Quantizing drums

  1. Render the shells and use them as the guide track.1
  2. Group items together with g.
  3. Use Dynamic split on the guide track.2
  4. Turn off auto-crossfade and trim content behind from the options drop-down.1
  5. How to quantize with Reaper to taste.
  6. Then follow this with Fill gaps between selected items. For drums, Use a leading pad of 50ms.3

These days, I’m using MK Slicer.

Don’t edit them too hard. Something I’ve learned from electronic producers, like Alice Yalcin Efe, is that having swing and having hits slightly off the grid creates groove.4

Warren Huart does this manually. If something is out-of-time, he’ll edit the hit by cutting it (just before the hit, so as to preserve some looseness) and press a key command to align it to the grid.5 I prefer to use slip editing for this.

  1. Beat Detective Tutorial in Reaper (faster and easier than Pro Tools) ↩ ↩2

  2. Drum Editing without Stretch Markers in REAPER ↩

  3. Drum Editing In Reaper: Part 2 ↩

  4. 4 Red Flags of BAD DRUMS (Avoid making these!) - YouTube ↩

  5. Pro Mix Academy ↩

Notes mentioning this note

Mixing drums
Mixing drums Try to get an even hit between kick and snare.1 Pro Mix Academy ↩
Use a leading pad to create a smoother quantization
Use a leading pad to create a smoother quantization When using [[Fill gaps between selected items]], use a leading pad...