Lessons

Lesson Info

Editing DI Bass in Pro Tools

You guys on this uh, track right here? The one that's highlighted you guys can see you know what transients are there the spikes in the audio? Um, that's where we're going to go for really locking in base or guitar or anything I use tab to transient in pro tools, which can you see my keys when I do that? Perfect. So the way I would I go about editing generally a section is ella a little bit I tab to get to the transient in pro tools is everything guys that record to use pro tools, their logic or he's alive? I'm sorry, you studio on version uses video one ok, studio one I'm sure has something like this. I've never really did dove into it too much. Do you know if they have tapped to transient editing? I'm not entirely sure, but sometimes I use what's called waves audio trends x I think it's called that's looking that's a transient designer. This is different this over at timberline missing, but you'll see if you I'm sure they have something like this. Ah, logic in the marquee tool, you c...

an do this what I'm about to d'oh there's also you can kind of customize logic to do it I don't know do you stab to transition editing, you know, okay, um if you want to learn how really you could email me and I could show you how but I would if you find out that this kind of head innings for you I love apple to death my life savings is apple stock so this is how I add it and you can use flex time audio in logic and slicing mode which you use logic at all. Okay, flex time is okay, but it ah, a lot of times you'll get like, weird artifacts and stuff in that and that's why this protest have to transit to me is just the most rob basic editing and because of that there's no background junk going on it's just really and it's a little bit tedious as you guys will see right now. But it's the best way to edit anything as far as I'm concerned. So basically, like I said so I start here at the beginning of my track I'm assuming you guys can still see what's behind me all trying not to look back at that some before that sessions even really started and I tab in here found something kevin here and I know that that's a transit and I can see that I clicked be two separate and I slide it right there and it a lock to the grid some ingrid mode up here if you guys look um then I'll go to the next transient sometimes it's gift some so you have to like scoot around right now it's going to skip a bunch on me because I'm trying to look like an expert so if you guys get what I'm doing right now I'm just kind of nudge in't stuff into place sometimes when you can't fund when it won't detect the transient and your ingrid mode in pro tools obviously started for you guys that are pro tools dudes as much but you can't just command click and show it where you want the cursor to be an impress beatus split like I'm doing on these and then all uh so let's all this stuff and then command zero will lock everything to the grid the same way I was shifting it by hand and that we'll listen to it again then we turn a click on I just did my quick so we heard that and obviously it's chopped up but it is dead on in time and then we can check back this is what we had before not the worst but definitely not the best so we'll go back to this and we take this part again and then we go here to beat detective which this is proprietary to pro tools as well but yes, I assume most people working pro tools which is I think it's kind of the industry if they say it's the industry standard I don't know what people at home of chimed in at all whether they're pro tools users or not but you would go on to beat detective which is command eight on a full size keyboard um and you can smooth our the sections and it just moved them out for me now obviously that part gets off the grid because that's not my edited portion but I'm going tio against my best judgment we're going to dive into more complex editing because I could edit this whole song but it's such a simple just pop rock song that you're not going to really see the point of editing is much so let's see where were teo demo ing that's this whole section's going to be definitely said so I added a little bit more this song actually just to kind of show how it uh goes and how fast you can do it um so the same thing I would be just kind of tapping through locking stuff on they section gets a little more pocketed so I'm not going to mess with it as much in case the player was really creative you don't wantto if you can't see exactly where stuff supposed to go usually I will opt to not mess with it unless it's bad and I don't think any of this is particularly horrible so as I am I'm just kind of massaging this stuff into place and then again go to the beginning. To lead on my old cross fades smooths it out and then what I would do from this point is that would consolidate it which is shift all three converts it into a new region so that I can't lose my edits that I made um it's easy section okay, so I'm going to split this into its own thing, which be as I mentioned before is this lice thing in pro tools I'm going to show now going to show how you can youse beat detective to kind of automatically do the edits that you want to do, which is another reason why pro tools is awesome for edits and other does really fall behind so as I don't yes, I should have explained this more than I think I need to, so I cut it the transient right here like I have been if you guys see this and I'm moving it straight to bar forty nine just lock that into place everybody get what I'm doing they're still, um I'm gonna open up beat detective, which I had before, which is command eight on a regular size keyboard with the numeric fed, so I know how to get to it I'm just not used to looking forward to when you guys see me zoning out reading it now beat detective does is it does the transient detection and the slicing all in its own thing in this especially this for drums translates very well once you get more wild and stuff, you have to capture this election and then I had analyze and you'll see it came up with all these little markers right here, which those air the transient slices they need to get rid of some of them so I all quick on the ones that I don't want, and I can also click and move them once I do want into place all this makes sense kind of what we're doing just all these little pink markers air just showing detecting