Advice on Separation and Quantize

[CottersJ]

Hello,
Well, look through my posts.. all asking for help on one thing for another.
Im still learning PT as i've just moved across to it... picked most of it up but you come across the odd hitch you need to ask someone how to do.

Now, I am recording my drum kit. I watched a video and hey-ho I learned how to separate the kick track at the transients into seperate regions.
Then, Ctrl-0 and they are quantized to the grid I have selected. Everything is in time.

So, the problem I am now having is that there are some clicks popping in occasionaly inbetween each kick. It is the audio as it only does it on specific ones but after the separation and quantize the clicks are here. I am almost certain it is where there are gaps inbetween the regions.

I am wondering, what would someone do in PT now if they were in this situation? Is there a better method of quantizing a drum kit? Is there a way to now link all the regions back into 1 track again so there are no gaps inbetween regions.

Please tell me! :)
Thanks for your time

[Ludia]

Hi Icot,

Whenever I cut a region into more regions and if they are glued back together or stay seperate I always apply tiny fades in the begining and end of those regions. Even if you don't see pops and/or clicks in the waveform of such a region you will hear it. Apply those small fades and it will be without clicks/pops.

Regards, Luc

[suicune]

NB - you shouldn't quantise a live drum kit a drum at a time, treat the whole kit as a single instrument. Group the tracks, and look up some videos on beat detective, or elastic audio.

You can under some extreme circumstances move kick drums independently but I wouldn't recommend it on the whole.

[CottersJ]

Suicune - Hello, thanks for the advice. Could you please point me into the direction of a video like youtube.
I never knew that beat detective could be used like that, well I dont really know what it is to be fair.

Thanks

[suicune]

Hmm, I just had a quick poke around youtube and they're not terribly helpful. Most of them are just doing loops. The only one I can see who edits a full drum kit is doing it in a strange way to get around the old LE restriction of only being able to do one track at a time, which no longer applies in PT9. Best advice I could give is to just read the manual and have a go with it yourself, remembering to save as a new session first of course!

Or you could shell out the reasonable sum for Kenny Gioia's videos if you're struggling, he does BD in this one:

http://www.groove3.com/str/pro-tools...tricks-v1.html

I think he only deals with collection mode which I don't use myself, but his tutorials have gotten great reviews from most users, and cover lots of other aspects of PT too. I think most people seem to use beat detective in slightly different ways, it's all about finding the best way for you.

Or if you come down to Wolverhampton I'll teach you my method if you buy me a pint!

[bortraws]

You can also Group the drum tracks and turn them all into elastic audio tracks.
They can then be fixed with phase accuracy as long as the group is active.

Good luck.

[danander11]

When cutting and separating create a bunch of regions, instead of applying a fade manually at each end of each region... hilight the entire section, then hit CMND(CTRL)/F to apply a fade of your choice across all of them. fast and easy.

[CottersJ]

Suicune - Whilst waiting for your response I had a nosey on youtube too. Not amazingly helpful but I got a lovely 3 videos explaining elastic audio from PT 7.4!

I understand it now, and I have worked my drum kit, it is all in time. I used the elastic audio rhythmic algorithm and elastic quantised it every 4 bars as I found if I did it all the way across, some sections would go slighty off.. If I do it this way im not going through a lot more hastle and then finally any fine tweaking I did in the warp view and moved there..

Thank you very much.. this has helped me out a lot and tought me a lot too!

[Emcha_audio]

The reason you were hearing clicks and pops were due to not splicing your take at the zero crossing point. It's longer to do in PT since it's not automated, but finding your zero crossing point and splicing it there, and at the other too, will avoid having to use fade ins fade out all together.

Even though it's for an other program, the explanation of what a zero crossing points, and what it looks like is pretty good

http://www.rippletraining.com/zero_c...int_edits.html

But at the same time with the elastic proprieties it's much easier to quantize your parts now :) How ever learning how to splice properly is going to be a good thing when you do heavy editing.