How do you "do drums" ?

[Luke K]

Im in the middle of a recording project for my girlfriends songs.
I have tracked almost everything now. Just going over the drums using elastic time cleaning them up some.

Just wondering for future reference what are the best ways to record drums?
Not talking mic placement so much...but more like how do you record them.
Do you do multiple takes and do a comp or do you do takes until one of them is close and then clean it up with elastic time? or something different?

The help is much appreciated. I must say i have learnt so much from you guys on these forums and i am a much better engineer/mixer today because of your help...so thanks!!

Luke K

[albee1952]

I'll toss you the first curve ball. I try to NOT record drums and instead use a Roland TD10 kit playing ezdrummer or SD2. That allows me to edit and fix a decent performance so the drummer only needs to play it a few times(and doesn't need to be 100% perfect). Also, with midi, I can punch-in on the drums a lot easier(and even make MY drumming presentable). My favorite setup uses the Roland kit but real hat and cymbals with 3 mics. Something about the mics and real brass puts a bit of "air" onto the whole thing.

[se.audio]

Do a couple of full takes (2 or 3), then go back over problematic parts and do a couple more just of those.
Make sure you record everything to a click or shaker or tamborine or drumbeat, whatever will help the drummer keep in time.
Have a listen to each part and comp the best together onto a new take (within the same track) or a new track, however you prefer to work.
Then forget about elastic audio to fix the drums up, use beat detective (command + 8 on the numeric keypad).
Quandtize the lot, go back over it one last time to check all is good, then consolidate the lot...

hope this helps

[Luke K]

Originally Posted by elmostephane

Do a couple of full takes (2 or 3), then go back over problematic parts and do a couple more just of those.
Make sure you record everything to a click or shaker or tamborine or drumbeat, whatever will help the drummer keep in time.
Have a listen to each part and comp the best together onto a new take (within the same track) or a new track, however you prefer to work.
Then forget about elastic audio to fix the drums up, use beat detective (command + 8 on the numeric keypad).
Quandtize the lot, go back over it one last time to check all is good, then consolidate the lot...

hope this helps

Ok i just tried using beat detective but no luck getting it work yet? do i need to ungroup the drums first to use it? whats the trick to using it? I have never used it before.
Thanks,
Luke K

[ejwells]

Originally Posted by Luke K

Ok i just tried using beat detective but no luck getting it work yet? do i need to ungroup the drums first to use it? whats the trick to using it? I have never used it before.
Thanks,
Luke K

Well...PTLE/M-Powered only has single channel Beat Dtective, unless you have the Music Production Toolkit.

[Luke K]

Originally Posted by ejwells

Well...PTLE/M-Powered only has single channel Beat Dtective, unless you have the Music Production Toolkit.

Can i use beat detective and quantize the channels 1 at a time??

[ondruspat]

Originally Posted by Luke K

Can i use beat detective and quantize the channels 1 at a time??

A dangerous proposition!! If you just do a track at a time your region separations will be all over the place and you will get phasing issues.

There is an old workaround of mixing the drums to a single track (to be used as a guide for the Beat Detective), using Beat Detective on that track, then transfering the separations to the grouped drum tracks, then quantizing the drum tracks. (search the DUC for the old post)

To be honest, I used this method and found it to be a pain. If I was going to use Beat Detective I'd just pony up and get the multitrack asset. (....maybe eJay still has the asset availiable....ejwells, that is...)

[albee1952]

I've never gotten any love out of BD either. With a full kit, I would group the drum tracks and use EA.

[DonaldM]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I'll toss you the first curve ball. I try to NOT record drums and instead use a Roland TD10 kit playing ezdrummer or SD2. That allows me to edit and fix a decent performance so the drummer only needs to play it a few times(and doesn't need to be 100% perfect). Also, with midi, I can punch-in on the drums a lot easier(and even make MY drumming presentable). My favorite setup uses the Roland kit but real hat and cymbals with 3 mics. Something about the mics and real brass puts a bit of "air" onto the whole thing.

My wife has the running debate with me about drums. She says she doesn't like the drum machines. I say "great, cause I don't use one!" (well technically, that's not entirely true...I do still have my old Yamaha RX5). Then I explain about drum samples and loops etc. I make the very logical point (I think) that just because the drums were recorded elsewhere by some other drummer doesn't mean they aren't "real" drums. I mean, what difference does it make WHERE they were recorded, or even if all the drum sounds were recorded at once?

Her response is that unless its a "live" drummer it isn't "real" drums! And on we go...

[ddwhitney]

Originally Posted by albee1952

I've never gotten any love out of BD either. With a full kit, I would group the drum tracks and use EA.

+2



Before getting MPTK expansion license from eJay



I used EA exclusively...