Drummers Who Play Other Instruments And Record

My homage to Crimson's "Red", called "Brown". No perfectionism here - turn it up :) https://soundcloud.com/greta-courtney/brown

Drums plus naive guitar, naive slide and naive piano, a couple of "ahhh"s - recorded with just a Zoom recorder and mixed in Audacity. Most of the weird squealy noises are a slide played up near the guitar bridge.

A fairly balanced and clear demo-standard recording is very easy to achieve with minimal cost.
 
I don't have the right gear to record drums the way I want for things like this, so I wrote the drums then tabbed them out in midi. If I could afford the mics and interfaces then I wouldn't hesitate to use them. I have a 2 channel Mic pre and a couple cheap mics.

This one was recorded with kontakt using slate's samples. Then me on guitar.

Rocking a Jackson 7 string through an Orange CR120h and b52 cab with a radio shack usb mic. The guys on one of the main guitar forums said that amp couldn't do it.

https://soundcloud.com/liaztraht/untitled-track

I wish I could find someone to play the drums on this live so I can hop on guitar. But I always get stuck behind the kit because I'm the only one that can play. I'm bored of metal druming :/

My next project I will probably single or dual mic my kit. Get a nice organic stoner rock thing going. Still working on the guitars though.
 
It all depends on how you want to record drums. Live or Midi?

Not sure if garageband is good for recording live drums, everyone I know who's used it has used loops. This is fine for a while but you ultimately need to modify it to go with the song.

I have a PC (32gb RAM, 4 x 3.6ghz i7), a roland studio capture and Cubase artist 8.5.

For years I used EZDrummer and Drum Kit From Hell, played in from a Roland TD5 and then modified through the above plugins in cubase. It works for a while and for a while its great, but ultimately it sounds wrong, especially hi-hats and cymbals.

Since I bought my new gear, I am so much more creative because if I have an idea for an odd metered song, I just quickly program a beat into groove agent, play the riff and then play a live guide drum track over the top and create the true "feel" of the song that I had in my head before I started.

Other times I play the structure of an entire song on the drums and then cut them up as I play guitar tracks to various parts (verse/chorus etc)

It's all about finding whats right for you, I have just made do with shit gear for years. Now I have finally spent a decent amount of hardware and software, it really has been worth it.

Haven't posted any new tunes online at the moment though coz I'm still working out how best to use it
 
I haven't had much time lately to continue with my venture into recording although have been using Studio One Artist which came with my PreSonus interface to record the drums along with imported bass tracks from either Amplitube or Garage Band. Then bringing that back into Garage Band on a Mac desktop to fool around with.

Garage Band is okay but thinking about getting Logic Pro X and bringing one of my older Macs into the basement so I can do everything there. Logic Pro X is only $200 and is pretty much pro level software. Something else to learn.

Oh yeah, thanks for those who posted links to their work. Much appreciated!
 
I've been using FL studio haha. I used to make electronic music so I kept it because I know it well.
 
MoreBeer said:
I haven't had much time lately to continue with my venture into recording although have been using Studio One Artist which came with my PreSonus interface to record the drums along with imported bass tracks from either Amplitube or Garage Band. Then bringing that back into Garage Band on a Mac desktop to fool around with.

Garage Band is okay but thinking about getting Logic Pro X and bringing one of my older Macs into the basement so I can do everything there. Logic Pro X is only $200 and is pretty much pro level software. Something else to learn.

Oh yeah, thanks for those who posted links to their work. Much appreciated!
Click to expand...

I'm a big fan of Logic. I've used version 5.5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Never tried X but I don't have the money to buy it at the moment. I use 9 every single day at work, so Logic is my 'home' DAW and what I feel the most comfortable with.

I will offer Reaper as an alternative. It's much cheaper, very customisable and well-featured. The one downside for me is not having access to Space Designer - which is a very important plug-in for me and one that I miss. It's great for sound design and was an absolute cornerstone when I was making ambient music. Reaper is a professional DAW and can produce stunning results, it just doesn't quite have the spit and polish I'm used to. Most of the issues I have with DAWs in general can be solved by having multiple monitors (damn lack of a meter bridge).

