Recording an Electronic Drumset

[Deaconblue]

Hey,

I am in a band that is planning on recording our first full-length album on our own and I want to make sure that I record the best possible drum sound/mix for the songs. The drummer in my band plays an electronic drumset and in the past we have separated the signal from the bass drum and the signal from the snare/toms/hi-hat/cymbals by sending one signal through the left channel output and the other signal through the right channel output. I wanted to know if anyone has had any experience in recording an electronic drumset and if there any techniques to separate the different parts of an electronic drumset so that the bass drum,snare,toms,hi-hat, and cymbals can be separated in the mix? Thanks.

[TimOBrien]

Far better way is to just record the MIDI out of the drumset.

Then you can edit the performance, separate out the tracks & replace any of the sounds with anything you want....

[mikeh]

I agree with Tim. If you only have stereo outs you can't seperate audio in the 1st pass (other than left and right).

If you record the MIDI you can then trigger the sound from the module and record seperate tracks. As an example - the first MIDI playback you could record snare & kick (using the left and right out). Then tigger agian and records the toms and then the cymbals, etc.

It will require several "takes" but you could then have as many seperate audio tracks as your recording medium will allow.

[Mistral]

Umm.. what are you talking about Mikeh. If you do it that way you may as well just be recording the audio the same way.

What Tim is saying is - Recording with the MIDI OUT is INTENDED to make it possible to record in just ONE take and still maintain separation of each drum. Although the drums are all recorded to one physical MIDI track in your program of choice (Cakewalk Sonar, Cubase, etc) there is nothing preventing you from cutting and pasting individual drums onto different midi tracks, but even that isn't necessary, with the many drum plugins out there which assign each note on a MIDI drum track to its own audio output. You end up with virtual tracks that can be EQ'd and FX'd, and if desired you can bounce them to physical audio tracks later on.

[fritzmusic]

What is the make/model of the module your drummer will be using?

[mikeh]

Mistral,

What I was saying is that if the module only has stereo outs - you can have as many indivual MIDI tracks as you want - you can still only record 2 seperate audio tracks at a time.

The advantage of MIDI is that you can run numerous passes, record 2 tracks of audio at a time - but have them all sync.

You are correct you can record numerous audio tracks without MIDI - but you would have to play each track in real time, subject to the timing variance that may or may not occur (not an easy task - I had to do things like that pre MIDI and pre sampling).

The original post in no way suggested using the electronic drums (or the MIDI performance) to trigger samples. So I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that Deaconblue was looking for an answer limited to the use of the stereo durm module.

Now - if indeed the intent is to capture a single performance and then use that performance to trigger samples - in that case I agree with you 100%.

However, if the intent is to try to have multi drum track control using only the sounds from the drum module (subject to the limitation of stereo outs) then I stand by my original post!

[DAS19]

You have to know how to record in midi if you are unfamilar you probably will not understand.

When recording in midi you can seperate the bass drum sound and the snare sound and the crash sound and any other sound you want. You can even change the drum sound or keep it coming from your same midi module. You can also place the different midi sounds on seperate AUDIO tracks if you want after you have recorded the midi file. You have to know midi to really understand what we are saying.

To answer your question... The best way to record electronic drums is through MIDI. Anything offering midi should be taken advantage of it is really the most amazing thing if you know what you are doing with it. I fix piano parts if you hit an extra note you can just erase it, you can copy and paste numerous notes. You have to fool around with it and youll understand.

[Seeker of Rock]

This is easy for me...I have a DM Pro with six outputs. I don't use the internal effects in the unit (either 2 or 4, I forget, of the 6 are dry outs) so I run each of the six outs into six separate channels of my board. I have mine set up like this:
1-kick
2-snare
3-high hat closed
4-high hat open
5-toms
6-crash and ride

I adjust the individual volumes of each midi note within the DM Pro so they are mixable in one output as a whole. Midi sounds like it would be much better, but at the moment I'm not inclined to learn it and I don't use software in my recording chain.

Anyway, depending on what controller your drummer has, assigning drums to individual channels is an easy way to control your drum mix at mixdown after it is recorder to a hard drive.

[NRS]

Many drum modules have individual panning per trigger if your only running the two tracks out method.

I'll do the whole MIDI thing one day too but for now I have an older Yamaha DTX and basically like to pan all the pads exactly the way I would hear them at the throne (or with L&R overheads). No pad gets hard panned all the way though or you'll lose the ambience. I generally just start with my kick at center and gradually pan each pad a little more L or R outward exactly as I see them.

On playback, sweeping tom rolls and your outermost cymbal crashes become very apparent. For what they are, I really dig electric kits!