Recording Drums

[marpstar]

I have a question. Whenever my band records, we always mic everything, run it into a mixer, and run that into a cassette recorder, and play the song live. This technique works, but if I mess up the levels, We have to record the whole thing over. Now, my question. Everywhere I've read about track by track recording, it says record the drums first. For some reason, they make it sound so easy. But it seems kind of hard to record the drums without being able to follow anything. Could anyone clear this up for me, maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe not. I want it so I can adjust the levels on the recording after laying down all the tracks, rather than having to record the entire band playing again.


Thanks

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Coupla ways --

1) Whole band plays together, but you really only want to make sure that you get a good drum take - the other instruments are recorded to other tracks as a guide - being replaced later with overdubs.

2) You lay down a click track with a simple rhythm instrument and guide vocal for the drummer to play along to.


Which route you go depends on the band, the recording capabilities, and your own engineering preferences.

 

[jake-owa]

Hey marpstar, it's all about multi-tracking. You need a multitrack recorder with four tracks or more. Then you record the drums to a track and play that back through the mixer while recording the other instruments to the recorder.

The way I used to record with a four track cassette would work for any porta based setup. I'd set up enough mics to get the whole band and record it on one track, that's a scratch track. The main thing to get right on the first take is tempo and feel. Then listen to that track while "overdubbing" the instruments one at a time. finally replace the scratch track with a final drum overdub and youre ready to transfer to another recorder for vocals.

Record the stereo out of the four track to another cassette or stereo recorder making sure to get the music mix right. Record the mix in stereo back to two tracks of the four track recorder and you have two tracks open for vocals.

You didn't say if the "cassette" recorder was a four track or not but hopefully this will help you a bit.