Pro Tools 11 - #17 - Group Comping with Drums Video Lecture | Pro tools Tutorial: Basics to Expert - Video & Sound Editing

hello this is music tech help guy and
welcome to episode 17 of my Pro Tools 11
video tutorial series in this episode
we're going to talk about comping live
drums with groups so the problem with
comping live drums is that well it's
it's an all multi-channel I have a kick
in mic I have a kick out mic I have a
mic on the top of the snare drum on the
bottom of the snare a TomTom mic floor
Tom mic hi-hat mic a stereo pair of
overheads and also a stereo pair of room
mics so the drums are not you know not
just the stereo track or a single track
so when we comp these we can't just comp
them one track at a time we have to comp
them as a group we have to treat all of
these tracks as one instrument rather
than a group of instruments and by the
way if you're not already familiar with
comping and using playlists go back and
take a look at epsilon 16 because I do a
more in-depth explanation of what
playlists actually are and how they can
help you out so I'm assuming going into
this video you already know how to use
playlists and you've already done some
comping work so let's just take a listen
to a little bit of this
all right so let's take a look at our
other playlists that we have for these
now if I just go to the kick in track
here you'll see that if I go to a wave
wave form and changes to playlists
you'll see that I have one two three
four five playlists and actually the
bottom playlist is identical to the top
one so underneath each one of these
tracks I have five playlists so I can
pick from five different takes I can
pick from not all of them are the same
you can see and some of them he came in
early or came in late they sort of you
know we were recording bleeding out we
were recording guitar bass and drums all
separately in three different rooms when
we did this so sometimes the guitar
player
the singer guitar player would come in a
little earlier a little later and so the
actual performance
for this is actually varying a little
bit but for now you know just for this
video we're gonna sort of ignore the
fact that where there's other
instruments in the mix that we have to
live to worry about the problem with
this is if I just say oh I like this
take and I bump it up in there I'm just
bumping up this take of this one track
and not that same take of the other
tracks so in order to keep all the drums
in phase and make sure everything sounds
correct so I don't have a kick drum take
from another you know kick drum clip
from another take and then a snare drum
clip from another take so we're not
mixing mashing our different instruments
up on different takes because that's
just gonna sound bad it's just gonna
sound sound terrible because it's two
different takes the timings gonna be off
the the way he hit the drums gonna be
off he might have even played some
different things in one take that he did
in another so in order to actually make
this work for drums there really any
multitrack instrument like this is you
have to group all of these together so
I'm just gonna click on the top track
hold shift and click on the bottom track
hit command G to create a new group and
I'm just gonna call this drums and I
make sure that this is a mix and edit
group although you could just make it an
edit group alright so now that my drum
group is on you'll notice that I can
edit all of my drums at the same time
when I select them and when I move them
also when I change my waveform view to
playlist view it changed it to changes
it to playlist to you for all of the
instruments so generally what I like to
do is I like to look at like the
overhead mic or I like to look at the
room mic just so I can see something
that's you know I'm looking at the whole
kit what I am gonna do is I'm gonna go
ahead and delete the top playlist and
notice that when I click on a place go
click on the red playlist it selects the
red playlist for all of them if I click
on the blue one it selects the blue
playlist for all of them so I'm gonna go
ahead and just delete the top playlist
because it's the same as the bottom
playlist and we're gonna go through and
we're gonna listen to these and find the
best takes from each of these now I'm
not gonna be as sort of surgical about
it as I was with the the vocals where
I'm taking individual phrases I'm sort
of gonna get big sections and put them
together for the drums so the intro is
just a sort of rim tab thing let's
listen to this one first and one thing I
do like to do with drums is I like to
turn the click track on so I can hear
which one's best in time although my
click track has to be going to my output
in order to hear it there we go
all right next one yeah and I don't like
that one I don't like the kick-drum in
there yeah I like that one so I'm gonna
pull all of this up into the main
playlist you drag over the selector tool
hit the UP button punches it up into the
playlist now it also punches up the
overhead track the hi-hat track all the
Tom tracks the kick tracks the snare
tracks so everything has been punched up
not just that one track because we are
working within a group so everything's
staying phase-locked so let's go over
here to the fill let's see if I like
this fill okay let's try this one I know
it seems a little off
