Things guitarist tell drummers to do...

WaitForItDrummer

WaitForItDrummer

Senior Member
So I don't mean to pick on guitarist... (Ok maybe a little :)

So the guitarist in one of my bands goes like:
"Why don't we record drums one drum at a time... You know, you first play the only snare part of the whole song, then only the bass drum part of the whole song..."

Erm...

Why don't we record the guitar part one string at the time? Like you first just play the E string part of the whole song... Then just the G string... LOL

Anyway, what hillarious things did guitar players (or other band members) tell you to do?
 
This is less something he told me to do and more of a suggestion, but my guitarist friend and I were working on this Irish-sounding punk song he'd come up with recently, and he sent me the notation with TuxGuitar. He had taken the liberty of adding a backing drum notation track with some basic ideas for fills and accents and such that I could mess around with as I saw fit. Of course he didn't realize until I pointed it out to him that he hadn't accounted for left/right hand movements, and wrote out some parts that would've required me to have three arms to play correctly. I've since dubbed the song with the working title of "Three-Armed Mick".
 
WaitForItDrummer said:
So I don't mean to pick on guitarist... (Ok maybe a little :)

So the guitarist in one of my bands goes like:
"Why don't we record drums one drum at a time... You know, you first play the only snare part of the whole song, then only the bass drum part of the whole song..."
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, that was some what common way to record in the late 70's and early 80's.

Many records in the disco era were done like that, and some rock albums in the early 80's were done like that.

These days, they can just use sound replacement software to accomplish the same objective.
 
WaitForItDrummer said:
So I don't mean to pick on guitarist... (Ok maybe a little :)

So the guitarist in one of my bands goes like:
"Why don't we record drums one drum at a time... You know, you first play the only snare part of the whole song, then only the bass drum part of the whole song..."

Erm...

Why don't we record the guitar part one string at the time? Like you first just play the E string part of the whole song... Then just the G string... LOL

Anyway, what hillarious things did guitar players (or other band members) tell you to do?
Click to expand...

Actually, this isn't such a stretch. Stewart Copeland said he recorded "Every Breath You Take" that way, didn't he? Or at least some part of it. I thought that was what I read back in the 80s. He said he wanted separation on the entire kit, so he did all the pieces separate.
 
First band I ever played in...the guitarist - a huge fan of the Grateful Dead - asked me to play 'something freaky'.

I tried a sort of off-kilter beat, and he waved me off: 'No, no...freaky.'

I began a kind of tribal tom-tom groove, knowing that a lot of Dead stuff incorporated those kinds of drums. Again, he waved me off: 'No, man...you know...FREAKY.'

We went through about six different permutations before we moved on to another song. Almost thirty years later and I'm still not sure what the hell he wanted...
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
Actually, this isn't such a stretch. Stewart Copeland said he recorded "Every Breath You Take" that way, didn't he? Or at least some part of it. I thought that was what I read back in the 80s. He said he wanted separation on the entire kit, so he did all the pieces separate.
Click to expand...

I remember reading the same thing many years ago...
 
"When I nod my head, you hit it."


.
 
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Matt Bo Eder said:
Actually, this isn't such a stretch. Stewart Copeland said he recorded "Every Breath You Take" that way, didn't he? Or at least some part of it. I thought that was what I read back in the 80s. He said he wanted separation on the entire kit, so he did all the pieces separate.
Click to expand...
I seem to recall Mick Fleetwood recorded his drum parts that way. I could be wrong, though.
 
It was suggested by our guitarist that we should record me playing the verse, then record me playing the chorus. We could then just paste repeated verses & choruses so they sounded consistent.
Me and the bassist looked at each other and just face palmed. He didn't suggest it again.
 
Dodeska said:
It was suggested by our guitarist that we should record me playing the verse, then record me playing the chorus. We could then just paste repeated verses & choruses so they sounded consistent.
Me and the bassist looked at each other and just face palmed. He didn't suggest it again.
Click to expand...

Again, I read something like this when Nirvana's first album was out and big. Somebody told me that thanks to ProTools, they snipped the best loops of choruses and/or verses, and just strung them along - much like how you'd program a drum machine back in the 80s, by recording one loop, then letting it play over and over, but this time they did it with the entire band playing the rhythm part. I knew stuff like this has been going on ever since the dawn of music recording, something I think was called "Musique Concrete".

