Pro Tools 11 - #25 - Drum Replacement/Layering with Tab to Transients Video Lecture | Pro tools Tutorial: Basics to Expert - Video & Sound Editing

hello this is music tech help guy
welcome to episode 25 of my Pro Tools
video tutorial series in this episode
I'm going to show you guys how to do
basic drum replacement and layering with
a edit function called tab - transients
now what tab the transients doesn't and
make sure you could turn it on here
though as this won't work is using your
selector tool you can click on a track
and you can hit the tab key on your
keyboard and it will jump to it'll jump
the playhead to the next transient the
next identifiable transient in the
waveform so this is helpful for editing
because if I want to sort of pinpoint an
exact sort of drum hit I can click
somewhere before it hit tab like a hit B
to separate it and then click tab
against and move on to the next
transient it'd be to separate that and
you can identify one single sample or or
identify identifiable transient in the
in the waveform there's a few added
features with some extra key commands so
for instance if you hit tab at tabs for
word if you hit hold option and tab at
tabs backward if you hold shift while
tabbing it makes a selection while
tabbing and if you hold option and shift
it makes a selection backwards while
tabbing we're not really gonna use it
for that function we're gonna use it to
copy and paste in a sample for each one
of these drum hits so let's let's take a
listen to what we have here this is live
drums if you hear a little bit of a
bleed from the singer in the background
it's cuz we record this band live
they're not exactly on the grid actually
they're not on the grid at all they kind
of just play to their own time so this
is another added advantage of tab -
transients is we're gonna be able to
detect where our drum hits are off of
the grid so let's just list it a little
bit of this
all right so the drums aren't bad I mean
there's hardly anything on them at the
moment these guys are looking for a very
very sort of bluesy organic sound so I
don't want to overdo my production on
these drums but the two things that
stand out most to me in pretty much any
rhythm and blues or rock track or really
any any pop track even is the kick in
the snare those two things really need
to come out to me and even if we and
again with these guys they want sort of
an organic bluesy sound I still want the
kick and snare that to sort of pop out a
little bit more so what I'm gonna do
first is I'm going to layer our kick
track with a sample of a kick drum a
better quality recording because our
kick drum right now is kind of thirty
but it's not really that consistent I
want the you know that four on the floor
whatever is or that was it's a
one-in-three to really stand out so I
have this kick sample here it sounds
like this sounds sort of like a 1980s
heavy-metal kick drum we're not gonna
overdo this we're gonna put we're going
to layer this sample really really low
in the mix just to give the overall kick
drum a little bit more definition
so there's another set of key commands
that we can use it with tad the
transients that are really really useful
before and in previous episodes we
talked about the the key focus mode up
here that basically allows you to
shorten some of your your shortcuts so
one of the the shortcuts that shortened
is your copy and paste and cut functions
instead of having to press ctrl X or
ctrl C or control V to cut copy and
paste you can just hit X C or V so
that's kind of useful
you can click on something hit C to copy
it click somewhere else and hit just V
to paste it another another key focus
mode function that's really useful to
add the transients is you don't actually
have to hit the tab key to tab anymore
instead of using the tab key to tab
around and then holding option to tab
backwards you can actually hit the
apostrophe or quotation key to tab
forward you can hit the L key the tab
backward you can hit the comma colon
semicolon to tab down and you can hit
the P button to tab up so you see I'm
going with this what we're gonna do is
we're gonna copy in this kick drum into
the clipboard and we're gonna tab over
to the first kick drum hit L Tutera L
hit send me comma semicolon to tab down
hit V to paste hit P to tab back up move
over to the next kick drum down paste up
now you just keep repeating that process
for all the kick drums now I've listened
this recording several times so I know
which which of these transients are kick
drums and which aren't but you basically
check to listen listen to it and
identify that so I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna go through this whole section here
and I'm just gonna follow that same
process tab right tab down paste tab up
and again I'm skipping all these little
transients in between because there are
sneered rums or bleed from the kicked
mic I rarely use the tab back unless I
have to but it's kind of convenient not
to have to hit option in order to do so
alright so I think I got it so generally
what I'll do is we just mute the
original sample it's a command and by
the way and let's listen to just our
sample kick with our original kick track
and I'm gonna pull the sample kick away
down in the mix I want to hear
there we go so the way I'm seeing this
is the the original kick tricks are
gonna sort of be like the body like the
meat of it and my replacement tracks
sort of gonna be the definition I'm
gonna blend those two things together
let's see if this sounds like with all
the drums in and then let's mute it and
listen without so I really like the way
that that gives the the kick trim a
little bit more definition and what we
do is optimally would sit here and do
this through the whole song but just for
this short video I'm just gonna do this
one little section alright let's do the
same thing with the snare drum I've got
this snare sample right here this is
sort of the opposite issue this the
snare drum tracks have a lot of bite to
them a lot of brightness but they don't
really have enough body to them so our
snare drum here is gonna our snare
sample here rather it's gonna be sort of
like our body now its snare drum there's
other factors involved like first of all
there's a lot more bleed in your snare
track then then your kick track so it's
gonna be a little more difficult to
isolate just the snare hits once you do
this for a little while you can start
looking at waveforms and you'll know
which ones are actually snare hits and
which ones aren't like I know these are
kick hits and these are rim taps on the
snare drum but not actual snare hits so
that's another thing to distinguish is
different ways to play the snare
sometimes the snare drum will have
little three stroke and two stroke rolls
in them or flam's and other other
techniques that you sort of have to skip
over and this is why blending the
original track with our sample track is
really the best
the best course of action here because
we can still maintain some of the things
that we can't resample properly so it's
copy in our some new scenario trim to
the clipboard I'm gonna mute the
original and we're gonna go along just
the same way we did before just hit tab
over and these are all kick hits and
ribbon taps here's our first actual
snare hit paste that in and again I'm
sort of just ignoring the stuff in
between the actual snare hits you know
this whole this whole process can be
time-consuming but one of the the huge
advantages to doing it this way is not
really taught time is not the advantage
because you can you can get drum
replacement software that'll do this for
you the event the real advantage is
first of all it's a cheap way to do it
without having to buy any drum
replacement software if you're just
looking to do like a basic drum layering
like I'm doing here
the other advantage - it's very very
accurate its time accurate a lot of drum
replacement software I've use does not
phase accurate sometimes the the samples
that are replaced don't always perfectly
match up where they're supposed to the
other downside to doing it this way is
that sometimes with samplers you can
control other things like velocity
controls or round-robin controls where
you alternate the sample which you can't
really do here alright so let's listen
to just our snare tracks good and again
I pulled the snare drum down in the mix
again just to I want to blend the snare
drum under our original snare tracks so
let's do with all the drum sound like
now
and then again without them so again you
have the freedom to sort of downplay
those samples or uh play them any way
you want depending on the genre the
music you can mix them into the mix into
the song any way you want you can EQ
them any way you want it just gives you
an additional isolated source to work
with so that you can make that his drum
performance sound even better than it
was all right so as always I hope you
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