Bad drummer + almost good bassist + bad guitar parts + bad vocalist = save me!

[solarfall]

As i said,
what can i do if the drummer sucks (no groove at all and shit fills) and every other player has followed his time during tracking?

It's like he played without metronome so i can't use a midi drums part because there's no grid to follow!

The song sounds lifeless even with the following edits:

- drum replacement (kick + snare + toms);

- sidechain compression on drums bus;

- sidechain distortion on drums bus;

- medium/heavy compression on overheads;

- light compression on drums bus;

- heavy eq/comp on bass guitar to get maximum punch.

Any more ideas?

I could post the drums track but i wanted to save your ears .

Wating for suggestion before i kill myself.

[crying1986]

You can't do much...it's just going to give u a headache. Wrap it up asap and keep your name off of it. Let them know where you're coming from in a nice way...and choose your clients more wisely.

[cavern]

I wish i could offer some kind of gem here but even with all the tools available, its not magic.
If they are that bad,just tell them,they can re-record it with the drummer playing to a click or you can bury them in effects as much as possible and that's what they get.
What are they expecting from this?That's the important thing.
Do they understand their limitations as players?

[Jeff Hayat]

Originally Posted by solarfall

The song sounds lifeless even with the following edits:

- drum replacement (kick + snare + toms);

- sidechain compression on drums bus;

- sidechain distortion on drums bus;

- medium/heavy compression on overheads;

- light compression on drums bus;

- heavy eq/comp on bass guitar to get maximum punch.

If you have already tried everything there, you may be SOOL. A good recording starts with good musicians. Better to have great musicians recorded and mixed by an amatuer, as opposed to crappy musicians who can barely play recorded by (for ex.) Bruce Swedien. Sure, Bruce's recording will sound great sonically, but if the performances suck, what's the point?

Do the best you possibly can, wipe yourself clean, and move on.

Best of luck.

[Aaron Miller]

Ask the band to give it a listen and ask them if they are satisfied with the performance.

[donnylang]

When confronted with an artistic/creative problem such as this, I always see 3 choices:

1. fix it
2. cover it up
3. emphasize the flaws

An examples of emphasis and covering up would be to add way too much reverb and send the whole thing through a distotion pedal, turning it into an intentional mess.

[fastlanestoner]

All you can do is to retrack. Don't waste your time with more edits

[rogerbrain]

best thing to do is get paid in advance.

are you engineering or producing?

sounds like they are self producing.. let them go at it.

I know we love music ..but once you 'open the doors' you are a biz. get the money and record what they do.. no reflection on you..

[ProfessorNick]

If the drums are out of time, use quantize/beat slicing to move them around enough to get them grooving. See if you can re-track the guitars if stretching and quantifying them makes them sound odd. Then re-record the guitars either full on or direct and use amp simulation to the newly adjusted drums. Trust me, it can be done with enough time. Problem is how much are you willing to invest? I find that it can take an hour to fix something that can be redone correctly in 4 minutes or less.

[ShadowAMD]

Use a shotgun (Mic) :P

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by Aaron Miller

Ask the band to give it a listen and ask them if they are satisfied with the performance.

That is the answer for this situation.

I take it there is no producer? No one from the band who is responsible for making decisions for the band and seeing that their artistic vision is met? No one who should be worried about this besides you? Hint: there should be. And not you. For future consideration.

[drummerGlyn]

Originally Posted by Aaron Miller

Ask the band to give it a listen and ask them if they are satisfied with the performance.

This has got to be the way forward. Maybe they're happy with the "organic" feel of the drums If they're happy, do your best and move on. As long as both parties know what to expect as a finished result there's no issue.

The problem starts when they expect an amazing mix to miraculously appear from a shoddy set of recordings/performances.

As they say, you can't polish a turd

[solarfall]

Very good suggestions here.
My conclusion is this:

i've got to complete the mix as soon as possible in the best way possible (even knowing that it will sound not so good). Then get paid and then stay away from that project.
I will deny til death that i worked on that material.

