Manual Editing Vs Quantising: Why Slip Editing *Beats* Quantising for Live Drums
- drumaudioediting
- May 30
- 6 min read
The ongoing debate across a lot of audio editing forums is the classic manual editing vs quantising argument. Truth is, editing isn't a rigid, one-size-fits-all process and different situations require different editing solutions. In this article, we're going to explain in the context of editing live feel drums, why manual editing (or slip editing) beats quantising methods such as beat detective.
Quick heads up: we put together a full PDF guide packed with drum editing hacks — you can check it out here if you want an even deeper dive.
Manual Editing vs Quantising: What Do We Mean By Each?
Manual editing is a basic and vague term that most people use to describe slip editing, whether they're aware of it or not. That is because slip editing requires you to manually cut/splice the audio files and then manually drag each hit or note closer to the grid...and then manually rejoin the files to cover any gaps made.
Quantising is a generic term for moving notes or a pieces of audio closer to a musical grid, usually a fixed tempo. From my perception, a lot of people in online audio communities refer to tools that automatically quantise audio and mostly bypass the need for manual editing as 'quantising'. This includes tools like Flex Time in Logic Pro X and Beat Detective in Pro Tools.
To avoid any confusion in this article, I'll be using the term auto-quantising for the this.
Manual Editing 1 - 0 Auto Quantising - Maintaining Groove
The first point of this shootout goes to slip editing! When editing live feel drums, as the term 'live-feel' suggests, maintaining the natural groove of the drum recording is super important.
When using auto quantise functions, this by default aimlessly snaps the hits straight to the grid which is great for achieving extremely tight sounding drums for pop songs and high-production-value music. This does suck out a good percentage of the musicallity and rhythmic variation of the performance though, which saps the live-feel element.
You don't always have to auto quantise 100% to the grid though! Most auto quantise functions across the various DAWs allow you dictate a quantising strength, usually a value between 1-100%. The higher the value, the closer the edit points are quantised to the grid from their original position, relative to the nearest beat.
Despite the above, manual editing wins this point because it gives you the most direct control over every single edit point. This type of editing tends to be more musical and creative because you can tackle each section differently, as you go.
For example, you may come across a 2 bar section that grooves really well, however it's consistenly too far after the beat and sounding a little lazy. Tackling editing manually not only lets you identify this in the first place, but it also gives you the freedom to nudge that entire section a touch earlier to make it tighter to the beat, while retaining the authentic natural groove.
Manual Editing 1 - 1 Auto Quantising - Workflow Speed
With the next point going to auto quantising, we draw level on the scoreboard. Many people will argue that auto quantising is lazy and non-musical, especially in the context of a drum recording that needs to groove. One thing they cannot argue with though, is how much more time efficient it is if it's used properly.
Auto quantising methods such as beat detective are rarely 100% accurate, there are almost always a few cases in each drum recording where the tool misreads transient point. The effectiveness of these tools also relies on your performance being relatively tight already, as the algorithm will automatically snap each hit to the nearest gridline.
The reason I mention the above is to express that these time saving tools are not perfect and still require a little adjusting and setting up. Saying that, they are still mostly much quicker than slip editing which can be extremely time consuming.
With manual editing, not only are you performing the drum editing actions manually, but you're also taking that extra time to listen, evaluate and make decisions. This can be really trial and error, especially if you're a novice editor.
With the above in mind, how can you make the most out of auto quantising's efficiency, while still producing live feel drum edits? Below is a qucik tip for you.
Auto Quantising Tip For Maintaining Groove
If you want tight sounding drums while maintaining some of the live feel, you can auto quantise the shells only (kick, snare, toms) and leave the hi-hats and cymbals as their natural groove to add some push and pull to the performance.
If the cymbals and hat grooves are performed too loosely, you can try to quantise these seperately with a lower qunatising strength of about 50%, to bring them more in time without killing the feel.
Manual Editing 2 - 1 Auto Quantising - Gaining Momentum and Preserving Energy
Manual drum editing sneaks into the lead here due to a really valuable, yet under appreciated point. Conserving mental energy is so important during audio editing. The process itself can be time consuming, tedious and at times frustrating.
As I briefly mentioned in the last section, auto quantising tools will rarely give you 100% accurate results if you just hit a couple of buttons and hope for the best. DAW softwares and algorithms makes mistakes, plenty of them too.
If you aren't wary of how these tools work, what can go wrong and how to prevent user problems; you're going to be opening up the doors to lots of future headaches, while you sit there for hours on end fixing your own fixes. It can be really punishing to your mindset when you're taking one step forward and two steps back.
Not only can you end up spending the same amount of time auto quantising as slip editing, if you don't follow the correct processes, but you will likely also be less satisfied with the result because of how you got there (and much more depleted in energy).
If you aren't familair with auto quantising tools and how to use them properly, manual editing is the best way to go for conserving energy, making slow but sustainable progress and achieving an (almost) enjoyable flow-state.
When you start slip editing, it can feel like a nause. You can think to yourself how long it's going to take you to get through the song and how many edit points you'll have to make. But as you start to make progress you become familiar with the track, the drummers playing style and what editing approach works best with both of these in mind.
You'll be able to use a mixture of audible and visual cues to make exponentially better (and faster) decisions, proofing your work and edit points as you go so there's little stagnancy in your workflow. The creative freedom and enjoyable nature of this style of editing can actually give you more energy, rather than take it away.
Manual editing isn't always a breeze though. If the drummer's performance is too sloppy, you can be forced to spend extra time fixing edit points to prevent horrible audio artefacts that come from excessive slip editing.
Here are two helpful guides for you on how to tackle the main issues that come from manual editing:
Extending the length of a hit/note: https://www.drumaudioediting.com/post/how-to-extend-the-length-of-a-note-hit-without-using-elastic-audio
How to fix cymbal stuttering artefacts: https://www.drumaudioediting.com/post/how-to-fix-cymbal-stuttering-when-editing-drums
Manual Editing 3 - 1 Auto Quantising - Attention To Detail
In the context of live-feel drums, manual editing takes the final point here and overall wins this shootout.
Yes, auto quantising tools can provide you with a much quicker and streamlined editing process when used properly. Realistically though, it's a careless process when you keep natural groove in mind. Your intention when hitting the 'quantise' button isn't a musical one, it's a time saving one.
You're doing this to get a quick fix and avoid having to put the time in to listen to each section of the song and the discomfort of having to make dozens and dozens of musical micro-decisions. You need a musical based process to acheive musical results.
Listening through the song cronologically, section-by-section really does enable you to get into every detail of the audio and the performance because the process has forced you to do so. There's no getting away from the kick/snare flam, or that accidental rimshot, it's right in front of you.
This attention to detail means you're much more likely to come out of it with a polished, yet human sounding performance that is free from artefacts and mistakes. Auto quantising serves it's purpose, but if you're a newbie to those kind of tools, your performance deserves the extra attention to detail and human care of manual editing.
I just want to clarify, for transparency, that I use auto quantising (beat detective) most of the time for all types of drum editing. That's because I do this professionally and have done for many years. I know exactly what I need to do to make beat detective work for me, and get me the results I want with minimal problems.
If you are interest in personal 1-on-1 editing coaching, to remotely learn how to achieve pro-level edits, fast; you can learn more about our coaching plans here.
Want to take everything you just learned even further? Check out our full guide — it’s the shortcut we wish we had when I started editing drums years ago.
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