Taking a simple recording and making it stupidly complicated

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GarryJ
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Taking a simple recording and making it stupidly complicated

Post by GarryJ » Fri Aug 28, 2009 12:43 am

By replacing a whole badly-recorded drumkit with samples, kick, snare, toms, hats and cymbals, whilst trying to retain the original performance dynamics.

Verdict: sounds alright, but takes a ridiculous amount of time. Not recommended.

http://www.yousendit.com/download/YkxLc ... bVUwTVE9PQ

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Waltz Mastering
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Post by Waltz Mastering » Fri Aug 28, 2009 7:45 am

It can be done very quickly (15 minutes) and sound natural if done right.

Making use of any existing room sound in the OH and ambient mics and blending the samples with the original sounds helps the naturalness.

Corey Y
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Post by Corey Y » Fri Aug 28, 2009 1:04 pm

What was wrong with the original drum tracks? Have you considered either blending the samples with some or all of the original tracks or playing around with some room mics and piping the samples into the room? Sounds pretty dry right now. The cymbals especially sound very much like samples, odd decay. Depending on how much time and patience you have you could even bring the drummer back in to just play the cymbals in a room and combine it any number of ways with the rest of the drum samples.

There are lots of other ways to approach the situation, depending on what your time table, resources and restrictions may be.

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Taking a simple recording and making it stupidly complic

Post by Nick Sevilla » Mon Aug 31, 2009 2:10 pm

GarryJ wrote:By replacing a whole badly-recorded drumkit with samples, kick, snare, toms, hats and cymbals, whilst trying to retain the original performance dynamics.

Verdict: sounds alright, but takes a ridiculous amount of time. Not recommended.

http://www.yousendit.com/download/YkxLc ... bVUwTVE9PQ
I always say this to my clients :

Choice 1 : We re-record the bad part. Cost : musician's time + studio time. Usually this takes two takes, plus the time to get the kit sounding right this time around.

Choice 2 : We replace the drumkit in a DAW. Cost : studio time, LOTS of studio time.

Usually, 99% of the time, choice 1 is less expensive and sounds better.

And Usually, the client chooses choice 2. Hey it's their money they are throwing away, right into your pocket.

But I always try to opt for choice 1.

As one example, I had client "X" with this very situation. I put it in numbers :

"Would you rather pay 2,500 bucks, or 30,000 bucks?"

He paid 30,000 bucks, and get this, the reasoning was that "He did not think it would take that long, even though he'd never touched a DAW nor done this before"

Even after spending about 10,000 into the replacement procedure, I still offered for him to go and re record... "oh, we're almost there, just a little more editing and it will be fine" was the standard answer.

I still laugh out loud when I remember that scenario.

Cheers
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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lapsteel
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Post by lapsteel » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:51 pm

if it doesn't work just redoing it is the best way to fix it

andrewfoshee
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Post by andrewfoshee » Mon Aug 31, 2009 9:52 pm

Holy freaking Springsteen budget, who in the f@ck has $30k to drop on fixing a drum part? Are you kidding me? I'm pretty sure you could buy a plane ticket, rent out Abbey Road for a month and record an entire new album with that chunk of change, let alone hole yourself up in any high brow, super posh studio in the States with a Grammy winning producer for a couple weeks.

Wait, were you working with Steely Dan?
I will see you there, or I will see you at another time.

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