Anyway there's the possibility i'll post the finished product here.

Have a nice day.
Giovanni

[stevens119]

without a click, you can't do much....however...if it were tracked to a click, then you could do a whole lot. I can fix almost anything...with tab to transient. But without a grid, it's much harder

[solarfall]

Originally Posted by stevens119

without a click, you can't do much....however...if it were tracked to a click, then you could do a whole lot. I can fix almost anything...with tab to transient. But without a grid, it's much harder

This is a big dilemma because the track was recorded with click but the drummer managed to ovverride the click in his ears and play at his own tempo.

Just to say: 1/4 of the song is played in time. 3/4 is played much faster then the click track (maybe a quarter note faster).

I'm a drummer to and i can't figure out how it was possible to go so much out of sync.

Giovanni

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Because he couldn't hear it. It is not unusual for the click to get lost.

There is an old sig from someone around here, "Don't blame me, I just recorded what you played."

[nocoJack]

My old producer always said, "If it sucks, no one will hear it anyway." Just get them finished and out of there and move on!

[misterlong]

We produced a band for a label once which was so bad, we sent them out to the pub while we did some "technical stuff" and I got one of my session guys to re-record the drums, playing badly to sound a bit like the band drummer. We did the guitars like this too. Couldn't let them know or they were gonna kick up a fuss! They were so bad, but had no idea! The fact they got signed didn't help with this complete denial.
When the guy came back he was amazed at how good we had made him sound, but he "couldn't remember doing that fill!"

the band got very quickly dropped off the label, and the song writer retained.

We just had to do what we could and maintain some sorta working relationship with the band cos we were on the clock with a label. The stuff sounded passable at the end, but was never going to be great.

I wouldn't bother doing that again. Tell the label they ar shit, and that you want some good musicians!!

long, out!

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by nocoJack

My old producer always said, "If it sucks, no one will hear it anyway." Just get them finished and out of there and move on!

The problem with that is that no matter what, it will be the studios fault. band out of tune? Studio. Out of time? Studio. Song lyric awful? Studio. Girlfriend in trouble? It's that darned studio again. Always. And it is impossible to explain. The best thing is to never let this happen. The next best thing is to insist that your name not be associated with the project in any way. Even then, it's on the street and people know. Gotta fix it or take the heat and potential losses forever.

[Boska]

Do it yourself. or Superior drummer, and Melodyne, melodyne as ****! or swallow your mandom and ask for better takes.

[grabme]

Would love to hear it, surely it can't be as bad as you say it is?

[mhs2xs]

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

The problem with that is that no matter what, it will be the studios fault. band out of tune? Studio. Out of time? Studio. Song lyric awful? Studio. Girlfriend in trouble? It's that darned studio again. Always. And it is impossible to explain. The best thing is to never let this happen. The next best thing is to insist that your name not be associated with the project in any way. Even then, it's on the street and people know. Gotta fix it or take the heat and potential losses forever.

Yeah, those are the worst. I was the asshole in the couple of bands that I was in that had people in them that were like this. Luckily I wasn't with them for very long. Some people just can't believe that they sound that bad. Even though I had to point it out, and sometimes clandestine recordings were required, I told them I was right there with them. We sound good and we sound shitty, as a band. I told them that nobody hears a drunk ass singer mumbling out of key and singing the first verse three times and says, "That singer sucks, but that drummer, he's badass". It's always, "They suck". It's a reflection on everybody, so I'd demand they get their shit together, or I was gone.

Some would still endeavor to run up to the sound goon or the engineer and try to blame them for eq'ing the feces into their performance because, they've been told by a bunch of drunk/stoned friends that they're the greatest. There's a huge dilemma you AE types face when it comes to this. On one hand, they're a client and you want to do the best you can for them, even if it means you're making them sound like something they're not. You guys can work wonders most of the time and even a half-assed performance can be made to sound phenomenal given your experience and gear. On the other hand, you can spend forty forevers polishing a turd to no avail.

