In this post, I wanted to share a few thoughts on drum editing. Specifically: 1) A general background on drum editing. 2) my experience and approach to drum editing from working with and talking to hundreds of artists and engineers.
The History of Drum Editing
There’s a lot of different opinions and approaches to drum editing, and what is considered “in time” “good timing” “well performed” drums. Before I dive into my approach and opinions, I think it’s important to summarize them.
Before the advent of Protools, editing drums (or anything for that matter) was a laborious process of splicing tape by hand. Recording to a click track/metronome wasn’t really done much in pop and rock music until the 1970s (If you want to understand more about the history of timing and click tracks, you can check out this lecture from Pete Calandra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyVBj61_T18 ).
During this pre Protools era, a performance with good timing was one that was performed with a human ebb and flow. Even the best session musicians of this era didn’t have mathematically perfect time. Recordings of drummers like John Bonham, Ringo Star, and any pre-Protools drummer fluctuate in timing throughout the record. This was a feature, not a bug. Good timing was more about playing well together as a group than it was about perfectly matching up with some mathematical grid on a computer screen.
Because of this, most recordings were done with musicians in the same room recording at the same time. This allowed musicians to listen to each other and create a solid group time.
Music in general was less about being perfect and more about capturing a real, authentic, emotionally impactful musical performance. Some of the most iconic songs in history are out of time and out of tune, and those imperfections have become beloved features of those recordings.
The Advent of Protools
When Protools came around, you could now visually see a grid that perfectly mathematically represented the tempo of a piece of music, and you had access to a digital click track/metronome. You could also cut and move audio files much easier than tape, and easily see how an instrument lined up with the perfect mathematical grid of the tempo (bpm).
When Protools came out with the drum editing tool, Beat Detective in 2005, engineers could now easily nudge every hit in a drum performance to be perfectly mathematically in time with the click of a button. This is called “quantizing.”
With the advent of synthesizers and midi, you now had musical elements in songs that couldn’t listen to the other musicians and speed up or slow down with the band, they were perfectly locked to whatever tempo (bpm) the digital audio workspace (DAW) was set to. It was now up to the musicians to play as perfectly as they could to those synthetic sounds, and the engineer to edit any tempo fluctuations out of the human performances.
These capabilities and changes in music started to change what people meant when they said that a musical performance was “tight” “well performed” “had good timing” “grooved well” etc. Over time, these concepts started to be less about the musicians listening well to each other and approached the tempo in a way that sounds musically appealing, but more about a musical performance conforming audibly and visually to the mathematical grid of the tempo that the song was performed at.
This change played out and continues to play out differently in different genres and geographical locations, with some areas and styles of music caring more about “the grid” or about the natural human feel.
The State of Drum Editing
Today, attitudes about and approaches to drum editing are very diverse. In most commercial/pop music environments, the grid is king, and you’ll have the top session drummers in the world getting quantized to be perfectly locked to the tempo of a song.
A good example of this would be a pop country recording session in Nashville. Engineers and producers that I’ve worked with in this environment will quantize every performance no matter the musician.
On the other hand, you have a more old school/purist approach that wants to preserve the timing of the musicians. Rick Beato has a good handful of videos breaking down how the thing that makes music groove is any bands personal sense of time and criticizing modern music’s obsession with “perfect” timing.
One of my favorite illustrations of the state of things is the Nashville session drummer Jerry Roe. Jerry is considered the busiest session drummer in Nashville. He plays on all the top country songs and is probably quantized by lots of engineers he works with.
A lot of times, when time is money, and an engineer is used to doing things a certain way, they’ll just quanitze performances without thinking about it. Jerry has an original band called Friendship Commanders where they make a point to not record to a click track, edit any drums, tune any vocals, or use any drum samples. They are self-described as “melodic sludge metal” - a genre that is typically recorded to a click, and heavily sampled and edited.
The lack of click track, editing, and sampling is a point of pride for Jerry and his bandmate Buick Audra (vocas, guitar, songwriting). If you listen to the band, it sounds amazing. Jerry is the king of playing drums in a modern click conscious music industry. But, you can hear subtle ebbs and flows of tempo in Jerry’s playing and in the band - a feature that would doubtless be ironed out in any of Jerry’s pop country sessions. But, this is a feature that Jerry and Buick view as helpful to the authenticity of their music’s brand and message.
I frequently encounter artists and engineers who consider subtle/intentionally musical shifts in tempo as a huge asset. I also encounter artists and engineers who consider anything with subtle shifts in timing as “bad timing” or “poor musicianship.”
My Philosophy
So, what do I think? Do I despise the idea of having my sacred unicorn time-feel chopped to oblivion to fit some commercialized standard of perfect timing? Or does my perfectly calibrated internal metronome wince if I ever hear any fluctuations in a song’s tempo?
My answer is neither. Like lots of other drummers, and ALL session drummers, I enjoy playing in different genres, and with different artists, producers, and engineers.
When I approach recording drums on someone else’s song, my main concern is: What are THEY looking for? Also, what part of the process are they in?
I play on songs that have perfectly quanitzed synthesizers and require drums that are really tight to the click in their performance and editing, and I am happy to play as tight as I can to the click and quantize the performance.
I also play on songs with loose timing, sometimes with no click at all! In those cases, my priority is to try and play to the other instruments in the song.
On almost every song I play on, I end up scooting at least one or two hits to make sure the drums sound as good as possible in the song.
The Real Issues
I can point to amazing records that have every note quantized, and amazing records that have glaring “mistakes” in their timing and vocal notes that are out of tune.
In my experience, problems don’t arise from quantizing, or because they have a more human feel. The problems I see arise from a few factors:
Not recording music intentionally
Not knowing how to edit well
Not having a good ear for timing
Whether you want everything quantized or not, you need to use your ears and make sure things sound good. There’s a HUGE difference between a musical human performance, and a sloppy performance. Don’t use authenticity as an excuse for bad playing/editing.
If you want your song to have minimal editing and great human feel, make sure every instrument is played exactly how you want it before you record the next track, or record everyone in a room at the same time. If you try and record drums to a poorly performed and unedited demo, the drummer isn’t going to be able to play the best human drum track.
If you don’t have a great ear for timing, get someone who does have one to edit your instruments. Even tools like Beat Detective have different ways of quantizing instruments that may or may not sound good on your song.
If you want everything perfectly in time and quantized, quantize each instrument before recording the next instrument. This will help the next musician to play to something that isn’t going to throw them off.
When I produce a record that I’m playing drums on, I try to edit the other instruments I track drums, so that I can feel and hear whether or not I’m playing in time with the music. Even if you’re quantizing everything, it helps to have the performances as close to perfectly in time as possible.
What’s your approach to playing “in time” and editing a performance?