Drum track ideas and suggestions

[Kon Alexiou]

I can play basic drums but the neighbours won't be happy if I start recording an acoustic kit...I've considered a Roland electric set but I believe there are other alternatives....

I've heard of drummers/producers using programs such as BFD or Sampletank to manually create drum parts bit by bit i.e. kick first, followed by snare etc..I've tried this and it's not bad...I've also read a number of people actually overdub a realy hi-hit so as to add more realism to the drums...

I'm loathed to learn the ins and outs of BFD because I can see programing fills/crashes etc...take time.

To all of you drummers or PT users who have good drum ideas what are you doing? What works? What do you think of using a real hit to add that extra sense of reality?

Thanks.

Kon

[Stiff]

Samples are "real hits" just not recorded at the same time. But sure, I've heard about people using a drum app and having just a real crash or hihat and record that over the whole thing. I don't really see the point of it these days though, the new drum plug-ins are so good. The Toontrack stuff, BFD and Strike all seem pretty amazing. Just click and drag a beat, draw in a few changes and you're there.

[David Francis]

There's no right or wrong way to do it. I think you're on the right track though for a more warm/live sound, cuz to me, cymbals are the most recognizable drums sounds that you can hear if it's "real" or not. So if that's the sound you want, just try it, experiment and see what works.

[albee1952]

I've been using EZdrummer lately and getting good results. I also have a Roland V kit that I have had good results with by recording midi, editing the performance as needed, and recording 8 tracks from the TD10 module. This way, I have 8 audio tracks to sweeten with plugins. I also aux-send the entire kit to an aux track with Waves TrueVerb to put a cohesive room sound on the entire kit. My biggest complaint about the Roland kit is the cymbals aren't great so I keep a folder of real cymbal hits and paste over the fake hits. This is easy to do manually on a simple song but a more complex (or busy) drum performance, it can be tougher. The EZdrummer is as easy as drag and drop.

[infamous plague]

Kon,
i use reason alot for programming drums (its real easy and you can export the midi file to use with other drum machines) during pre-production, this usually helps the band alot more than a click track when recording (mostly laying down one part at a time) but then i always go back and replace the midi drums with real ones....to me (been playin drums for like 15 yrs) it ALWAYS makes the song sound better
(btw i work alot in metal, pop and rock, I would think it's be different for other genres...)