Salvaging bad tracks.
Jim
real instruments is cool. Very organic and natural feel.
The thing is tho, ok, I play a track, and think eh, good enough. But
really it wasn't. Right chords, little timing issues. Should I play it
over or fix it.
FIX IT ??
You can fix audio files. Well, yep, turn out you can. I've done it
before on serious projects by making copies and cutting and pasting and
wasting many many valuable hours I could be biking.
....
So a friend sent me a song today, one he wants me to redo the vocals on.
Got the various tracks as mp3's via email. I'm listening, and thinking
... yikes .... that drum part needs work. Timing weird galore.
The ability to go in and move audio " notes " around one at a time is
doable. But, man, I don't have that kind of time for this. It might be
easier to toss his tracks and just replay the parts. Humm. ... which way
is best ? Still editing is nice, save the original sounds... if only
there were some automated function, that would be great.
Well, turns out there is, maybe.
Googled something like - should I replace an old track or start over ...
and found this.
http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/drumsalvage/
Ableton Live calls it " elastic audio ". Logic has " flex time ", which
I hope is the same.
Something new, I didn't know about. Thought I'd pass it on.
jim d
Jim
recordings.
My california recording bud sent me the tracks he made of some canadian
musicians a few years ago ( two or three ). He tells me there is a big
tradition of this sort of rural acoustic stuff there and he made a lot
of recordings.
Sadly, once he sat down and started listening close, well, ok, it's not
the most polished stuff. Very " organic ", very what I'd call folkie,
nice actually, but not commercial level tight. The upright bass guy
flubbed a few chord transitions where he wasn't sure where the song was
going.
And the drum tracks have LOTS of bleed from being recorded in someone's
parlor. Do they call living rooms parlors in canada ???
And of course, the tempo is a bit, er, loose. Not metronomic at all.
So what to do. My friends suggestion re the bass track was to replay it.
His logic was, it's a two minute song. I could replay it in about 2
minutes, give or take a take. Editing it in a DAW would take mucho
longer. But still, editing is the tech solution so I naturally
gravitated there.
I did a midi instrument replacement. Logic has a function where it will
take a monophonic audio track, analyze it and create a single line midi
track of it. Humm .... I did that on the acoustic bass line. And it
works, once you throw out the few mistakes Logic made. Then, I placed
that track above the kick drum track where I could see the events on
each track and how they line up in time. It was simple then to move the
midi notes a few ticks forward or back so they line up with the songs
acoustic kick hits, the songs tempo. Forget the midi track bar lines and
such, they don't match anything in the song. I used the original
drummers kick as the beat.
Once I had this new midi bass track usable, I assigned it to a nice
upright bass and ....humm.... in tune, on time .... better.
I then went back and did the same thing with the kick drum track. Again,
creating a midi track of the same " notes ", then assigning that to a
nice soft synth kick. The problem with the kick track was it was just an
awful sounding, ringie drum recording that mushed all over the low end
of the song, not mixable at all.
The process takes time. I started working out how to do this about 10
pm. I went to bed about 3 am. I was worth it tho. The result sounds
nice. The midi replacement tracks match the original instruments, but
don't have all the problems, bad notes, room noise and bleed, and timing
errors of the original.
The plan now is to replay ( yes I said REPLAY ) the acoustic guitar
track. Midi guitar sucks. And then to re sing the vocal track. For that
I need to spend a bit of time working on my canuck accent ... so I do
the piece justice .... eh ?
The other big plan for the day is to make some video so I can post song
2 to you tube. I finally past 100 views on the Draft. Eeeesh ... kids
picking their noses get more hits that that. Maybe I need to rethink the
content. less music, more lowbrow humor ?
I could just to the farm and shoot up some dirt or whatever and film
that. Shooting videos get a lot of hits.
jim