I recently recorded a band without a click, they were pretty tight. The drummer didn’t hit his snare with a consistent volume. Especially during blast beats (it’s a metal band) the volume of the snare drops. Now I’d like to cut up all snare hits so I can select them all and normalize them seperately so the hits appear consistent.
I could do it all by hand, but I figured using hitpoints might be useful. I created hitpoints and hit create slices. The snare track is cut up in seperate snare hits now, but the position of these hits are moved left or right from their original position. The snare hits now don’t correspond to the rest of the tracks.
Am I doing something wrong here? Or should I approach this in another way?
I considered replacing the snare with samples, but then still…it should be possible with hitpoints to create slices without everything changing position, right?
It is indeed possible, I managed to get it working after trying some things. Should’ve written down what fixed it for me, if it’s not snap I can’t remember what it was
Another option may be to use DetectSilence to split all of the snares into separate events (it’s like a noise gate, which is usually a good choice for a snare channel). And then when you have each bash as a separate part you can step through the events using maybe LocateNextEvent and replace the dodgy ones using Paste.
Well, not exactly… as long as you don’t actually move the snare hits (just cut each one into an event or part - btw, I recommend Detect Silence for this), there shouldn’t be any flams - even if you individually boost (or cut) the levels of some of the now individually sliced hits. In the OP example, I’d still recommend starting with Detect Silence (unless you really want to maintain the bleed on the whole snare mic track - in which case you can try keeping a long-ish tail on each snare hit, which helps maintain snare mic bleed “ambiance”).
Here’s a decent video tutorial on Detect Silence:
(Note that in this video, they check the Add to Regions option and also save the hits to a separate folder location - that part isn’t necessary. To just Detect snare hits and thus create nicely sliced snare events, I just use Detect Silence without the Add to Regions option - your choice though.)
However, if you plan to replace some of those hits with copies of other hits (and start moving them around), you’ll likely start hearing flams/phasiness from other mics. Hence, it’d be a good idea to use group edit on the whole kit for those hits you actually copy/paste/move &/or replace.
P.S. I wish there were Presets for Detect Silence! It would make this much easier (imagine creating a “Snare” or “Kick” preset - we’d all benefit from that, and I’d bet a senior Steinberg programmer could add that functionality very quickly.)
A.J., thanks for that thoughtful answer. I can’t wait to try this out. It had never occured to me to use the ‘detect silence’ feature to improve a snare hit.
Oh. When I talk about ‘flams’, I refer to a multi mic setup where the OHs here in part what the snare mic is hearing. If I move the snare by itself, then the combined sound at mixdown presents problems. But you have convinced me to run detect silence first on the snare and kick, and then do the group edit. I am thinking this will solve a few problems. So again, thank you very much!!
Y’know, I’d really like to see DetectSilence integrated into the project window. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have the window up, but it actually adjusted the project window, or say the selected events, instead displaying the audio in the same popup window?
You’re very welcome… but I’d suggest doing any Group Edit work first (put all the drum tracks in ONE Group Folder, click the Group Edit icon, do your edits).
Then, only when you’re satisfied with your group drum edits, do Detect Silence on the snare and/or kick.
If you do it in the opposite order, Group Edit can get confused - that is, Group Edit wants all the tracks in a Group Folder to be the same length (and using Detect Silence to auto-snip all the snares or kicks into separate events will definitely not keep your drum track lengths uniform).
OK, I see the problem. Hm, riddle me this then? If I had snare, kick, 2 OHs, and a hi hat tracks to tighten up, the order of events s/b what, in your experience?
I have been doing this:
Gate snare and kick>create group folder for all drum tracks>edit hit points on snare>quantisize snare>done
Do you see a benefit to adding the detect silence operation to this process? If so, where would you put it?
Roos, I just realized you’re not the original poster of this topic - so there may be no need to perform a Detect Silence on your snare (or kick). The OP wanted to individually tweak the levels of each snare hit, and Detect Silence is great to help with that (in that it can create individual events for each hit).
To just tighten timing, I’d create the Group Folder for your various drum tracks (kick, snare, OH, hat), calculate hitpoints for the kick and snare tracks (and possibly the hat) using the Sample Editor, and then use the Quantize panel to tighten things up. Be sure to set the proper slice rules on the Quantize panel - I usually start with 5 stars for kick, 4 stars for snare, and 3 stars for hat (and a range of 40ms or so, with offset at 0ms).
Detect Silence is a great feature, but it’s not necessary for tightening timing. When I use it, it’s usually to isolate sounds. Kind of like a more permanent (and visual) version of a read-ahead gate. It also lets you, as the OP’s question implied, alter individual hits (volume, etc) in a way they couldn’t easily be altered otherwise.
