Will this work?

[tamky]

In order to have as much control over the final drum mix, my intention is to record completely isolated drum tracks. I.e., I am going to record electronic drums on individual channels/tracks. Kick on 1 track, snare on another, hi-hat on another and so on.
Does anyone else record their drums this way? If so, any advice? Thanks in advance.

[Tim Brown]

Hi Tamky,
That will work great because it gives you complete individual control when it's time to mix.

Are you recording on a computer? If so, you might want to also have a MIDI track. That way, you can do things like - record a kickdrum audio track and also have the Midi playback a dsifferent kick sound, so that you can layer them if you like. I have a friend who does this, and it seems to work really well.

Normally, if I'm recording an acousic drumkit, I use 4 tracks: Kick, Snare, Left, and Right. But I also trigger electric drums from my kit at times, and when I do that - then I put each sound on it's own track, plus the pair of overheads.


Tim

[tamky]

Tim - thanks for the reply. I will keep that midi idea in mind.

[eraos]

Originally Posted by Tim Brown

Hi Tamky,
That will work great because it gives you complete individual control when it's time to mix.

Are you recording on a computer? If so, you might want to also have a MIDI track. That way, you can do things like - record a kickdrum audio track and also have the Midi playback a dsifferent kick sound, so that you can layer them if you like. I have a friend who does this, and it seems to work really well.

What do you mean by having a MIDI track? Do you mean record onto a midi track while recording the drumset?
I'm still behind on my MIDI knowledge, so triggering and sampling and whatever is still somewhat foreign to me.

[tourettes5139]

Do you mean tracking each piece of the kit seperately? I assume that you don't, because you have electronic drums and there is no point to it. Just curious.

[Tim Brown]

Originally Posted by eraos

What do you mean by having a MIDI track? Do you mean record onto a midi track while recording the drumset?
I'm still behind on my MIDI knowledge, so triggering and sampling and whatever is still somewhat foreign to me.

You can record the separate audio tracks while you record a MIDI track of the electric drums. That allows you to use the MIDI track to play back different sounds if you want.

I'm not really heavy on the MIDI myself - I've messed with enough to get by, but that's about it. My old lead singer was a a keyboard player and had a MEGA Keyboard rig with a PC long before it was common, so he was into MIDI fairly early in the game. I got into it during the late 80's after I had been through a few electronic drumkits back then.
Those Simmons drums were hell on the wrists....and you can not imagine how pissed I was when I opened one up, and found out I had paid for some cheap plastic, a 1/4" jack, and a piece of 1/4" plywood with a $2 piezo element glued to it. That's when I started messing with triggering - because I could get those Elements for $2 all day long at Radio Shack.

We put them on everything.

I even used one as a pickup on my brother's bow for his upright bass! You plug the bow in, and play the bass, and the bow carries the vibrations throw the contact pickup. It doesn't work very well on an electric guitar, but on the Upright, it's wicked sounding.


Tim

[eraos]

Originally Posted by Tim Brown

You can record the separate audio tracks while you record a MIDI track of the electric drums. That allows you to use the MIDI track to play back different sounds if you want.

Ah, so that's for electric drums only? Makes sense.

[sirslurpee]

I've done this before, with the electric drums, separate channels isolated. It works pretty well, that is, if you like the sound of electric drums. I couldn't stand it. Just didn't work for my application. Although if I ever do anything where I can use them I will do it this way definately...

[tamky]

Originally Posted by sirslurpee

I've done this before, with the electric drums, separate channels isolated. It works pretty well, that is, if you like the sound of electric drums. I couldn't stand it. Just didn't work for my application. Although if I ever do anything where I can use them I will do it this way definately...

I'm overseas and won't be using anything accoustic. Are you saying there's a better way to record electronic drums and have more control than the seperate track idea and/or a better sound? BTW, I'll be using a Roland Fantom 6 for my drum source.

[tubesrawsom]

acoustic is the way of the wise

[gullfo]

yeah, definitely record the tracks separately if you have the outputs on the drum controller and the inputs on your recorder. definitely also catch the MIDI to a midi track (you can always split it later if you needed to) because if you have an otherwise excellent performance, you can always adjust the midi and replay it back through the drum controller to "punch in". and if you're doing extended mixes, you can easily loop the midi nd re-play it or use a variety of other drum tools to create layers, new sounds, etc...

this is true whether using electronic or triggers on acoustic (in fact, given the fairly low cost of triggers and midi converters you should have triggers on your acoustic set so you can add sampled kits, etc... later if you need to).

in general - always get the MIDI! its light weight in terms of size and processing to collect it and can be [re]used in many many ways...