Here’s an interview Ryan did over the phone during our last recording sessions. He talks about writing, recording, distribution, touring and of course, starving children.

It’s a great interview, but I thought I would point out that I completely disagree with him when he says “I know that anytime I try to raise my voice in any capacity to yell, I sound like I’m telling my dog to get off the couch.” There were a few times in the recording sessions when he would start to get really loud, and I thought, “this is what was missing from the last record.” I’m really glad we got some of that recorded.

Full Quality Video (MP4) 

Notes

Intro

Pro Tools LE comes standard with a single track version of Beat Detective, which is what I will be using for this video. A Multi-track version of Beat Detective comes standard with Pro Tools HD, and is also available for LE users as part of the Music Production Toolkit, which can be purchased for a couple hundred bucks. If you don’t want to spend the money and have comparable results with the standard software, here’s what you can do.

For this lesson, I have already mic’d up and tracked the drums on top of the backing tracks, and I’m ready to edit the drums.

In order to keep track of your progress, you should save multiple sessions. Since the session files themselves don’t take up much space, this is an easy way to keep track of your audio regions. After you have the takes you want to keep, save the session as [Your Session] Drums.ptf. This session will keep the drum takes completely unaltered.

Next, save another session as something like  [Your Session] Drum Edit.ptf. This is the session we will be working in to make all our Beat Detective edits.

Guide Track

Create a new audio track called Kick/Snare. Set the input of Kick/Snare to an unused bus and arm the track to record. Make sure the Input Only monitoring option is turned on. Set the output of or create a send on both your Kick and Snare track to that same bus. Play back some audio and try to set the gain of those tracks so that they are peaking at about the same level.

TIP: The Kick/Snare track will be used as a guide for Beat Detective. This will work for most of your projects, because Kick and Snare are normally the most prominent drums in keeping the rhythm of the song. But if, for instance, the toms are more prominent, you may want to bus the toms to this track, too.

Before we record to the guide track, it’s a good idea to trim the regions at some even point. Starting and ending at a whole measure is best. This just makes the regions easier to work with.

Record the guide track from beginning to end of track. Mute all the other drum tracks.

Correct The Guide Track

Go to Event > Beat Detective  [Apple 8 or Ctrl+8 on the PC]. Make sure the Kick/Snare guide track is selected, and go to the Region Separation portion of beat detective.

Click Capture Selection, then Analyze. 

As long as your don’t capture and analyze another selection, this guide track is stored in the memory of beat detective.

Expand the view of the Kick/Snare track, start to adjust the sensitivity. Set resolution to whatever you want beat detective to line up. Bars (measures) will just line up the beginning of eat measure, beats will line the track up to the meter of the song, in this case, 4/4, or sub-beats which would be 8th notes 16th notes, etc. 

For this track, I’ll use sub-beats, so most of the hits will be corrected. Next, set a trigger pad. This is the amount of time will be padded to the region before the corrected transient hit. If you leave this at 0, you might hear some clicks or pops on the track.  I usually have this at double the smoothing time. For instance, if I was planning on having a smoothing time of 5ms, then I would set the trigger pad to 10ms.

Click separate, and move on to region conform.

        Strength – how close do you want beat detective to slide hits to the corrected rhythm? Less strength will keep the feel of the drummer, and 100% strength will have perfect hits.

You can also use a groove template.

        Exclude within – this can exclude 

        Swing (if needed) – If the rhythm of your song is swung, experiment with swing strength on some type of MIDI track, then write down the swing percentage to use for the rest of the song when quantizing other parts.

After deciding on your settings, click conform. Now move on to Edit smoothing.

Fill Gaps will probably work fine, but I always like to fill gaps and crossfade. The default fade time is 5ms, which is half of my trigger pad length. Apply the smoothing.

With all the other drum tracks still muted, listen through the entire song. You can also eyeball it by comparing the Kick/Snare track to the separate Kick and Snare tracks. It will be pretty obvious when Beat Detective makes a wrong guess. You can either undo your Kick/Snare edits and start the Beat Detective process all over again and tweak the settings, or just be prepared to correct them manually.

All the settings you applied to the Kick/Snare track are stored in beat detective. Now you will apply those cuts to the individual tracks.

Select the Kick track and apply the separation. Using the P and Semicolon buttons you can select the other tracks. Apply the separations down onto all the tracks. 

Do the same with conform.

Then with smooth. The cross fades will work in the background, so don’t worry about interrupting beat detective. Check them in the Activity Monitor.

Unmute the drums, mute the Kick/Snare track and double check the track again. If there were any edits you need to do manually, do them now.

TIP: To correct skipped or misplaced hits: 

        Select the track names whole drum kit and create a new edit group (apple g)  Label it “drum edit”  When editing drums, eliminate crossfade on bad. After you are satisfied with all the drum edits, save the session. Then save it as “Drum Final.” This is were the corrected drums will be consolidated to single regions, which will make them much easier to work with.

Consolidate the tracks, by going to Edit > Consolidate Region (alt shift 3), or using the Gain Audiosuite plugin

Now you can import those tracks into your primary session, or just save this as the primary session.

That’s it. Now go on to compress, eq, augment, sound replace your drums. You’ve got the perfect take.

I personally find the one-on-one setting comfortable since I can play most of the back-up instruments myself, and don’t have to coordinate schedules with a drummer, guitarist, etc.  It is necessary that one of you can at least play basic keyboard parts.  The more live instruments you can play, the better, but you will have to use Virtual Instruments to pick up the slack. You can get by using V.I.s for most anything except guitar, and have satisfactory results.

Before I get to my advice, I’d like to note that these ideas can be applied to other forms of musical or creative relationships, but these are the things I noticed in this particular type of project.

First, make sure you work with a singer/songwriter whose music you actually like!  This might seem obvious, but it needs to be emphasized. You will be putting a lot of creative energy into the songs, and you should be excited about the end result.  Don’t try to work with certain artists just because they seem popular or bankable. These things are great, but will wear their welcome when you realize that you hate their music.

Even if you love their music, you might not gel with them in the studio.  In a one-on-one  relationship, personality clashes can come to the forefront quickly, so it’s probably a good idea to start out with a small project like a three song demo before you prematurely commit to making an entire album with this person.

Before you arrange or record a single note or lyric, it’s best to verbalize exactly what kind of relationship you and the writer want to have for the project.  I’ve had some experiences where writers bring incomplete songs and want as much of my creativity as possible. Most of the time, though I fulfill the producer’s job of focusing on the writer’s vision and help bring it to life. Here are some questions you need to be thinking about:

How much creative control does the writer want to have?
How much does he want you to have?
What kind of input does he want from you?
Are suggestions for changing lyrics out of the question?
When and how long does he want to work?

Throughout the song, clarify with your writer what his vision of the song is: what he’s trying to say with the lyrics, what emotions he wants to convey through the instrumental. You need to be on the same page or else you will quickly butt heads.  If you come a crossroads in the production or arranging of the song, make sure you can logically state your case. “My idea sounds cool, and your idea sucks” does not cut it, and will lead to the end of friendships and collaborations alike. Keep in mind that music is subjective, and that the writer’s opinion is just as valid as yours. 

Unless the songwriter is interested in learning more about home recording, try to keep the sessions music-based and not get too technical. For instance, if you can’t find that “perfect” synth or sampler patch for what you had in mind within a few minutes, skip it, and come back to it later.  Things like this will most likely bore the songwriter to death. Leave that stuff for yourself when you’re tweaking the mix by yourself. If keep making make sure you and the songwriter are on the same page, he will learn to trust your judgment.

Just remember that the most important element in this close working relationship is compromise.