Would you notice quantized drumming in a video?

I am subscribed to a few drummers on youtube, many of them have the multi-camera setup, record their performances to a professional standard.

I was blown away that they all had PERFECT timing and then eventually something hit me - I wonder if some of these guys are correcting the timing of the recordings?

I know from making my own videos that the eye isn't too fussy on how the audio syncs with the video, as long as you see the stick moving at roughly the same time.

Do you think this is happening? What's your opinion?

I feel cheated and misled.

I almost always notice errors between the video and audio. It's part drummer, part OCD. I had always just figured that the editing after recording was not sync'd up properly. I never thought that it was "fixed" though, unless it is obvious that a recorded track was dubbed over the actual playing. While I don't spent too much time watching vids on YT and the like, now I feel somewhat cheated and will probably be even more hesitant to accept what I see on the interwebs.

Perhaps I have too much of an interest in believing that people are for the most part honest.

With all the new technologies today, there is every reason to believe that 'tightening up' drum audio tracks is being done today, as it is relatively simple to do. You would never notice it in a video. I do not think they quantize though as that would be too perfect.

Are you talking about correcting the drum track to align with the rest of the audio, or aligning the sound with the video?

Dre25 said:

I am subscribed to a few drummers on youtube, many of them have the multi-camera setup, record their performances to a professional standard.

I was blown away that they all had PERFECT timing and then eventually something hit me - I wonder if some of these guys are correcting the timing of the recordings?

I know from making my own videos that the eye isn't too fussy on how the audio syncs with the video, as long as you see the stick moving at roughly the same time.

Do you think this is happening? What's your opinion?

I feel cheated and misled.

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Who knows anymore, right?

I do know this- Last year I did a session for a famous LA producer who is responsible for some of the stuff that hits the airwaves and when I heard the finished product, most of what I did had been chopped, looped, filtered and pretty much distilled down to what they wanted it to be. I sounded like a caricature of myself. It was me but it sorta wasn't.

As in correcting the timing of the drum track to align with the song that they're playing to.

Ncc - I thought quantizing was the same as ''tightening up''.

Dre25 said:

As in correcting the timing of the drum track to align with the song that they're playing to.

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I have made drum videos and to be honest, I think that would be kind of hard. Say I hit the snare a little off beat. I would have to copy-paste that sound into the correct spot in the track, which would change all of the audio around that specific part, including cymbals, whatever reverb there may be, and so on.

Maybe there is a way to do it that I am not aware of. The software I have is pretty bare-bones.

Granted I use an E-kit where the recording of all the instruments is done on a single track. On an acoustic kit it may be easier to edit individual drums. But that's just my impression.

Dre25 said:

As in correcting the timing of the drum track to align with the song that they're playing to.

Ncc - I thought quantizing was the same as ''tightening up''.

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Maybe a studio engineer can explain this better. This is how I understand it.

Quantizing is lining up everything exactly on the beat. It is like playing perfect to a metronome.

"tightening up" is processing a drum track with a pattern, so that it maintains more of a natural feel. We are only talking about fixing slight variations as long as the recoding is not way off.

Of course doing this requires samples of the actual drum and midi conversions. You process digital for this type of thing, not analog.

Km6543 said:

Maybe there is a way to do it that I am not aware of. The software I have is pretty bare-bones.

Granted I use an E-kit where the recording of all the instruments is done on a single track. On an acoustic kit it may be easier to edit individual drums. But that's just my impression.

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New software (like Roland Cakewalk Sonor X3) allow you to take a single audio track, say a snare, and covert it to midi by simply dropping it onto a new midi track. You then process the midi track however you want. Playback uses a sample of the snare (or any snare if you want to use a different snare sample). The velocities will not change, but will loose things like snare rim shots. You can convert the midi track back to an audio track (by then recording the audio playback) if you want. It all takes just a little time once you get the process down.

Km6543 said:

I have made drum videos and to be honest, I think that would be kind of hard. Say I hit the snare a little off beat. I would have to copy-paste that sound into the correct spot in the track, which would change all of the audio around that specific part, including cymbals, whatever reverb there may be, and so on.

Maybe there is a way to do it that I am not aware of. The software I have is pretty bare-bones.

Granted I use an E-kit where the recording of all the instruments is done on a single track. On an acoustic kit it may be easier to edit individual drums. But that's just my impression.

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Actually it is MUCH easier to do with an e-kit. Just record MIDI and you can move any single note anywhere, perfectly and individually. Also, the DAW will probably have a single "Quantize" button that will do it for an entire track.

Bobrush said:

Actually it is MUCH easier to do with an e-kit. Just record MIDI and you can move any single note anywhere, perfectly and individually. Also, the DAW will probably have a single "Quantize" button that will do it for an entire track.

