New With LOADS of Questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter WCman1976
  • Start date Start date
W

WCman1976

New member
I am looking to record songs in a two guitar, bass and drums format. I can handle the singing, guitar and bass, but I will need to outsource for drums. I already know what software I want to use: a friend of mine recorded via Garage Band and has produced songs that sound like a true professional studio. For this I need to know a few things:

1) How many mics and what kind would you recommend putting on a drummer?

2) If a human drummer proves to be too expensive to hire, can anyone recommend a drum machine out there that sounds human? I used to have a BOSS DR-770 that was called "Dr. Rhythm" or something like that.

3) I write songs that are in a wide variety of styles. Some might be loud bone-crunching metal-type riffs. Others are acoustic ballads. My question is: how do you mix these properly so you will have the same volume across all songs instead of having to adjust the volume to prevent your ear drums being blow out? This is a problem I've always had; I could never get the levels right between tracks when I recorded in the past.

I appreciate any help.

Steve
 
What DAW you record to is largely a matter of workflow. I know nothing of Garage Band, but I'm pretty sure I've heard there are some restrictions you may not be happy with... however if you have a friend who knows it, then that's a plus for you.

1) No idea, I'm not a drummer. Check the drum forum for various explanations. 4 seems to be the way to get a decent sound, from what I've picked up along the way.

2) DR770 - I've got one of them in a box somewhere. It's not really done that way any more. If you go this path you'll use software like Addictive Drums, Superior/EZ Drummer, Steven Slate or various others. Make sure that they work with your DAW (see previous comment re. Garage Band). Way easier and better than your DR770.

3) Sort of the wrong question - this is normally part of the mastering phase, not mixing. That said, if you don't mix properly then you can work against achieving this goal. Forget about mastering for now and learn how to mix well. That sounds vague, but until you have some actual tunes, there's no glib "Do it this way" answer I can give you. Others might have different opinions, of course.
 
Armistice said:
What DAW you record to is largely a matter of workflow. I know nothing of Garage Band, but I'm pretty sure I've heard there are some restrictions you may not be happy with... however if you have a friend who knows it, then that's a plus for you.

1) No idea, I'm not a drummer. Check the drum forum for various explanations. 4 seems to be the way to get a decent sound, from what I've picked up along the way.

2) DR770 - I've got one of them in a box somewhere. It's not really done that way any more. If you go this path you'll use software like Addictive Drums, Superior/EZ Drummer, Steven Slate or various others. Make sure that they work with your DAW (see previous comment re. Garage Band). Way easier and better than your DR770.

3) Sort of the wrong question - this is normally part of the mastering phase, not mixing. That said, if you don't mix properly then you can work against achieving this goal. Forget about mastering for now and learn how to mix well. That sounds vague, but until you have some actual tunes, there's no glib "Do it this way" answer I can give you. Others might have different opinions, of course.
Click to expand...

That was really good advice Armi! :)
 
Armistice said:
What DAW you record to is largely a matter of workflow. I know nothing of Garage Band, but I'm pretty sure I've heard there are some restrictions you may not be happy with... however if you have a friend who knows it, then that's a plus for you.

1) No idea, I'm not a drummer. Check the drum forum for various explanations. 4 seems to be the way to get a decent sound, from what I've picked up along the way.

2) DR770 - I've got one of them in a box somewhere. It's not really done that way any more. If you go this path you'll use software like Addictive Drums, Superior/EZ Drummer, Steven Slate or various others. Make sure that they work with your DAW (see previous comment re. Garage Band). Way easier and better than your DR770.

3) Sort of the wrong question - this is normally part of the mastering phase, not mixing. That said, if you don't mix properly then you can work against achieving this goal. Forget about mastering for now and learn how to mix well. That sounds vague, but until you have some actual tunes, there's no glib "Do it this way" answer I can give you. Others might have different opinions, of course.
Click to expand...



Pretty much this. I'll elaborate on the first point:

4 mics is the absolute minimum you want on your drum set. You'll want a dedicated dynamic mic for your snare drum and your kick drum. These are the two more important drums. You can have two small diaphragm condensers above the set, which will record everything. If you want to be more specific, you can have a dynamic mic on every drum and then use a high pass filter (cutting the lower frequencies) on the condenser mics so that condensers will really focus on the cymbals and gluing the set together.

Here was a song I recorded with four mics. I used a Shure SM57 on the snare, two MXL 990 (small diaphragm condensers) for the cymbals and toms), and an MXL 4000 (normally you don't want a condenser on the kick, but it was all I had) for the kick.


 
Thanks for the replies so far.

While looking on Amazon for the drum programs that were mentioned, I found one that is called Indie Rock Drums Volume One, released last August by a company called the Loop Loft. I lean more toward indie rock than anything else, so this may be good. There are no reviews on Amazon yet, but I am going to look elsewhere.
 
Before purchasing any drum software, do a search for some youtube demonstrations so you can hear the sounds. Are you familiar with MIDI piano roll editing? Basically with these programs, you can just 'drag and drop' pre-made loops, but the real way to use them is to modify the loops or create you own in the piano roll edit mode.

You'll want to look at a full-featured DAW rather than Garageband and you'll need an audio interface with as many (or more) mic preamps as the maximum you anticipate using at one time.
 
Damn...well I guess the question I should ask then is, which DAW should I use for the type of music I want to make? And the same question can be asked of that interface.
 
Many interfaces come wiht a limited edition DAW, but Reaper is well-thougt-of, free to download full version to try out, and only $60 to register.
The interface will depend on how many mic preamps you want and your budget.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top