Switching takes with drums - and multiple takes

Cubase
1

Imagine drums - recorded with 20 microphones, and then 10 “takes” (that is 200 lanes we need to manage).

If I want to just switch takes easily (but switch them on all 20 mics at once), how do I do this? This way, we can listen to what the drummer did on take 1. If we don’t like it, listen to take 2, etc. The problem, is that using lanes, I have to open every single track, scroll through all 10 takes and select the relevant take, and I have to do this for all 20 tracks!). This takes FOREVER. :open_mouth:

How do we easily select “takes” to audition? - to easily switch takes on all 20 drum tracks?

I hope I am making sense… sorry - feeling confused right now.

Thanks,
Todd

2

Put the 20 tracks in a folder and enable ‘group editing’ (the “=” symbol on the folder track).

You only need to have one tracks’ lanes open to switch between the takes by using the comp tool.

3

Stop using lanes and switch to Track Versions - much easier also in the recording process. You click ‘new version’ and all 20 tracks are empty again and ready to go. Indivudual tracks can still be moved between versions and lanes anyway.

4

Depends on how one prefers to work I guess. I’m faster using lanes but that’s maybe just because they were earlier than track version :wink:

5

Track version for me, too. Faster and easier organization.

6

Awesome… Thanks guys! :slight_smile:

I will try these suggestions out this evening!

7

Don’t get me wrong, I use lanes all the time too. But with multitrack recording, Track Versions keep things much tidier. And in my experience with acoustic drum recording, exchange between takes is very hard anyway, not to mention comping. Especially when no click is used… But it’s good we have both!

8

No problem! I tried drum editing with track versions and found comping much harder compared to the usage of lanes.

In detail I track to a grouped folder, use the best take as a basis and ‘comp in’ better parts from other takes.
I make this comp-thing a new track version and ‘delete overlaps’ > do my fades and if necessary some timing edits.

In case something won’t work out well (cut off cymbals and stuff) I go back to the track version with all the takes and look for something that fits/copy paste selected ranges into the other version.

Actually this gives me the best of both worlds. Before track versions existed I parked the takes on a complete set of (disabled) tracks, just in case I’d need different material (way more effort).

What I absolutely prefer over all of this is just a really good drummer :laughing:

9

I don’t fully understand the ways you do this yet, but I want to find the best way to edit multi takes of drums, especially if I want to combine that with some multi tracking audio quantize.

so my question to you above, do you find your method superior or what do you think of this method desribed in this video:

10

the one issue with the technique showed in that video of how to edit drums with track versions

is how to apply crossfades in a smooth way, which seems essential to avoid clicks.

does anyone know how to do that using the techniqe demonstrated in that video?

11

The reason I bring up this cross fades issue, is because, as far as I understand, if I use the track versions and just cut and paste the takes I want to use I wont get any overlap, and thus Im thinking that crossfades wont work, since it needs some overlapping parts to be able to do a nice cross fade.

Or does cubase take some seconds from the origianl wave file to create overlaps, despite them being cut away from where I am working. Nor surprised if this was hard to understand