If you can afford Logic Pro X, then go for it. I hear very good things now it's been ironed out and it is in every sense a 'professional' DAW.
 
belairien said:
I've been using FL studio haha. I used to make electronic music so I kept it because I know it well.
Click to expand...

Never heard of FL Studio, although I have been out-of-the-loop with recording tech for a LONG time. I'll check it out.
 
MoreBeer said:
Never heard of FL Studio, although I have been out-of-the-loop with recording tech for a LONG time. I'll check it out.
Click to expand...

It's a bit trickier to set up audio inputs as its designed more for midi and vst use. But their piano roll and track sequencing are the best I've used.

I use Studio One when I need to "punch in"
 
I've got an R16 as well; handy for drums because of the eight inputs. I usually use about six tracks for drums and then I'll dump them into my DAW which is Cubase LE, and then add on from that point, using the same R16 as an interface.

I play bass and keyboards in addition to drums and just noodle around with some instrumental Steely Dan / Weather Channel kind of fluff.
 
I really didn't set out to spam Drummerworld with my song today, but I stumbled onto this thread. I put this together a couple weeks ago, and I play everything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2tBDKbIoU

I wrote the lyrics to that first, then I sketched out the overall structure on an a capella multitrack I did on my phone. I recorded the bass first, and since I was recycling the same 12 bars, I just looped a good section. Looping the bass made it convenient to play with varying the length of the composition. Add bars, just drag out another loop. Subtract bars, drag a loop away.

I played drums to the bass line for a pretty good while before I recorded everything. I worked out some fills and transitions that fit, kind of hearing all the other stuff that was going to come into being while it was still just in my head. Now that I had practiced the vocabulary I intended to use live, I went in and wrote out some performance notes to myself about what fill to play where.

I didn't over-think it, and most of it was just stream of consciousness as far as what cymbal to hit to punctuate what chord change or whatever. I did three takes of the drums, and the final mix includes parts of all three takes. I played all the way through all three times, instead of piecing together the final result out of many individual sections and loops.

After each day's recording progress, I bounced to disk, and put a copy of the final track on my phone. I listened to it on a continuous loop off and on all day at work, and just sort of mentally worked out how what was going to go from there. I recorded rhythm guitar next, and then I think I did vocals, and filled in with the lead guitar and the trumpet last.

I recorded all the audio with REAPER on Windows 10, using a Focusrite 18i20, a Sennheiser Drumkit 600 recording kit, and my trusty old SM57 for the trumpet. (As a Linux audio guy, the complexity of this recording interface is what finally turned me into a traitor. I could have moved the raw audio over to Linux, but for $60 I decided to just learn REAPER. It's quite good.)
 
I dabble with synths and keyboards and although I'm not really proficient in any instrument, I like to record my experiments in electronic music. I have finished about 10 (freely released and underproduced) albums since I started 15 years ago.

Back when I was starting out, I tried to make more conventional stuff and tried to record acoustic drums in a couple tunes.

The first one combines sequenced samples plus some acoustic cymbals and snare tracks, recorded with a Sennheiser e835:

http://www.facproductions.net/music/aardvark/03_Jellybean.mp3

The second one was an over-ambitious project where I played bass guitar and recorded all drums in one take recorded with the e835 and an AKG C2000B. Then the drum tracks were run through a Nord Micromodular for effects and filtering:

http://www.facproductions.net/music/dsp/14_Keffy.mp3

Years later, I recorded two (less conventional) albums where the drums in some tracks combine sequences with live e-drums.
 
This is a great thread, it'll be a super resource for me soon (hopefully). I'm not looking to do the finished products that many of you folks are, but I'd like to be able to put some demos together for stuff that I'm writing, to give to the guitar player and primary songwriter for our band. Then he can put his twist on it but hopefully still be in the thought process of what I had in mind.

Plus, my guitar playing sucks! :)

It'll be fun following the thread.
 
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