Time Alignment for Recorded Drums

[nebula328]

I apologize if this is a basic question, but I’m not having any luck finding an exact answer.  I have a multitrack recording of a live drummer to a click and there are a few spots in the song where the drums are hitting towards the back of the beat while the other instruments are hitting a little more forward on the beat.  I was going to manually edit those spots, and a friend recommended using a different program to more easily realign those sections.  Once they suggested that, I thought there has to be a way to do that in SD3 (and probably better than the program they recommended).  I’ve never used SD3 for this purpose, so now would be the time for me to learn.  I’m assuming I could do it by importing the audio, converting to midi, making the fixes/quantizing, and then reconverting to audio (as I prefer to use my recorded parts on this song rather than SD3 samples).  Is that correct?  If so or not, could someone guide me to the correct section in the user manual to figure this out or if anyone is willing to explain the process that would help, too.  I appreciate any help/info!

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.3.7
Operating system: macOS Sequoia (15)

Topic

[Mark King]

That sounds like hard work. I put audio into my DAW where I can either quantise it or use audio warp to do multitrack alignment. If you do it in sd3 then you would have to replace all the drums for them to align. I’m sure it’s possibly but I wouldn’t want to do it this way. I use the drum replacement in sd3 but not in standalone. I use it in my DAW.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[nebula328]

That makes sense. I knew I could do it with replacing the drums, but we want to keep the ones we tracked. Thankfully, it’s just a couple spots and will be easy to do manually. I just got to thinking about SD3 and wasn’t sure if it would be an option or not. Thanks for the reply!

[Scott Eshleman]

Once you’ve converted your drums to MIDI, made your fixes & quantized the MIDI,
it’s my belief that you can only revert the MIDI to Toontrack (or another brand) samples.
I don’t think your original audio is an option any more.

[nebula328]

That’s what I thought, but wasn’t 100% sure. I appreciate the reply!

[Bear-Faced Cow]

Something you need to ask yourself is: is this something that needs to be done? When you listen to the drums without the click, does it sound like it is speeding up and slowing down? If it sounds natural without the click, then why don’t you beat map it in your DAW? That will give your song a more organic feel than doing it the other way around.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

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Thanked by: Brad

[Author]

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