Recording Drums

leejohnwatkinson

Junior Member
Hey,

New to this forum stuff but I just want a few answers quickly, ha.

I am thinking about recording my drums. I am not terribly worried about the sound quality (unless it sounds awful).

I guess my question is:

Could I put a few mics around my drums that are connected to the PA system we use for vocals and then link the PA directly to the computer (line out or whatever) in order to record the sound?
 
If you have a sound card that will take an input into your computer, that would definitely be the cheapest way of doing it. But if you want control over separate drums, then you'd need a multi-channel USB interface, if you wanted to stick with recording into your computer (and all the inherent headaches of learning how to do that).

I did a mini-review of a Zoom product here that I really like and it doesn't break the bank:

http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69369
 
Thanks for the quick reply!

That's alright then.

I just wanted to make sure I could do it that way. It's just for a few recordings before i can start spending cash on gear.

Doing it the way I planned, would it be easy enough to take the sound file and overlay it onto a song (like a drum cover) and a video file of myself playing the song?

If so, what software would make this easy?

Thanks again.
 
From what little you've said, it would be hard to know what you can actually do. Here's my process for the videos I've done:

Record the song I want to lay drums down to on one track of the multi-track recorder. Then record video of me playing to it as the drums go down on other tracks of the multi-track recorder.

Then, in iMovie, I import the video into a track, and then (after making a stereo mixdown of the my audio tracks) import that track into iMovie and lock the two together. It's the only way I can get good audio with ok video. (Remember, I'm muting the sound from the video and replacing it with the sound from the multi-track mixdown).

What kind of computer do you have and what software are you already running? Some machines have audio software built-in.
 
The reason I have said so little is because I know very little, ha!

I have no software on the computer, it's just a standard everyday computer that we have set up in the garage for band use (emails, youtube, all that stuff).

I simply wish to record the sound of my drums, capture video of me playing the drums, put these together so you would see a video with sound of me playing the drums (in sync of course).

Then i would want to add music to this also, as i wish to record a drum cover for Youtube.

The things I have to hand, of which i wish to use, are:

A drum set.
3 Vocal mics.
A PA System (using only the head).
A computer.
Cameras for the video.
 
So I'll assume that when you record stuff with your cameras you have a way of getting that into the computer, yes?

The easiest way to do this would be to play the track you want to play with through the PA, play along with your drums, and use the camera to record the performance. It's sound like you have a Windows machine so I'm not sure if it comes with built-in software to edit video and upload to YouTube. But I think a Windows A/V software would be something like Vegas? Somebody jump in here about the Windows software.

Anything else more elaborate than that would require $$$.
 
Back
Top