Takes Are A Mess

[Newman]

Hey there,

So I foolishly did a bunch of drum takes (4 tracks), each take being a different length, and they are now a sort of confusing mess, split in different spots, etc. Some spots have many takes, some only a couple, some a few. It's hard to quickly know what goes with what.

If anyone and everyone gets what I'm talking about, what is a good and quick way to salvage this mess? Or is there no good and quick way?

And is there a way to avoid this in the future other than doing all takes the exact same length?

Thanks!

[mschnell]

I suppose there is a section about takes in the Reaper User Guide and there are several videos on that issue.

I seem to understand that takes work diifferent in Reaper than in some other DAWs, so they might be unfamiliar to some.
-Michael

[Coachz]

I would use the crop to active take action to keep the takes I want. In the future punch in to time or item selection. I have a doc that might help.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15wM...w?usp=drivesdk

[hopi]

much better to do them all the same length by using a time selection and letting it run to the end even if it is a bad take

[poetnprophet]

You could also try viewing the takes as Layers. I think the shortcut is Cntrl-L on PC. This will explode the takes into separate layers. In fact, they aren't takes at that point since they will all play, but it can be easier to view, understand, and edit them this way. The downside is you have to manually mute the ones you don't want to play, which is why takes can be useful.

[martifingers]

Takes in Reaper are not always perfectly intuitive as you have discovered but I found these two videos helpful although they deal with "punching in" specifically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjb8G6jnkUo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Il-LhyMs8

[ashcat_lt]

Double click the track in the TCP to select all items. Ctrl+Left Click the one item that has all of the takes to remove it from the selection. Hit Delete. Drag the edges back out as far as you want. Now you can go ahead and split it on purpose where you want to switch takes.

[SonicAxiom]

My prefered method is recording and editing drums as multichannel items. I'm setting the recording track to the appropriate amount of channels (mostly 8, in the track's routing window) and define a matching range of multi-channel track inputs. Each channel of the recorded multichannel item is routed to its own dedicated track for processing and mixing (as shown below).

If the drummer has to overdub certain parts of the song, I set Reaper's recording mode to auto-punch in time selection, create the appropriate time selection and do the no. of recording passes necessary to get a decent performance.

The multichannel approach also facilitates general editing and time-stretching of the drumset as a whole without the need to group separate tracks.



It is possible to create a multichannel drum item from separate tracks (after a "normal" recording) by routing the signals of those tracks to different audio channels of a new track which has been set up to be multichannel. A multichannel item can then be rendered simply by triggering the corresponding multichannel stem rendering action.

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[Coachz]

Originally Posted by SonicAxiom

My prefered method is recording and editing drums as multichannel items. I'm setting the recording track to the appropriate amount of channels (mostly 8, in the track's routing window) and define a matching range of multi-channel track inputs. Each channel of the recorded multichannel item is routed to its own dedicated track for processing and mixing (as shown below).

If the drummer has to overdub certain parts of the song, I set Reaper's recording mode to auto-punch in time selection, create the appropriate time selection and do the no. of recording passes necessary to get a decent performance.

The multichannel approach also facilitates general editing and time-stretching of the drumset as a whole without the need to group separate tracks.



It is possible to create a multichannel drum item from separate tracks (after a "normal" recording) by routing the signals of those tracks to different audio channels of a new track which has been set up to be multichannel. A multichannel item can then be rendered simply by triggering the corresponding multichannel stem rendering action.

.

Using that technique can you add effects to individual tracks like Reverb to the snare?

[SonicAxiom]

sure. Multichannel track has its "Master send" disabled. Instead, every single audio channel (or sometimes pairs) is routed to a dedicated track below where the actual processing and mixing takes place. Once you have configured the entire set of tracks for this purpose you safe it as a track template.

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[karbomusic]

Originally Posted by SonicAxiom

Instead, every single audio channel (or sometimes pairs) is routed to a dedicated track below where the actual processing and mixing takes place.

When I do multi-channel drums ^that is how I do it. Not 'that' much different than when you route a multi-channel VST to sub tracks.

[Glennbo]

Originally Posted by karbomusic

When I do multi-channel drums ^that is how I do it. Not 'that' much different than when you route a multi-channel VST to sub tracks.

Both my V-Drums/Superior and mic'd acoustic drum setups are like that and saved as track templates.

[Newman]

Originally Posted by SonicAxiom

My prefered method is recording and editing drums as multichannel items. I'm setting the recording track to the appropriate amount of channels (mostly 8, in the track's routing window) and define a matching range of multi-channel track inputs. Each channel of the recorded multichannel item is routed to its own dedicated track for processing and mixing (as shown below).

If the drummer has to overdub certain parts of the song, I set Reaper's recording mode to auto-punch in time selection, create the appropriate time selection and do the no. of recording passes necessary to get a decent performance.

The multichannel approach also facilitates general editing and time-stretching of the drumset as a whole without the need to group separate tracks.



It is possible to create a multichannel drum item from separate tracks (after a "normal" recording) by routing the signals of those tracks to different audio channels of a new track which has been set up to be multichannel. A multichannel item can then be rendered simply by triggering the corresponding multichannel stem rendering action.

.

Can you re-arrange things easily with this method? Move a section from one spot to another, for example, without deleting whatever was there?

Also, it looks like you'd have all the takes in the one channel, right? Couldn't that get messy or hard to see if you do more than a couple of takes?

Thanks all for the help.

[ChristopherT]

I much prefer Pro Tools playlists for takes.
Never any confusion.
Simple workflows are often best

[SonicAxiom]

we've already discussed the same subject in several threads in the past:

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=213660

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=212699

Multichannel drum recording/editing can be convenient and favorable for a no. of reasons. Other procedures can achieve the same. As always, it depends on what you are aming for and how you wanna get there. I'm prefering this method by far because it's more flexible and more powerful than other methods. It requires a bit more setting up but once you have it working you can save it as a track template for later use.

Splitting a multichannel item is like splitting a bunch of tracks at once but more convenient to handle. Same goes for using stretch markers in multichannel items. I find it much more convenient to only have a single item to edit instead of numerous separate items on different tracks. Functionality-wise, you are getting the same results - probably quicker and with less project cluttering.

You can cut, copy & paste multichannel items and you can also record multiple takes. I'm not a huge fan of keeping more than 2 or 3 takes. If a take is not spot on, I delete it and record a new one. There's no use in keeping non-decent takes.

You can also virtually/non-destructively nudge only the kick channel back or forth against other drum channels by inserting the "JS:Time adjustment" plugin into the appropriate, dedicated "kick" mixing track shown in my track template.

You can extend the functionality of the template to be able to also do drum replacement on top of the other possibilities by adding a few instances of ReaSamplOmatic5000. I'm in the process of making a tutorial video showing various aspects of the multichannel approach. However, it can take a while to finish it as I don't have a lot of time atm.

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