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Quantizing acoustic music? (Do you hear timing issues?)
I recorded a quick and dirty acoustic bit for a non-profit documentary trailer. Now, it seems that documentary is moving forward and might be grant-funded. They love the music and it will be used all over the finished product.
Here's the problem, I was in a rush and I didn't rehearse enough nor play it very well. This documentary is about Slovak immigrant settlements in America. My idea was to take a traditional Slovak folk melody and "Americanize" it. The Slovak National Anthem is based on a well-known folk melody, so I arranged it for Carter-style depression-era country on my father's 1930's Gibson archtop. I also added pedal steel which is from another era, hoping no one will call me on it. I'm not well versed in this style of music and I didn't play it well, particularly the bass. If you listen to the clip, either the guitar or the bass is off-beat at various times.
Rehearsing and re-recording is possible, but I'm not excited about it as all of the video work will also have to be re-recorded and edited.
The audio was recorded in Cubasis. What are my options for straightening this out with technology? (the video should still be synced enough if a few audio notes are shifted here and there, I hope.....)
Comments
Auria Pro’s warping works quite well. On iOS, I think it is the best tool for that.
Also, before mucking with it, it might be worth having someone you trust weigh in on whether the issues need correction.
You can add extra tracks and just record a short “punch in” segment to use to replace the bad spots in Cubasis. You might be able to chop out the bad note and shift it to align with the beat and make it an editing exercise.
@espiegel123 @McD
“ Also, before mucking with it, it might be worth having someone you trust weigh in on whether the issues need correction.”
I’m curious if you noticed timing issues?
Nice track. Congrats!. I wouldn’t worry about it, listening to the track I couldn’t notice anything wrong on a first listen. IMO you might end up making it worse, cos one you start aligning things to the beat it’s hard to stop and you might kill some of the emotion.
I understand it’s your music and that “off note” might be all you hear, we’ve been there. If that’s the case just fix the one or two very upsetting ones, don’t over do it.
Someone mentioned Auria. You can also use Auditor, which should be fine for just a couple of edits.
Really nice job on the recording! The only thing that sounds off to me is the timing on the bass. The guitar is the metronome in this case and the pedal steel is fairly forgiving as far as timing goes. The bass could easily be time aligned manually without any type of warping algorithms. Split the bass track before and after the out of time notes and shift them to align with the guitar strums. It will be a bit time consuming in Cubasis but can definitely be done.
Also, mix wise…I would center the bass in the stereo field. Or, if you do want to pan it, put it slightly to the right side because that’s where it’s located in the video. But…I’d just center it
Some of the bass notes do hit a bit "off the grid", but I don't know. The piece of music sounds perfectly fine to my ears. Not everything has to be timed perfectly in my opinion. Not even when producing beats. ❤️
The bass doesn’t need to be perfect but it’s definitely rushing enough to feel off in a few spots ..there’s a reason @Sabicas is asking and they seem to know that something seems weird with the audio. It’s such an easy fix to make it “right” so why not do that?
I guarantee that they’ll wish they had fixed it after the documentary gets released. Lol
Don't touch the guitar, but if you want to you can correct the bass - although 90% of people won't notice the timing issues.
Two options:
Import the bass track into Auria Pro, along with a reference for the rest of the mix (on another track) and use the audio warping to fix the timing. This works really well in my experience.
Alternatively stick with Cubasis and chop the audio track for the bass manually and re-align to the grid. Probably simpler but potentially less fidelity than the Auria approach. Personally I would try this first, and if it's not satisfactory then go for Auria.
I wouldn't use Auditor, the quality is nowhere near as good as Auria when it comes to warping.
Just want to say how much I enjoyed the music as it is, and watching that gorgeous archtop being played. What model of bass is it by the way?
above emphasis mine … I’m curious why you say this method could result in “less fidelity”? Any time you use an algorithm to warp audio, you are altering the actual audio file.
Alternatively, when you align audio manually, you are not altering the audio and (when done properly) it will result in no fidelity loss.
Edit: throwing this offer out to you @Sabicas… if you don’t feel like messing with it or you’re not getting the results that you want, send me the guitar and bass track (WAV file preferably) and I’ll edit it for you. I edit audio daily and could knock it out in 10-15 minutes.
…double post…
Because if you align the audio by just slicing it up there could be gaps and clicks etc...
Ahh, I see. That’s not necessarily changing the audio fidelity though, that’s just shitty editing. 😆
Why not re-record the bass track?
Because they don’t want to re-record the video too
Thanks for all of the responses. It’s a relief to hear that it’s not THAT noticeably off. I’m wrestling with the idea of leaving it alone while excusing it as more true to old folk music where there were no post-production corrections VS taking the risk of possibly improving it with surgical editing…..which also may screw it up further. I’ve always been anti-over-processing and sucking the life out of music by removing imperfections. This one, however, is really nagging me.
I started cutting up notes and moving them around in Cubasis, last night, but it kinda highlighted that the guitar is not perfectly aligned to the grid either. After quite a bit of tweaking, it’s not better and possibly worse. That means having Auria warp the bass might just make the guitar sound worse.
@mtenk That is very generous. I think I’ll take you up on that offer and if I like your results, maybe you can explain your process afterwards? I may not be able to get back to this until tonight or tomorrow, but I’ll send message you a link to the file downloads.
I’ll give that a try. Thanks.
I don’t have it in front of me right now, but it’s a Kala uBass “Rumbler”. It’s the basic model as I found they all sounded the same plugged in which is the only way I foresee using it.
Sounds good. If you don’t like the results I won’t be offended. Haha
Since you mentioned a grid I’m assuming you recorded this to a metronome? When you’re trying your edits within Cubasis you should treat the guitar as your “grid” and not the grid lines within Cubasis. Otherwise, it will still sound out of time in this situation (since the guitar is a bit off the grid too).
Isn’t music track independent from video?
It is. I recorded audio and video in the same take, however. I could probably get away with recording bass audio again and no one would really know but me. However, I never play the guitar part the same exact way, twice.
I like it. Sound very nice. I think moving the whole bass track could be a solution. Definitely an issue foe to listen to. Most of the bass track is ahead of everything else.