Hey everyone, I'm hoping to gain some insight into how the pro's go about recording multiple takes of drums and compiling them into one good complete take. I'm managing to do it in Cubase SX3 but the process is somewhat complicated - more so that I think it should be. This is my current workflow:
-Create 8 tracks, one for each mic coming through my interface, put them all into a folder track called Drums. Route each track output to a group track called "Drums group"
-Set all tracks to "Lanes Fixed" (i.e. show lanes)
-Record my first take. Straight after hitting stop I hit Ctrl+G to group all the events together. Also lock their positions.
-Record further takes until I'm confident that I have a good performance of each song section.
-Splice them all into song sections, then listen through and choose the best pieces for each section.
Right, so this method means that I can minimize 7 of the tracks and enlarge one (usually "Room Mic", but that's not important) and any edits performed on the Room Mic track will also be made to the related tracks on the other 7 tracks. But this is so long as I GROUPED them and ensured that they were grouped before editing. I haven't found an "auto-group" function like Sonar has - does a later version of Cubase have this feature? If I slip up and forget to do the grouping, I either have to undo, undo, undo and go right back to where I was prior to editing. And I'm constantly zooming and straining my eyes to ensure that all related events are grouped before doing any edits. I feel like it's making me work harder, and that isn't a good thing when trying to both drum and engineer at once!
Also - If I have done more than about 4 takes, this makes the lanes very small and hard to see/get my head around. While the obvious answer would just be "do less takes" this isn't always a possibility. So for one of my projects I selected all events over the 8 tracks, then used the "delete overlaps" command. This condensed everything and made it easier to finetune the cuts and add crossfades - but if I wanted to go back and replace a section with a different take, well, that would just be a nightmare. I found one workaround - duplicate the Drums folder track and keep it disabled in case I want to use it, and then delete overlaps on the original folder. This introduces the problem that my grouped takes/events are NOT copied across to the new "drums backup" folder. Annoying.
Surely there is a tried and true method for handling multiple tracks and multiple takes. I have the same issue with guitar/bass - close mic, room mic, DI, only on a lesser scale. Essentially all I want - is to have one track which controls the 8 drum tracks. I generally never have reason to directly edit the "Snare Bottom Mic" track on it's own :P
Is there a command to show lanes on all tracks, as opposed to having to click the button on each track one at a time? Also a way to "disable/enable all selected tracks"
When I select "lanes off" why do my events all show up grey, instead of the color they're meant to be?
Is there a way to automatically group and lock the positions of recorded events straight after recording?
Might as well ask this - what DAW is most suitable for recording musicians with multiple tracks and takes and keeping them all organized and easily managed?
Sorry for the long first post, I have scoured the internet intensely over the last few weeks and learnt a huge deal about Cubase but this is one topic I haven't yet found. Also I understand things may have improved in later versions or Cubase. All help and ideas are much appreciated!