5 Drum Editing Tips For Beginners

If you're new to music production and audio recording, you may not have not properly explored the editing rabbit hole yet. Audio editing can be a time-consuming and tedious task at the best of times, even more so when you're working with multi-mic drum recordings.

If you don't know what you're doing, there's the potential for a lot to go wrong, a lot of mistakes to be made and also a large amount of hair to be pulled out in the process. Here's our top 5 drum editing tips to give you a head start and prevent you wasting your valuable time (and your sanity) in the process.

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Why Is Drum Editing Important?

Say that you've just finished recording a song, EP or album. Whether it's been a recorded in your bedroom or a professional studio, the next course of action for the audio tracks is for them to be edited. The editing process consists of the following:

• Performance Enhancement - choosing the best takes and replacing any mistakes to achieve the best comp (final commited performance) as possible.

• Time Alignment - adjusting the timing and groove to be more in time with the set tempo of the track (click/metronome) or other instruments.

• Clean Up - Removing any unwanted noise or artefacts from the audio tracks.

Completing these editing tasks before moving onto mixing is very important because if the elements of the song aren't in time with another, lack consistency/flow and contain noise or performance errors - no amount of mixing is going to make the track sound professional, cohesive and radio ready.

Drums are the backbone of any full-band instrumental song, they should provide the listener with a consistent rhythm and groove which sets the pace and the emotion of the song as a whole. The problem is that unless you have a very well rehearsed drummer, most drum recordings aren't played cleanly and consistenly enough to a metronome to be used without editing.

Drums are also inherently more difficult and time consuming to edit than most other instruments due to their complexity and multi-mic setup. Therefore, to get you started we're going to give you 5 fail-safe tips to edit drums cleanly and efficiently to achieve pro edits, fast.

Drum Editing Tip #1 - Don't Move Your Tracks Out Of Phase

First of all, I'm assuming here that you have phase aligned your drum tracks already. If you haven't, I recommend that you do to create the easiest and most enjoyable editing experience for yourself as possible. If you want to learn how to phase align drums or want to know WTF that even means, you can learn everything you'll need to know and more by reading our ultimate guide to phase aligning drums.

So, say your drums are phase aligned and ready to edit, it's very important that the first thing you do, if you haven't already is to group all your drum mic tracks together. This means whatever adjustment you make to a track going forward, whether that's a cut or drag, it does the exact same thing to all the tracks.

You need to move all the elements of the drum kit in phase (in sync) with each other, otherwise it will cause a whole array of unwanted artefacts, including flammed shell hits and washy cymbals.

For more information on why this is important and the physics behind how phase difference impacts your audio tracks, read our ultimate guide to phase aligning drums.

Drum Editing Tip #2 - Organise Your Session

Drum editing can be a time-consuming process, especially if you have less experience with editing or you’re working on a larger project with multiple songs. Ideally, you want to make the audio editing workflow as streamlined and hassle-free as possible so you can quickly move onto the next stage—mixing.

There are a few effective ways to arrange your session in your DAW that make navigating the performance easier and, in turn, save you time when editing audio files. Here are a few strategies to help:

• Ordering and colour coding your tracks:

  This creates a solid foundation to work from. As you become familiar with the system you’ve put in place, you’ll start to recognise exactly which waveform belongs to which track without constantly referring to track names or wasting time glancing around the screen. This helps you slip into your flow state and make faster micro-decisions, which really adds up over the course of a session. I also recommend placing the most important tracks—the ones you need to focus on the most—right at the top of your session with increased track height. These will typically be the close-mic shell tracks: kick, snare, and toms, followed by the cymbal close mics and, finally, the overheads and room mics.

• Marking the sections of the song:

  When editing, you often need to refer back to similar sections to find replacement parts for poorly performed phrases. For example, if a fill in the first chorus is nearly impossible to edit cleanly without creating audio glitches, you’ll likely want to copy and paste that same fill from the second chorus. Manually searching for these parts can eat up a lot of time unless you know the song bar by bar. Clearly labelling each section makes it much quicker and easier to locate what you need without knocking yourself out of your editing flow

Drum Editing Tip #3- Splice, Don't Stretch

When it comes to editing drums, one of the golden rules—especially for beginners—is to splice, not stretch. So what exactly does that mean?

Splicing refers to the process of cutting the audio at the transient (the initial peak of a hit) and manually sliding that region to align more tightly with the grid, without changing the length of the audio itself. This approach keeps the natural sound of the recorded hit intact.

On the other hand, using time-stretching tools like Elastic Audio (in Pro Tools) or Flex Time (in Logic) actually alters the speed or duration of the audio waveform to match the grid. While these tools can be useful in specific scenarios, time-stretching drums—especially live recordings—can often introduce unwanted artefacts. This includes phasey sounds, a loss of punch or transient impact, or unnatural tails on cymbals and room mics.

By focusing on cutting and moving the audio—rather than warping it—you preserve the raw energy and punch of the performance. It’s a more controlled, non-destructive way to tighten up timing without sacrificing tone or realism. Yes, it can be a bit more time-consuming at first, but it consistently yields more musical and professional-sounding results.

Drum Editing Tip #4 - Focus On The Shells

When you’re editing a full drum kit, it can be tempting to try and get every single mic—kick, snare, toms, hats, overheads, rooms—all perfectly aligned to the grid. But not only is this unnecessary, it can actually over-edit your drums and remove a lot of the natural feel of the performance.

Instead, focus your editing efforts on the core of the kit: the shells. These are your kick, snare, and tom close-mics—the elements that drive the groove and determine the tightness of the performance. Once the shells are edited properly, the rest of the kit—especially the overheads and cymbals—will almost always fall naturally into place.

Why does this work? Because the overheads and room mics tend to capture more of the ambience and movement of the performance, rather than the precise timing of the hits. If you over-edit these, it can actually make the drums sound robotic or phasey. By leaving the cymbal and ambient mics a little looser and focusing on locking in the shells, you maintain both precision and feel—resulting in tight, musical drums that still groove like a live performance should.

Drum Editing Tip #5 - Adding Crossfades

If there’s one editing step you absolutely cannot afford to skip, it’s adding crossfades at every single edit point. Crossfades ensure smooth transitions between audio clips and eliminate harsh clicks, pops, and digital artefacts that can sneak in during drum editing.

When you cut and move audio clips—especially when working with multi-mic drum recordings—those clips no longer have the natural decay they once did. Without a crossfade, the transition between two regions can sound abrupt, unnatural, or even glitchy. A properly applied crossfade gently blends the audio before and after the edit, restoring that natural continuity and masking any potential edits.

It’s also important to consider the length and shape of the crossfade. For most drum editing situations, a 5–10 ms crossfade with a linear (straight) shape will do the trick. That’s long enough to make the transition seamless without smearing the transient or softening the punch. For more aggressive or rapid-fire sections—like blast beats or double kicks—you may need slightly longer fades (10–20 ms) to ensure stability.

To save time, you can batch-create crossfades after finishing your edits. This massively speeds up your workflow and ensures consistency across the session. Many DAWs even let you program a shortcut to automatically create your preferred fade settings, reducing the chance of missing a fade or applying one with the wrong settings.

Adding crossfades might seem like a small step, but it’s one of the most important habits you can build as an editor. It’s what separates quick and dirty editing from clean, professional-grade drum edits that are ready to be mixed.

Want to take everything you just learned even further? Check out our full PDF guide — it’s the shortcut I wish I had when I started editing drums years ago.