order of recording instruments

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davecg321

New member
After reading the following article a few questions came to mind.

Best Order To Record In? [Reader Question] | The Recording Revolution

If I am a using a drum programmer like ez drummer would it be more preferable to record the scratch track (vocals and guitar) over my already composed and finished drum track, and then layer/record instruments over the scratch? Or, with the drums already in place would it be common practice to the just start tracking the main rhythm parts? (without the need of a scratch track)

Would the article also be a good reference point for music without drums? I.e do I still record a scratch track to a click and then start tracking?

One last thing.... is it common practice to keep the scratch track take audible through the headphones for each instrument that is subsequently recorded, or, do we get rid of it after the drums or 1st instrument is recorded?

Home some light can be shed on this

Many thanks

Dave
 
Scratch to a click, drums, bass, everything else. Or do it however you want. You decide what YOU need to do. It's not complicated.
 
If your working at home with a programmed drummer, a scratch track is a waste of time.
You already have a perfect drummer. Just start layering the instruments on top of it.

Scratch tracks are more used in a studio when you have a whole band in so each member can track to something.
If you're at home with no time constraints, I don't see the point.


But you can if you want to. Nobody will ever know if you did or not, to be honest.
 
Schwarzenyaeger said:
If your working at home with a programmed drummer, a scratch track is a waste of time.
Click to expand...
No it isn't because the scratch track can be guide for programming the drums with some dynamics. But I know "drum programming" and "dynamics" are not things that people can usually pull off at the same time, so maybe it is a waste of time..
 
I wouldn't start dialing in dynamics until I was mixing the song. If I had drums and a bunch of scratch tracks that I'm going to delete anyhow, then I'm programming the dynamics in relation to tracks that won't even be in the song. I'd rather just use the drum track as a metronome and play the instruments and go back to the drums later on.

I just don't see the point of doing scratch tracks for myself when I could just go for usable takes when I'm in a no-pressure environment and nobody is reliant on my instrument but me.
 
I think a lot of people in home recording end up with finished tracks that are basically just evolutions of the original demos. Like, we write by recording, or record while writing, then when we've got it hacked into something we finally want to commit, we re-record and replace any tracks that aren't quite right and the final mix comes out of the same DAW session (or a "save as"...) where we started. At that point, it's kind of questionable whether you'd call the original tracks "scratch" or not. For my own stuff, I often end up keeping that first sketch/scratch track and using it somewhere in the final mix, but...
 
Guilty of that as well.

Anyhow, nobody will know how you did it, OP.
If you're recording your guitar and you just think "I need the vocals to know how this goes", then do the vocals first.
 
Schwarzenyaeger said:
I wouldn't start dialing in dynamics until I was mixing the song. If I had drums and a bunch of scratch tracks that I'm going to delete anyhow, then I'm programming the dynamics in relation to tracks that won't even be in the song. I'd rather just use the drum track as a metronome and play the instruments and go back to the drums later on.

I just don't see the point of doing scratch tracks for myself when I could just go for usable takes when I'm in a no-pressure environment and nobody is reliant on my instrument but me.
Click to expand...

Do it however you want. But scratch tracks aren't a waste of time.
 
Yeah....it's not too complicated.

I start with a rough rhythm guitar & vocal scratch track, laid down to a click (I'm recording this to tape).
Then come the drums, bass, rhythm guitars....I usually leave the click for them too.

Then comes the other stuff, in whatever order it feels right, but usually the final vocals and leads are the last thing to go. I may mute click during all that but I'll keep it the click track through the end, and even when I make my transfer of the tape tracks to the DAW.

It's the absolute timing reference. I like to not just hear the click, but to also see it as a track in the DAW....that way, when I have to make some edits, I still have that as a reference I can hear and also see. I know a lot of guys like to just turn on the click in the DAW, which is certainly OK...but even when working just in the DAW, I like to record the click as an audio track and I have it at the top, right above my Kick and Snare tracks.
 
Greg_L said:
No it isn't because the scratch track can be guide for programming the drums with some dynamics. But I know "drum programming" and "dynamics" are not things that people can usually pull off at the same time, so maybe it is a waste of time..
Click to expand...

Agreed. The dynamic and flow of the original song/performance is the most important reference you can have, especially if you're programming instruments.

On top of that I don't assume that a fixed tempo will always work.
Sure, I'll try to find a suitable tempo but songs don't always lend themselves to it, so sometimes I'll work out a variable tempo map from the scratch track then build drums etc afterwards.
 
Lately I've been doing stupid things with parameter modulation in Reaper to get programmed drums to automagically follow the dynamics of other instruments in the mix, but nowadays I only program drums when I kind of want them to sound like a machine, otherwise I actually play them in with the dynamics and timing fluctuations that I want.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Agreed. The dynamic and flow of the original song/performance is the most important reference you can have, especially if you're programming instruments.

On top of that I don't assume that a fixed tempo will always work.
Sure, I'll try to find a suitable tempo but songs don't always lend themselves to it, so sometimes I'll work out a variable tempo map from the scratch track then build drums etc afterwards.
Click to expand...

Scratch tracks are especially useful for the rare guy that actually records real drums.
 
Yeah, they come in useful for me.

I usually will put down the most horribly edited, out of tune, guitar or bass track to get the structure of a song down. The only thing that's really important to me is the timing of things at first. I'll punch in parts slopilly, etc....just to have something that contains the whole song, but the timing isn't sloppy. I do that on top of the simplest drum beat, unless I'm bored and sometimes I'll actually program the drums to how they might end up. After I lay down real guitar and bass, I either record drums and then vocals last, or vocals and then drums last.

But scratch tracks are definitely a tool I use in my writing and recording pretty much all the time.
 
I program a basic drum track, do all the instruments, then go back and redo the drums properly, then do the vocals, generally. I can't possibly know how the drum track should be until i have the instruments in place... so the concept of starting with a completed drum track doesn't work for me. The instrumental tracks will inform where this or that accent ends up with the drums.
 
As the OP can see from the responses so far, there is no one way of recording your tracks, and the method you use in entirely up to you and what you feel most comfortable doing.
 
There's no right answer, obviously, but I like: scratch guitar and vox to click -> drums -> bass -> guitars -> vox -> whatever else
 
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