Can or have you ever recorded drums part by part..............

  • Thread starter Thread starter chadsxe
  • Start date Start date
C

chadsxe

New member
Quick over view...

2 OH
Snare top and bottom
Toms close miced
Bass mic in hole

Everything is getting close mixed because the room sucks. The toms and bass suck also so they are going to get GOG'ed. The drummer is good but not perfect. The band plays a mix of diffrent types of metal. This requires the drummer to play super fast stuff on his bass drum along with tiplets out the a@#$. They want to record the songs a little faster then they are playing them at this point. This makes it extra hard for the drummer to get through the whole song with out f@#$#@% up. There is no more time for practice and recording starts in a week and a half.

With that said........

Have you or can you record drums part by part, if needed? A La Verse then Course then Verse then Course. The kid dosen't even want to break it down that much. He is just worried that his take can be magic but there is a F&*(&(*^ up in on verse or one course.

I personally have never done this. My worries are with get the transition to go over smooth. I imagine if you end drum hits correct you can do a nice crossfade and no one would be the wiser.

I guess I am just looking for more insight....

Also there are times were he is on the bell of the Ride. Sometimes he can't stay at it hard and the bell doesn't ring though enough. Has anyone ever did another track of just a bell or one drum part.

Any info would help....thanks
 
I do that for myself just because I suck at drums. With a real drummer though, that's unnecessarily time consuming.

However I don't see a problem cutting all the drums for entire verse and doing the ol' cut-and-paste. In that case I would definitely use a click. If you do it right, you shouldn't need to crossfade, just drop in the parts between the beat.

Or do it the ol' fashioned way, run through it all the way, mistakes and all, and punch in to fix.
 
Well I by no means want to cut and paste drum parts. More so doing full verses or courses to make sure there perfect.
 
I have actually recorded the different parts of the kit seperately for different sections with good results.

There have been drummers who just don't quite have the chops to do fast double bass while keeping to a click, So I will have them play their kick all the way through ( or sections anyway) and then go back and record the rest of the kit. Sometimes I'll even have them do snare and toms and then go back for fast Cymbol parts. The only real problem arises when the drummer has never really figured out a standard part that they play so they just freeze when it comes to just playing one section of their kit.

It has the added benifit of good part isolation, particularly if you want to do some sound replacement or triggering.

Tom
 
I'm thinking that's really no different than doing punch-in's at the various sections is it?
 
The trick to doing what you want to do is to have the drummer play all the transitions.
Have the drummer play the intro and the first couple of measures of the verse. Stop.
Then have him play the last couple measures of the intro, play the verse and go into the first couple measures of the chorus. Stop.
Then have him play the last couple measures of the verse, into the chorus, then into the next part...and so on.

That way, you have each transition twice so you have plenty of space to splice the parts together.

If he isn't playing to a click, this becomes 10 times harder. Not impossible, but there is a good chance that the tempos will not match from take to take.
 
tmix said:
I have actually recorded the different parts of the kit seperately for different sections with good results.

There have been drummers who just don't quite have the chops to do fast double bass while keeping to a click, So I will have them play their kick all the way through ( or sections anyway) and then go back and record the rest of the kit. Sometimes I'll even have them do snare and toms and then go back for fast Cymbol parts. The only real problem arises when the drummer has never really figured out a standard part that they play so they just freeze when it comes to just playing one section of their kit.

It has the added benifit of good part isolation, particularly if you want to do some sound replacement or triggering.

Tom
Click to expand...

I have often thought about recording drums this way. I had my drummers kit set up in my studio for a week to see how good I can get his drums to sound before we start recording and discovered how much I suck a drums. I can keep a beat for about 30 sec and then I start to get sloppy. For my own purposes I thought that maybe I would program my drum machine like I always do but instead of programming the snare and hi hat I would play those parts with real drums to get more of a natural feel. I think I could keep time ok if the click and kick are loud enough. This would save me from that whole coordination thing. :D
I asked my drummer if he could lay drums down recording two things at a time like snare/hat, then kick/cymbals, then toms. He said he didn't think he could do it. I should have tried while I had his kit. I think after I get my Firepod I might look for a snare and a hi hat.
 
Farview said:
If he isn't playing to a click, this becomes 10 times harder. Not impossible, but there is a good chance that the tempos will not match from take to take.
Click to expand...



He will with out a dought be playing to a click...

I imagine that as long as he can hit a transiton for like one measure then There would be plenty of room to do clean crossfades, and no one would be the wiser.
 
It depends on how cymbal happy he is. The cymbal wash will be the thing that makes the transitions sound wrong. He will have to play enough ahead of the edit to make sure the cymbal ring is the same(ish).
 
Fairview


Have you ever actually done this, or are these educated assumptions?
 
The way a drummer plays his/her cymbals and how the transitions are written is directly relevant to the ease and/or possibility of recording the drum parts seperately. I guess it also depends an your mic technique. Editing drum parts together can be a very tricky and frustrating task.
 
don't bother. you'll be spending more time and effort than it's worth.

get him to learn the parts faster without screwing up, or play them slower and speed them up in post production.

editing drums like you're proposing is a MAJOR pain in the ass. i've yet to have a client that's paid me enough to do that sorta thing. i'd rather record the kick separately in one take, then the snare and toms in a 2nd take, and then the cymbals in the 3rd take. that still a PITA, but it's less of one IMO.


cheers,
wade
 
This might be an urban legend, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the 'Boston' albums recorded this way?
 
I thought it was Cheap Trick live a Budokan.

:D

Has anyone here ever tried doing one drum at a time. I would be concerned with all the parts meshing correctly. If each drum hit could be recorded as a midi event that would be a different story. I would assume you could quantize the events and every thing would line up.
 
<,No, it was "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac.>>

and "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by the Scorpions, as well as many other songs that we don't know about yet.


i've heard that the majority of (at least) the first Boston was more or less "live". not to be confused with "Frampton Comes Alive", which was nowhere close to "live"......


cheers,
wade
 
EdWonbass said:
I thought it was Cheap Trick live a Budokan.

:D
Click to expand...
That concert was also aired as a T.V. show in Japan. A friend of mine gave me a copy of it on DVD, complete with weird interviews and wacky Japanese commercials.

Bun E. rocks!
 
MadAudio said:
That concert was also aired as a T.V. show in Japan. A friend of mine gave me a copy of it on DVD, complete with weird interviews and wacky Japanese commercials.

Bun E. rocks!
Click to expand...

That's awesome. I'm getting in my truck now and driving down to DC to borrow it. See you in about 30 minutes. :)
 
chadsxe said:
Fairview


Have you ever actually done this, or are these educated assumptions?
Click to expand...

Odds are if Farview gives advice, he's done it.

It's a basic concept--cymbals have a fast decay. If you crossfade during one cymbal decay to another, and the drummer varies the volume or timing between the two hits, the amplitude of the decays won't line up in a crossfade, and you won't get a smooth decay--there will be a dropoff, or worse, a swell. Hence his advice (and mine) to only 'crossfade' (really just a splice) where there is no cymbal decay, nor any other drum. Shouldn't be that tough to find a spot, unless the kick goes nonstop 16th notes the whole song.

As for drum-a-time, that's what I do. No it doesn't sound realistic, but that's only because I get really cymbal happy :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top