the transients and then as you can see, like they've most the playing on this was a little early in same thing I can double click stuff into place. Well, so when you when you did your first shift, the whole thing was selected, so everything everything shifted, I do that when I breathe, I break it up into sections because obviously a whole song is not going to have the same dynamic range, so you're gonna need toso say if I work a eight or sixteen bars at a time it's more manageable? Yeah, I'll just go on, I'll cut a sixteen section move it so you're right that's a good point I probably wasn't behind the whole time on the plane, I was probably pretty close on some ahead on some whatever and then I just scooted into place, so that beat detective didn't have to think about one of my first beat was going to go, ok, that's cool, thanks for bringing that up. That's something where it's just something I would have forgot because it's so deeply embedded in my work flow at this point right now, I'm just double clicking parts in you can also use this right up here, the sensitivity mode, but I'm usually pretty good between, like sixty five and eighty five percent, so I don't want to mess with it too much, so I'm just going and I see that all of these air very obvious parts, that's like, ok, the pick is hitting at that point. So is there any disadvantage to just locking everything? And I mean, obviously at some point, like you mentioned, like the players feel and yes, the vibe if he's trying to do like intentionally play, you can't lose feel I guess it really depends on the drama of the bandit the thing it also depends on how you treated your drums, because generally, if you're you're going to edit your drums before you edit anything else or else you need to track to your what your drums or we're going to find all sound like, so if you didn't edit drums at all like at all then you shouldn't be editing you're not going to want one hundred percent the based on grid because your baseball is going to sound tighter than your drummer, which is going to make your bass player sound crappy so and I'm realizing some stuff might not online in perfectly right but what's that got breaking the fourth wall guys ok, we might break the fourth wall right now, which is when you screw up and you have to explain what went wrong kind of sort of that that works in this case. So now I have these all detected I think I'm realizing that it detected the entire song so I'll make a cut afterward. Um, well, actually car right there, so it has those are all my transit markers, so now I'm going to click separate down here you guys see the green ring so I don't have to really point out I guess every time some separating them it cut him all into sections, which is basically what I was doing before and now we got a clip conform and it knows that I want him to their nearest sixteenth notes it conform right now this election bar okay wants me there, okay, recapture now through form okay, so if you guys saw that, it just shifted everything the same way I did before and I notice some parts where the plane was pocketed did you hear that stuff? Sounds kind of like jumped the gun so what do we owe so that's a sixteenth note early so I would go in I would ah go back and play again we'll assume that the rest is pretty right too far off for example sake, I'm going to say that's, right? I'm sure their spots where it's not, but I'm going to hit go the same were a process that we did before we're going to smooth that out and it's going to fade it and now it's one hundred percent often get swanky there, but that obviously that was a part where I wasn't even paying attention to the park because I didn't realize it was analyzing that far in advance but you can use the most effective way is going to be the tab to transient way through but it's also it comes down to how much how close you were like if the guy was pretty lofting. Usually you can rely on beat detective bases a weird instrument in the way that some bases have better transient response than others, so editing a jazz bass track is a lot easier than editing like the more fat bodied guitars so the thinner your base sounds the easier it ends up being to edit, which is why tab to transition on guitar editing is a breeze and same with drums because it's just so pronounced but since bases like a more rounded instrument it's a little bit harder to get it but it's imperative if you want tightly edited tracks you need to go in and do it and so a lot of times you can even what's worked for me before is all duplicate the track which this track duplicate everything and then I'll go in and I'll be detective the track and I'll just do it all rushed through and it's like ok that's cool where do I have problems that stick out and I'll go down to my copy of the track and I'll read it by hand and move it up together and that's a really effective way to just quickly get out your edits um and it's kind of like this stuff we're doing earlier it's all building blocks it's something you need to know and you get going and makes everything else more pleasant because you're not fixing problems later on what is your, um like where do you is your process o is the same for tracking like the order of what you track like do you always tracks scratch first like in your genre for doing basically where does basically I and it's upset after drew? It really depends always scratch guitars first and drums and then um I my work flow gets really weird every record after drums because I try and make it so nobody nobody should feel left out is in this is more has less to do with tracking based on more, which is producing records but I don't want people to feel left out and I don't want people to feel like they're just getting beat up so I'll usually I'll track drums and then if we if there's a lot of clean vocals which relate marta like you're doing faulcon bluegrass so aa lot of times I realised the base is one of the easiest instruments wants it edited and once it's like cleaned up to track vocals too because it's such a pure no and you're not dealing with cords and you can really quickly here like ok, the base is usually root note stuff so it's like hey dude, you're not in key whereas if you have ah chord with like fists and thirds going on it's like, well, I'm in key to that third and it's you know you're not in key with the song, so creo usually do drums if there's