The order of instruments...

[Farno]

I have jumped into music with no idea what I'm doing. I've recorded some nice tracks and wondering if I'm doing everything right.

What I'm doing is laying drum tracks down then guitar and then bass. I suppose there is no "wrong" way to record as the final product will sound pretty much the same.

I've never tried laying guitar tracks down, then drums.

I have issues (using EZDrummer) laying drum tracks down that work with my riffs. The timing is off or it just doesn't work. So what I do is play one drum beat and make up some riff and continue adding on but I lose creativity and everything I make is the same tempo.

I'm wondering what other people do when they make there songs.

 

[mikeeb]

I do a scratch guitar first that does not have to sound great but has to be on timing, then i do bass, then i do drums, then i do real guitar and delete scratch guitar. Then I do vocals. But thats just me.

 

[Greg_L]

scratch guitar to click > keeper drums > keeper bass > keeper guitars > delete scratch

 

[Manslick]

Generally I start with guitar since I play guitar but a funny thing happened yesterday morning. I was all set to veg out in front of the TV when I started tapping this little groove on the bottom of the TV tray using my fingers, bass drum thumb the rest, the rest.

So I went to the studio and got the recording program going and with the drum module going and tapped out the bass drum and snare groove on the keyboard

Then I added some piano and bass, thru in some guitar and 8 hours later I had 90 seconds of some wild shit.

Going in I had no plan so the whole thing took some time. I’d go from tapping drum grooves to adding piano, some guitar, bass, back and forth on these instruments depending on what I thought it needed.

I couldn’t sing because I lost my voice at a bar watching a basketball game.

Typically I start with acoustic guitar and vocals with a drum loop and go from there.

 

[Farno]

Hmm. The click track is something I never have tried. I'm going to play around with that for a while, see what happens.

That's another thing, I need to figure out the transposing features and stuff so I can easily lay down my own drumtracks instead of using the premade ones in EZDrummer. The timing thing is something I've been working on.

 

[westgate]

back in the day when i used to do this stuff, i'd 'write' the song on guitar, get with a/the drummer; the 2 of us would practice the sh*t out of it/them; then, the 2 of us playing together, i'd record guitar onto one track and drums, submixed to mono, onto a second track of my akai 4 track, bass to track 3, and maybe a lead guitar on track 4.

then mix those 4 tracks down to 2 track stereo on another akai 4 track, then add lead vocal on track 3 and background vocals on track 4. that was usually it.
careful use of reverb on vocals and/or guitars made them go a long way!
edit-we'd bring in other musicians and singers for a lot of the other parts; not just the drummer and me.

then mixed to 2 track stereo for final song which would be the 3rd generation.
even made a few records (45s) that way. people liked them, too.

 

[Seafroggys]

I'm a drummer, and I compose all my music before hand...therefor, click->drums->bass->rhythm guitar->other instruments->vocals and solo instruments