I like the idea of just spending a nominal amount of time trying to get the tracks stacked and sounding as good as you can. As far as trying to chop it up to get it in time, I'd leave it. Anybody else that's for real should be able to tell what you did. If not, I'm not sure you'd want to deal with the situation on a regular basis anyway. Sometimes, it's best to give people the true example what they sounded like. If they're tone-deaf, spastic, megalomaniacs and think it sounds great anyway, cool, they're happy. If they're honest and have decent ears, they'll hear it and try to get better, or replace the weak links. Otherwise, you AE goons can only dance around the fire and conjur up so much voodoo before your mojo be done runded outz. Real musicians know this and show up prepared to perform and not "hash & thrash", so to speak.

[cavern]

Ha ha,i find a lot of people think they should be recording but they should really be practicing.

[duff mcshark]

Originally Posted by solarfall

i've got to complete the mix as soon as possible in the best way possible (even knowing that it will sound not so good). Then get paid and then stay away from that project.

Make them pay you for the day before you even start setting up microphones. That way when they're not satisfied with the final mix they can't just say they don't want it and not pay you. Even stricter people demand a deposit just to book the time, then pay the balance when they get there.

[Beat Poet]

I have to ask why you even took on the job in the first place, did this lot not even have a demo . . . or is this their demo?

[stevens119]

Originally Posted by solarfall

This is a big dilemma because the track was recorded with click but the drummer managed to ovverride the click in his ears and play at his own tempo.

Just to say: 1/4 of the song is played in time. 3/4 is played much faster then the click track (maybe a quarter note faster).

I'm a drummer to and i can't figure out how it was possible to go so much out of sync.

Giovanni

Really though, 1/4 note off isn't too bad. I would fix it if I was being paid by the amount of time I put in. Fix everything, cause when you move the drums, you have to move everything else too. If you fix it, and it could be good and the band would be impressed. If you don't fix it, then you at least didn't have to spend the time

[Jose]

Leave it as it is.I assume you are not earning a zillion for that demo.You can't fake a whole band's talent...

If you still tweaking everything with so much plugins you could rename the band for something like THE VST BOYS feat. QUANTIZATION.

[js1]

Originally Posted by Jose

If you still tweaking everything with so much plugins you could rename the band for something like THE VST BOYS feat. QUANTIZATION.

My name for that band is "Otto Toon and the Beat Detectives".

I do know that if you wanted to grid it up with Cubase 6, it would be straightforward:

- Group the tracks into an edit group
- Detect the tempo based on the drums (prob a mix of kick/snare). This will create a tempo map. Your drums will be now on a grid (albeit on a variable tempo).
- If the drum feel is OK, then you can move the other parts around.
- If you'd prefer it to be on a strict tempo, then set a static tempo, and Cubase will stretch/compress everything to be on the grid.

I'm not familiar with the ProTools, um, tools to fix this stuff. Given that ProTools kinda wrote the book on "correction", I would have thought that there must be a similar way of doing this.

Whether it's worth doing is a different matter.

js

[Iamcory]

Originally Posted by js1

My name for that band is "Otto Toon and the Beat Detectives".

I do know that if you wanted to grid it up with Cubase 6, it would be straightforward:

- Group the tracks into an edit group
- Detect the tempo based on the drums (prob a mix of kick/snare). This will create a tempo map. Your drums will be now on a grid (albeit on a variable tempo).
- If the drum feel is OK, then you can move the other parts around.
- If you'd prefer it to be on a strict tempo, then set a static tempo, and Cubase will stretch/compress everything to be on the grid.

I'm not familiar with the ProTools, um, tools to fix this stuff. Given that ProTools kinda wrote the book on "correction", I would have thought that there must be a similar way of doing this.

Whether it's worth doing is a different matter.

js

before i read the whole post i was gonna ask if pro tools can do this. but do you know if logic or ableton are able to do anything like that?

[JulianFernandez]

Originally Posted by Jose

If you still tweaking everything with so much plugins you could rename the band for something like THE VST BOYS feat. QUANTIZATION.

Jajaja, classic!