Sharing a guitar track/song with a "session drummer". "Standards"?Tips?Dos & Don'ts?

matarroano

New member
Sharing a guitar track/song with a "session drummer". "Standards"?Tips?Dos & Don'ts?

Hi! 1st post. Greetings to all fellow forum members!

I'm getting into this "collaborative online adventure" with a prospect drummer on the other side of the world...

Looking to "remotely" build a song with a guitar track recorded on my Boss BR-80. The "session drummer" will record live acoustic drums around that track.

Looking to know which are the most common "standards" used for this kind of "collaborative songwriting". How should I do it? Or... How is this most commonly done, for better results?

Record the whole song in a single track/file? Parts of the song as in intro/outro/chorus/solo in various files? Format/bitrate?

I know it's probably better to first get some kind of understanding with the drummer but, what would be the "basics" or standard procedures to have this done, in the most "professional manner"?

Any and all ideas about this very, very much. welcomed.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
 
Are you going to be sending him just a guitar track, or will it have bass, vocals, etc already put together? You won't need a "final" mix, since you'll be adding the drums in later, but it would be good to have a basic mix.

What type of equipment will the drummer be using. If he's also recording on a BR80, is he just going to record a stereo track? If he's going to multimike drums, he'll need to use a more complete system.

In any case, the first thing you would want to have would be a recording with a click track of some type to insure that you keep reasonably constant time. A basic track with a click would allow you to later align the tracks in a DAW. Then you can add tracks as desired. You'll need some type of count off so he knows when to start, of course.

If I was going to build one this way, I would put together a basic Midi drum track to get a feel for what I wanted, record a guitar, bass, and vocal, add any solos to get a partially complete song, then mix down all the music with just the countdown (maybe a hihat hit or something like that to count) and no drums. Send the stereo track to the drummer so that he can play along and record. Send the files back to me for addition to the DAW. Add those to the mix, substituting for the midi drums. Add any additional tracks and mix.

Depending on the drummer, you might also want to send along a copy with the midi drums just to get an idea of the feel. If he's got a good feel for a song, that might not be necessary unless you have some particular ideas of what you want.

Its pretty easy to just send WAV files through the internet, using something like Dropbox. You could also use 320K MP3s if you are pressed for space. They would fit into many email systems.
 
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