating Elastic Audio into some sessions that I am in the process of editing and mixing. All of the sessions were recorded with live instruments, no loops involved, and all of the players were Nashville session guys, so the performances are about 90-95 percent. The drums are split across 8 tracks. Most of the sessions were recorded to a click in Manual Tempo mode. There are a few "hiccups" where somebody (sometimes guitar or keys, sometimes drums, which tends to swing the whole band slow ar fast) might drag a bit or speed up for just a moment that I would like to smooth out and tighten up. Is Elastic Audio the solution here, since I don't have multi-track Beat Detective, and if so, how do I go about implementing it? I have had very limited success so far, beacause it always seems as if there are a few glitches throughout the song after quantizing that make the results unuseable, so I end up undoing everything and going back to scratch.

I guess I'm just a little confused on what EA is doing and when. I understand the concept of moving the Warp Markers, but is Pro Tools processing the Markers in real time? After PT is finished analyzing the tracks, is it actually doing anything, or do I have to quantize for anything to actually be moved?

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone out there can give.

[dub3000]

i haven't really gone near the marker functionality yet, but i've gotten good results by:

- making sure the session tempo is the same as the target tempo
- split the tracks at the first beat of the tricky section (you might want to group them but i've just been working on live-recorded stereo files), and then at every bar after that until the tempo stabilizes again
- go into 'elastic properties' and set the timing for that section for '1 bar' (or whatever it actually is)
- splice the sections back together

you keep your stable tempo without ruining the feel of the track by quantizing the hell out of it like that.

[dub3000]

oh, and x-form rendering is worth the extra time - but set it up before you go out to lunch or something

[StudioRat81]

i haven't really gone near the marker functionality yet, but i've gotten good results by:

- making sure the session tempo is the same as the target tempo
- split the tracks at the first beat of the tricky section (you might want to group them but i've just been working on live-recorded stereo files), and then at every bar after that until the tempo stabilizes again
- go into 'elastic properties' and set the timing for that section for '1 bar' (or whatever it actually is)
- splice the sections back together

you keep your stable tempo without ruining the feel of the track by quantizing the hell out of it like that.

Thanks much for the response. I finally ended up just printing the whole chapter on Elastic Audio from the PT guide, and reading through it, then I just jumped in headfirst, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. From what I've learned so far, this is an incredibly powerful tool. For my purposes, it doesn't really seem to do anything that couldn't be done before, but it's laid out in a way that makes it much easier to work on things on the fly. Seems like I am getting better, more believable results, too. Especially on vocals. I definitely can see that it is geared towards improving workflow. I'm not sure why I was having such a hard time wrapping my head around the concept...maybe it was because everything I have seen on it has been more about bringing loops into a session or doing wild tempo swings and crazy effects. Seems like sometimes they skip over the most basic applications, which is weird considering that is probably where it will get 90% of its use.

Anyway, thanks again for the response.