SUMMERY:

Beat Detective is probably one of the most in demand needs for tutorials out there. It's a very powerful tool and I want to show you how I use it and how to get the best results.

First off, make sure you have the Collection Mode Option for Beat Detective.

If your on Pro Tools HD then you'll have it. If your are running LE, you will need to have The Music Production Toolkit. I absolutely recommend you get this if you haven't already. Yes, it's kinda tight that Avid doesn't include all the extra features as a standard, but for now that's just the way it is. It cost some bucks but if your really want to get the best use out of Beat Detective then I wouldn't second guess it.


Below is what yours should look like if your have Collection Mode.






Okay so I have a small little session here with some drums selected. Simple verse into a Chorus. Just for the purpose of this tutorial.

Now I must stress that you should NEVER try to use Beat Detective across a whole song. It's far more practical, less stressful and far far easier to use beat Detective in sections. Bit by bit.
What I like to do, so I don't screw anything up, is group my drums and select a section, copy it and paste it at the end of the song and work on it there. Once I am finished and it's all locked up to my click track, I then select it and paste it back where I copied it from and move on to the next section.



Okay so when working on a section, first make sure all your drum track's are grouped. Next, select the section you want to work on. Now open up Beat Detective and make sure your on the Region Selection Page and then hit Capture Selection. When you hit Capture Selection you will notice that it will capture from the bars you have selected. In my case it's Bar 37 to Bar 45.



Always, Always, Always make sure the first thing you do is hit Capture Selection. I can't stress it enough. The majority of the time the reason why users can't get Beat Detective to work properly is that they forget to do this. I have done it so many times myself. Don't try to rush the process. Take your time.

Next to Capture Selection is Contains. This let's you choose what kind of notes your selection contains. 1/16 Notes, 1/8 Notes, 1/4 Notes and 1/32 Notes. So if your selection is an easy 1/8 Notes but has 1/16 Notes fill at the end then choose 1/16 Notes.

Now what we have to do is turn our Drum Group OFF. A really quick way to do this is hit Command and Shift and G. This toggles all your grouped Track's On and Off. So, turn your group Off and use the P and the : or ; Key to jump up and down your Drum Track's. I can't remember what the : key is called. Sorry.

I like to start with my Snare Track. So, for the purpose of this tutorial jump up or down to your Snare Track. It should be highlighted like this:



Open it up nice and large in your track's view so you can see what's going on.



Now hit Analyze. Next, bring the sensitivity slider up until it grabs only the snare hits. If it starts to grab more than you need don't worry. First, make sure that it does grab all your snares and then we can delete the triggers we don't want.

To do this, make sure that the triggers are indeed not snares, Select your Grab Tool and Option Click on the triggers to delete them. Now we go to Collection Mode.



In Collection Mode, we can Add Triggers so beat Detective remembers them. Hit Add All. Now, go back to Normal Mode and go to your Kick Drum track. Again just simply use the P and : Keys to do this.

Expand the Kick Track so you can see what's going on, and hit Analyze. Next we do the same thing. Use the sensitivity slider to Grab all the Kicks. I like to slide it all the way down first and then bring it back up to grab the triggers I want.

After you have all your triggers, again we want to go to Collection Mode apart from this time we want to hit Add Unique. Add All adds all the triggers, if we hit that it would erase all the triggers we did for the Snare. Add Unique, will only add all the Unique Triggers that are not yet in the Collective Mode. So hit Add Unique to add all the kick triggers along with the already added snares.

If you have some Tom Track's going on in the your selection, let's add them also. So, go to your tom track and make it big so you can see it and do the same thing. Make sure your in Normal Mode. Hit Analyze and bring the sensitivity down and back up so only the toms are grabbed.



As you can see, a lot of the time on Tom Track's it grabs way more than we need so all we have to do is use the "Promote Trigger" feature. Zoom up in there so you can easily see the Tom Hits. Hold the Apple (Command) key and click to add "Promote" your triggers.



Now zoom out and slide the sensitivity slider all the way down to as low as 1% and it will just grab the triggers you want. If for some reason it has left a couple of triggers we don't want, simply hold Alt and click on those triggers to delete them.



Next, go to Collection Mode and hit Add Unique to add those to your collection. Follow these same steps for any other Tom Track's in your selection.

Once your done, Turn your Drum Group back on and use the P or : Keys to select and highlight all your drums track's. Now with everything grouped and everything selected, make sure your still on the region Selected Page and hit Separate. All the little regions will now be cut.




Now go to Region Conform.



Hit Conform to Quantize your selection. Your track's will now shift into place.

Next, go to Edit Smoothing.




On this page we have "Fill Gaps" and "Fill and Crossfade". I use "Fill and Crossfade" as it will put a crossfade between each joining region so I don't have junk like clips or pops. Set the crossfade length to 3ms. You could just leave it at 5ms but I tend to like the crossfade at 3ms. Now just hit smooth. Wait for it to finish crossfading the regions and listen back and hopefully all your drums should be perfectly in time.

That's how I use Beat Detective and I hope this helps.
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