yeah kind of like the first one that we
used but I want to use a different crash
let me just turn my grid on to quarter
notes so I can better see I should try
eighth note there we go
it's better see which which take is on
or off the grid better um you know it's
look actually it's looking like the one
we picked it is the best one so we'll
keep that let's move on to little beat
here
start with the top top one alright now I
like how this and there's this little
dream in it this one was kind of frumpy
yeah I don't want that nope sounds like
he's trying to keep having a hard time
keeping up the metronome yep so I'm
gonna actually go with this one punch
that up in there let's listen that
ah so right there you can hear there's
like a stick like he hit the rim of the
Tom or something yeah so he can sort of
miss this fill there so let's see if we
can find a better take now let's kind of
behind still behind let's try this one
yeah let's use that one punch that up in
there
so it sounds like together and just like
I do it the vocals I'm gonna go back and
touch up the edits later right now I'm
just sort of getting a rough idea from
what I remember when we track this this
one this one and this one are correct
in terms of the length because in one
take he came into short one take he came
in too far out so let's want to listen
to this let's try this one yeah I don't
like the kick drum in there yeah I like
that one
let's pull that up in there that's
listen of these three fills here suChin
is the show the best energy to it
yeah I like this one the most right here
that's bump that one up I didn't really
like the way this tailed out though
let's try this take instead yeah I don't
like that either that's kind of cool
let's pull that up in there all right so
I could go through the whole song like
this get to the very end of the song and
just sort of pick the best spots
sometimes what I'll do drummers is I'll
just sort of keep whatever I think with
the best take was I punched up the best
take up in there and I'll just listen
for any mistakes and all I do is I punch
in the mistakes punch it up from the
playlist so obviously there's some other
issues going on here at this track where
the the drums are coming in late and
coming in early in certain spots just
because the singer was singing along
with them in another room and he sort of
would leave like a phrase in or a phrase
out of the song as they were playing it
so there's certain like flow issues and
song order issues that needed to be
addressed here as well okay so let's
just just for sake of time I'm not gonna
sit here and go through the whole thing
let me close out the playlist for you go
to waveform view and you'll see that in
all of our tracks now we have all those
takes that we just chose from the
playlist now just like it did before the
vocals it's generally a good idea to
come in here and sort of clean up these
edits so again I'm editing as a group so
I shouldn't have any phase issues
shouldn't have any issues with one track
being edited a different way than
another since using the trim tool and
cleaning up these edit points a little
bit and one looks pretty good
by the way sometimes it helps to turn up
the waveform zoom to see the transients
better and actually one one new thing
another thing I've showed you guys this
yet in this series is that if you go to
view and then you go to clip now
waveforms view waveforms you can view
your waveforms as a rectified waveform
which basically just means that the you
don't see a bi-directional waveform you
see a unidirectional waveform which
actually really helps for drum editing
because it lets you see transients a
little bit better and lets you see like
the the peak levels better as opposed to
the rms levels better so let's just and
this this really helps it like really
quiet transients that you maybe you know
would otherwise miss like like here
whether it's their like real real quiet
let's get in here and edit this up a bit
there we go
and this last one there we go now one of
the the big issues of drums is sometimes
if you like crashed one cymbal on one
take and then crashed another cymbal I'm
gonna take and you have like an edit
going through the crash that can be kind
of bad but that's just something you
have to work around you have to adjust
your edit point depending on depending
on the the take that you use so again
I'm just going to drag over all these
hit F to create quick fades again it
only works in your key focus mode is on
and what it does is when you hit F it
just puts a quick little fade in between
every edit point and then when we're all
done we're happy with these we can
consolidate them shift option three it's
gonna ship it's going to consolidate
everything and let's give this a listen
it did you hear that
so sometimes we've got to come in here
and do some some fancy fancy editing
work to make sure that we don't hear
things like that
like it's like I said before sometimes
it may force you to sort of extend or
change the Edit point so we don't hear
those weird symbol like it was like one
symbol that faded out too quickly on the
edit there we go
there we go
so we've got our nice comped drum takes
here again we're just getting a little
bit of the best of each of the takes
that he did all right so I hope this
video has helped you out I hope you
enjoyed the video and thanks for
watching