Slackmaster was right though on the high end samples, doesn't get much better than the ones on the V-Drums in my opinion, and he also picked out the fact that it wasn't a drum machine but me playing... So, lucky for me neither of you have to do any kissing.
S8-N, what were you asking about the snare? The way it sounds or the way I played it? I didn't spend much time setting up that sound, as I wasn't planning on posting this when I first started to record it. I kinda like the way it ended up, but definitely want to hear all opinions on it. That will only help me make the track better.
Thanks a ton, Ranger, e-mail me whatever you have for lyrics on this if you don't mind. I'd love to see what you came up with, although I am very tempted to leave this one an instrumental at this point. It takes me forever to come up with lyrics.
David, thanks for the high compliments that are really more than I deserve. I'll take them though.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, because I'm still listening to "Idaho" quite a lot. I really dig that Pink Floyd vibe going on with it. For my tune I'm not sure what all you want to know, so here's the whole, long, boring deal: I used a Strat and a Fender Deville amp, with a Digitech (I don't recommend this to anyone, there's much better stuff out there) effects processor with a tiny amount of distortion and low gain so I don't have to crank my amp up super loud in order to get a decent sound. I miked it with a single SM57 right into
a VS880. The bass is direct through my newly aquired POD, which works much better than my old way of running direct without anything in between. Like I mentioned before the drums are the V-Drums, four channels out (snare, kick, and everything else on a pair of stereo tracks.) I compressed the snare and kick like crazy when I mixed down to the computer. The V-Drums are great, the best money I've spent on recording/music gear. Allows me to just play drums, as I suck at miking drums kits to get the sound I want. I really respect the skills of those of you that have songs here with kits miked in home studios that sound great. If your drummer plays live quite a bit then the V-Drums are great for that too. I can setup/teardown completely in about 20 minutes average each way, and it gets faster everytime I do it and get more practice. I do spend a lot of time editing the sounds on each factory drum kit to build my own kits the way I like them to sound. I've had them for almost a year, and I'm still trying to learn the best way to record them. The thing has so many output options that I could almost run each drum to a separate track, if I had enough inputs to be able to record that many tracks at once. The heads on the V-Drums are almost like playing a real kit, by far the best in electronic drum kits, and allow me to do everything I was able to on real drum heads. Anyway, now for the bad parts on the V-Drums: Even though the cymbal samples are the best I've heard, they do tend to not sustain as long as real ones, though this could probably be edited somewhat if it really bothered you a lot. The hi-hat is also not as good as a real one. It took me quite a while to adjust moving from my real kit on this. All cymbals are also just those hard pads, so it feels kinda weird at first. With the factory kits, they have way too much reverb on most stuff for me. Sounds neat to play with headphones, but forget trying to record them this way. I still think I left too much reverb on the drum tracks I recorded for this song. By the way, I recently played that new V-Drums kit Roland just came out with, for like $1,000 less, and it really doesn't compare to the full kit. $1,000 is a ton of money, but worth it to move up to the Pro kit in my opinion. Man, this post was way too long. Gotta cut this thing off right now. I hope that answered your questions... without giving you too much more than you wanted to hear.
[This message has been edited by Jon X (edited 01-22-2000).]
