Drum Question

Most people dont. If most or all the members are playing at the same time they are usually seperated by rooms (mostly soundproof) so that you dont get the sounds of one instrument mixing in with another. Its hard to control things that arent seperated.

I know you dont prefer to record one instrument at a time but that is really the only good way to do it (Especially on a limited budget) if you want it to sound decent at all. Otherwise the sound isnt going to be much better than the old days when you would set a cassette player in the middle of the room and hit the record button.

Others might disagree, but thats my take.

Geoo

Yea i have kindof realized that I'm going to need to record things one at a time. Oh well, I really wanted to just do recordings all at once, but if its not going to sound good then whats the point. Plus if i do them one at a time its much easier to edit....

Oh well, I really wanted to just do recordings all at once, but if its not going to sound good then whats the point. Plus if i do them one at a time its much easier to edit....

Exactly and its not that hard to get used too. Kind of fun actually. Its the same way you would record if you were to spend the bucks to hire a studio. Atleast, thats my experience. As the editor (assuming you are the one going to be doing that part of the work), it is much simpler because if one guy makes a mistake, and they will, then you can record that one small part again.

I rush my recordings, because I am not concerned with the quality yet, and still I can have 10 or 15 different tracks with just me, guitar, and a drum track.

I think alot of people would back me on this too. Mistakes always come out when you press that record button. Its like your brain goes crazy trying not to make mistakes... so you end up making them.

Your on the right track. Good luck

Geoo

All of the studio recordings that I've done with bands were done "live," with the entire band playing at once and the drums located in an isolation booth. Usually we played to a click, and in most cases everything but drums were considered scratch tracks, but you could certainly try to keep as much as possible.

I do almost all my recordings alone at home now, so I lay tracks down one at a time, including real drums...though I tend to use software for drums a lot now instead.

Ditto on isolated drums in the studio.

There are really two problems recording drums: levels and balance. Drums have a 'punch' to them that'll bleed through on all the other tracks - no matter what mics you use, you won't be able to isolate them unless all the other instruments go direct to the mixing board. Since that means everybody's working with headphones anyway, it's just as easy to lay down the drums first.

Then there's balance... to get a really nice drum sound, you'll need a whole bunch of mics. You'll want the ability to fine tune by turning down the bass or snare, or turning up the toms or hi-hat.

But if you can afford a multiple mic setup, you can get a pretty decent recording. Digital equipment doesn't suffer from signal loss during track bounces the way tape did - if I had to produce something at home with live drums, I'd probably do this (adjust for the number of channels you've got):

1. Record a vocal/guitar using a single mic on one channel, two if you must. Use that as a reference track for the drummer to listen to - it lets you vary the tempo (if the song calls for it) and it lets you put any solos into the places they'll naturally go without having to have the drummer count x number of bars. When I used to do production, even in four-track tape studios, I found this led to faster (and less expensive!) sessions.

2. Use as many mics as you can to record the drums, and put them on almost all of the remaining channels. Leave two spares for the stereo bounce - if your reference vocals are track 1, use 2-6 for the drums. Even though you're going to get bleed between the mics, you'll still have control over the mix. In the tape days I'd use a mixer and direct the drums to a single track, or two tracks in an 8-track studio - but with digital equipment you'll have more control by doing the mix after the fact rather than adjusting the live sound.

3. Bounce the mixed drums to the open tracks (7-8 in this example) and after you're happy with it, scrub the original drum tracks to make room for the other instruments. Then finish things up, using the reference and drum tracks for the others to hear.

Because finished sound can be hard to visualize at first, if your recording equipment supports 'V-takes' (multiple versions of a single channel), you might want to do a couple of different drum mixes from the original data before you scrub the original data. After all the recording is done, that'll give you a few more options for mixing.