Anybody record drums like this?

MadMax

New member
I'm not a drummer, but I've got a few guys auditioning to come in my home studio and lay down some tracks with my drum setup. Just want some feedback on my recording approach.
First off, I'm recording into Sonar 3.1 and I have a Yamaha DT Express kit. The kik & tom sounds are acceptable, and believe it or not, so are the cymbals, so I'm running the L&R outs to my recorder. The snare and HH do not respond well to the nuances of real drumming, so I have a 8" metal Pearl snare and a set of 13" K (Zildjian) hats that I picked out after listening to many different sizes. They didn't "clop" as much as the bigger sizes when you pedalled them and I like the higher pitched sound.
I have the snare miced with a Beta 57 on top and the hat is miced with a Rode NT-5 about 3" above and halfway in from the edge. It's pointed out (away from the snare) at 45 deg.
I just set this up last night and it's a bitch to set recording levels when you're alone and have to go back and forth just to look at the waveforms and listen, repeat, repeat, etc.
Anyway, I'm also recording midi out of the brain so I can seperate the drums to different tracks do some sound replacement with a soft synth. I'm not sure yet how to do this, but in theory, it sounds like a good idea. This is where I need some help.
Anybody else record drums this way?
 
MadMax said:
Anyway, I'm also recording midi out of the brain so I can seperate the drums to different tracks do some sound replacement with a soft synth. I'm not sure yet how to do this, but in theory, it sounds like a good idea. This is where I need some help.
Anybody else record drums this way?
That's exactly the way I record drums. We use a Roland V-drum. I run both audio and midi from the brain while recording (so the drummer can hear the audio), but I only record the midi.

Later I split each drum to it's own track and then use the midi to trigger audio sounds, which I record one at a time.

I haven't used soft synths yet, but it should be no big deal once you have the midi.

Another advantage of recording the midi, is it makes any adjustments pretty easy - say an off time snare hit, or a clam.
 
Is there a way to split the midi in sonar so each drum goes to a seperate track? Or can I split them later when I assign the synth(s)? Maybe like assign each drum voice out of the soft synth to a unique audio track?
Sorry for the questions, but I'm a midiot.
 
MadMax said:
Is there a way to split the midi in sonar so each drum goes to a seperate track?
You mean while recording? If so, there isn't any way that I know of.

However, there is a .cal program that you can run afterwards that will send everything to it's own track. It's called Split Notes to Track.cal. http://www.cakewalk.com/tips/techtipoct.asp

Although, since each drum ends up on a separate piano key in PRV, I don't find doing it manually all that tedious either.
 
if you can have each drum part assigned to a different midi channel, then you can record each drum part to a different track. but that seems like too much work to me. just record the drums in one track and then use the split note CAL script to split each note to a different track.
 
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