queen vocals a lot of clean vocals, I'll do base next so that I have that because I already have this crash guitars and when I tracked scratch guitars I do a good job um where is when my assistant? If he's watching track scratch guitars, he doesn't do a good job he does a great job but everything else and he's manning the internet right now telling people to come watch me so that's cool um so that's then once I get that based on him for doing clean vocals can usually track screams or more like aggressive vocals to the base in the scratch or the guitars and I just kind of rotated so that nobody's working like five songs in a row like like I said, I like to knock out based rings can last more than a song so I'll get those three songs of based done in eight hours and then it's cool for the bass players like tomorrow I'm just going to play nintendo all day and it's go for him and I like to play nintendo to so usually I'll say all right well at lunch time me and you mario car like it's on and then it's a lot of it's just around the vocalist though because people can play guitar forever and it sucks and it gets hot in the room but when your vocals air down your vocals were done so that's how my workflow works is get drums done and then kind of tiptoe around the princess singers usually so let's get into some metal stuff more ah technical harder to play junk saying we have any questions from home well, I love this way we have a lot um I'm glad people are watching oh, they are there's a ton of questions I'm just kind of letting you go because I want you to get in your in your group yeah, I mean right now like we can take a break for questions before I get into more complicated editing and tracking techniques. Okay, all right. So, uh pat aton had asked what about editing finger players usually there's not a sharp transient and tab to transit all yeah that's a great point it's all by ear at that point for me and it's even it kind of goes hand in hand with the way I was talking about more fatter like the warwick sounding bases where there's less of a transient response fingers or even more of a monster in that point. And ah, a lot of that is why do like tracking with picks? And I expect if you're coming into sound temple the recorder record you're playing with your fingers my kind of like my pyramid if I'd have to go really far back but let's pull this up again if we can too my pie chart kind of just shows the players a big part and at my studio you can if you can play with your fingers I shouldn't have to edit you a whole lot because that's on important part of technique so if you can kick ass with your fingers patata on is that that's how I would determine it is how, if you're sick, flare your sick plan and I shouldn't have to go and fix everything with kept a transient, but if I'm editing youto helen back, I'm going to hand you a pick, and we're gonna figure out a way to see those transients to make my life easier in your wreck, her down better. So I guess that's when you have to play the bad guy and play the producer at a certain point, but which isn't as much with this class is about but that's how I would take that situation, ok? Steven t had asked at what point do you edit base? Obviously after drums, but is there anything else that must be done before touching base? I had it, I try and add it, obviously I didn't with these sessions because I knew that I had a lot to show. I added everything as I go if I can, so that once a lot of it's working with just deadlines and what I need to get done. So if if I'm not editing as I go just in my assistant or michael, my other engineer who assists on records as well, one of them will be receiving files in the email, or we're building a second studio right now, so they'll be files justin come get these files edit him because I like to I don't like to track anything to anything else that's unedited I want to be one hundred percent as I go and I think that's important for tight recording because if you track slop on top a slot you know it's I don't want to get into math but it's slop time slot that that point so everything gets exponentially worse if you're not tracking to the best option that you have available to you cool you want take a couple more yeah let's say a couple of months I have this open but this is going to get into tangent time I'm sure so okay well factory otto had asked a couple questions so one was what's your process for deciding what the best colored dye is for the base song and then the other question was does using a color dye present any tonal limitations come mixed time for instance ramping later using amp simms definitely both from factory audio. Yes. Okay um he asked about the tube the eye to eye will generally if I'm dealing with a lot denser mix like this one that I'm about the plates the metal song that we controlled earlier um I'll go with a thinner d I something less colored like a radio because I know like in this song I have a massive amount of guitars I havel a lot of stuff going on on drums where is the song we're just listening to I was able to go with the fatter universal audio die because I had two tracks of guitars not a whole lot going on we're adding that song is still being written but we're adding stuff but the base plays such a wide role and it's there's not a lot in the song going on but when I have tons of leads in just a wall of sound it's easier for me to fatten up the radio d I with plug ins even though I said that's something that I would rather not do or with amp tracks than it would be if I just had a really fat signal and ramping through using like the fatter d I same thing is the way I look at it is the amount of information you're trying to pass through to the amp if you have really thick there's less for the amp to do to impart its character you're gonna find distortion a lot quicker where's the thinner, more dried I you're going to get so let the and do its job so if the isa will going to be a huge party or sound then go use the colored one and really just let that be a good portion of your amp sound but a song like this song called I called a song ripper and the band's called dead signal a song like this, I know that tomorrow we're going to ramp, and I'm gonna have a knacks effects on this. I'm going to have a sands, and I'm gonna have a norman track. I don't need to have a fat die for this track. Thin will get me to where I want to go.