It still blows my mind that you couldn't find someone to play a song through perfectly for 3-minutes?

Even J.R. Robinson said he'd do a great smokin' take and then they'd want just the bass drum part again, which he would nail too. So it even happens to him!

And not surprisingly, I heard there's a tape vault full of what it took to record one of Metallica's albums - that whole album (whichever one it was) was just one huge edit from start to finish!
 
I was rehearsing for a church gig one Sunday and the guitarist told me to "play the most bland and generic Chris Tomlin fill ever."
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
Actually, this isn't such a stretch. Stewart Copeland said he recorded "Every Breath You Take" that way, didn't he? Or at least some part of it. I thought that was what I read back in the 80s. He said he wanted separation on the entire kit, so he did all the pieces separate.
Click to expand...

Seriously?

Well, thanks guys for enlightening me!

To me this sounds insane... As in insanely difficult... To me knowing how to play a piece is the muscle memory of what I'm hitting and when... And how my body does things in coordination - and how it sounds as a whole.

It must be very difficult to separate them out... Can you imagine a muti-tom 16ths fill? Or a solo? How would that work drum by drum?

I guess might work for keeping a rock beat or disco beat... But still ...
 
philrudd said:
First band I ever played in...the guitarist - a huge fan of the Grateful Dead - asked me to play 'something freaky'.

I tried a sort of off-kilter beat, and he waved me off: 'No, no...freaky.'

I began a kind of tribal tom-tom groove, knowing that a lot of Dead stuff incorporated those kinds of drums. Again, he waved me off: 'No, man...you know...FREAKY.'

We went through about six different permutations before we moved on to another song. Almost thirty years later and I'm still not sure what the hell he wanted...
Click to expand...

The other thing someone told me once was:

"play something more drummy" and then "no, less drummy"

I think they meant more fills... Not sure...
 
"Okay, so for this next part we're going to drop by 30 bpm and change the time signature for 4 bars, then go back to the original beat. No problem right?"
 
DrumEatDrum said:
Believe it or not, that was some what common way to record in the late 70's and early 80's.

Many records in the disco era were done like that, and some rock albums in the early 80's were done like that.

These days, they can just use sound replacement software to accomplish the same objective.
Click to expand...

Some of Joy Division's work was recorded that way and it sounds utterly stunning. Sparse and desolate.
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
Again, I read something like this when Nirvana's first album was out and big. Somebody told me that thanks to ProTools, they snipped the best loops of choruses and/or verses, and just strung them along - much like how you'd program a drum machine back in the 80s, by recording one loop, then letting it play over and over, but this time they did it with the entire band playing the rhythm part. I knew stuff like this has been going on ever since the dawn of music recording, something I think was called "Musique Concrete".

It still blows my mind that you couldn't find someone to play a song through perfectly for 3-minutes?

Even J.R. Robinson said he'd do a great smokin' take and then they'd want just the bass drum part again, which he would nail too. So it even happens to him!

And not surprisingly, I heard there's a tape vault full of what it took to record one of Metallica's albums - that whole album (whichever one it was) was just one huge edit from start to finish!
Click to expand...

I thought it would have been done before, but we were trying to keep it as simple (in engineering terms) as possible, and as you say above playing a song through perfectly for 3 minutes isn't so hard, especially when it's our own songs!
 
WaitForItDrummer said:
Seriously?

Well, thanks guys for enlightening me!

To me this sounds insane... As in insanely difficult... To me knowing how to play a piece is the muscle memory of what I'm hitting and when... And how my body does things in coordination - and how it sounds as a whole.

It must be very difficult to separate them out... Can you imagine a muti-tom 16ths fill? Or a solo? How would that work drum by drum?

I guess might work for keeping a rock beat or disco beat... But still ...
Click to expand...

I often practice each limb one at a time, the y's, ah's, and, pul, et also. Some times I switch back and forth between the full roll and the one handed, or even doubling the one handed version.
 
uhtrinity said:
Play it faster, it will sound heavier ....

He still hasn't figured out that you can play slower and still be heavy.
Click to expand...

Uhg, that is so wrong. For any given song (or part) there's a sweet spot to sounding heavy. Too fast or too slow and the "heavy" starts to bleed off.
 
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