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That's if you record MIDI and not raw audio.

I would be very surprised if it didn't happen.

I mean many of these drummers on youtube have fully mic'd kits and the drums are definately processed/engineered.

They are effectively releasing a finished product that they want to be as close to finished album quality as possible.

What do people do with albums? they fix any slight mistakes and make sure the drums are as tight as possible!

Km6543 said:

That's if you record MIDI and not raw audio.

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It's very easy to move a note back or forward in protools without affecting the rest of the music.

E.g if you have a snare hit that's off, you just go to the snare track select a hit and drag it left or right, no midi involved. I haven't done it but I've seen an engineer to it at the studio.

I haven't seen how they quantize the drum tracks but I hear most metal albums are quantized these days.

Technically, all quantized means is that events cannot happen at any point in a continuously variable fashion but that they must occur at multiples of an underlying quantum. For example, you could quantize to eighth notes and then everything would get moved around so they fell only at eighth note intervals (those eighth note triplets are going to sound like crap and every other sixteenth in a string of sixteenths would get lost by being pushed forward or back). Even with 1/64th note quantization things can start sounding mechanical. Back when MIDI first hit, "real time" was 192 pulses per quarter note (192 ppqn) and considered an imperceptible change from true continuous time.

I frequently notice when audio and video are not in sync. It drives me crazy to see a drummer an eighth note or even a sixteenth out of sync between audio and video.

It's extraordinarily easy to do. I've done it but only to know how it's done. I used it an University as part of a studio techniques module.

If you're recording a cover, you find the original tempo. Most modern master tracks are all corrected so it's most likely to be an integer BPM. Most DAWs will even have a BPM detection tool that takes most of the work out - but aligning a click accurately to a modern track usually only takes a minute of playing around.

Provided each track you're correcting in the mix is well isolated (i.e. no bleed) you can simply highlight it, engage the plug-in and enter a few parameters. In most DAWs, it will then divide the track up into separate regions for each peak that you can adjust manually - there's usually an option for how fine-grained the regions are and playing with that setting properly means you get every (say) snare hit rather than bleed.

There's then a tool that will automatically sync to the global metronome setting and move the separate regions in line with the global metronome.

Repeat that for each track that you have, glue the tracks so that they're no longer separate regions and you're done.

If you're good at it, it takes about fifteen minutes to do a whole kit accurately.

It's easiest when the drummer is basically right-on to start with. The software tends to shift the peak region to the nearest metronomic point (that you've defined) so if your setting is for 1/64 and you're out by more than 1/64, you have to adjust manually.i

If you quantise you have still be very close. To my ears, if a player is close enough to quantise without glitching then the quantising will make the performance less enjoyable, unless it's electronic music, although in a blind test I would consider the performance more "pro" and be impressed by the even spaces.

There's the rub - "more pro" does not necessarily equal "better". In fact, I would say the obsession with perfectionism is a weakness of a lot of music today (and since the 80s). If you "sand off" the roughness you get a featureless smooth surface.

As always, Duncan, you are a veritable font of information - maybe Britannic Bold or Impact.

Helvetica please or at least Arial! Not one of those religious ones, anyhow.

It's really quite simple to do. Any technician worth their salt will have done it a thousand times or more.

Whether or not it 'improves' the material - I'm staying out of that debate. All I'm going to say is that it's a tool like any other and can be used appropriately or inappropriately.

I'm the Comic Sans to Duncan's Helvetica.

Not worthy,
8Mile

Dre25 said:

I am subscribed to a few drummers on youtube, many of them have the multi-camera setup, record their performances to a professional standard.

I was blown away that they all had PERFECT timing and then eventually something hit me - I wonder if some of these guys are correcting the timing of the recordings?

Click to expand...

Multi cameras can mean multi takes. And it's also possible they just have one camera, and are filming a take, moving the camera, filming another take, and so forth.

Either way, it means, what you are seeing and hearing as a final product MIGHT actually just the best bits of multiple takes assembled together to make one perfect take.

As yes, with decent video editing program you can move audio/video to align it.

I have never made a drum cover, but I have made music videos, I've wrote music to line up with video, and I've worked with video in my day job, including aligning audio that is out of sync with the video.

Everything described is easy enough to do with the right program and a little bit of know how.

BacteriumFendYoke said:

If you're good at it, it takes about fifteen minutes to do a whole kit accurately.

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Well, what do I know. Not something I've ever had to do personally. I like what's on the track to be an accurate reflection of my playing. I can see though how if there are time constraints or whatever, one might be inclined to touch up the track somehow in some cases.