Recording drums

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www.witchsmark.com
Member Since: Aug 13, 2006

I am getting ready to record our bands 2nd CD. On the first CD we just had the drummer play the song (freestyle no metronome) while the guitar player played with him to keep the places and somewhat of a timing. Obviously as you would expect, the drums speed up and slow down on almost every song. Also, we just recorded the drums and did many takes until he stopped screwing up and we finally would get a descent track. This time I want to put more time and effort into our next CD and I have been thinking of ways to track the drums more consistently using Sonar 6PE. For starters, the drummer has agreed to try and play to a metronome. This brings up 3 questions:

1. Should the drummer play to the metronome or is there a better way to do this??

2. Should I record in pieces (verse, chrous, fills) and paste them together later or should the drummer record through and then ultimately Punch-Over the bad parts if any??

3. Our drummer is very dynamic, hits really loud at times causing a -18db to shoot up to -3db on certain parts where he gets a little excited, how can this be fixed??.... tried a Compressor as best as possible already and it really isn't working out that well.

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Typo Szar
Member
Since: Jul 04, 2002


Jan 28, 2010 09:29 am

1. Yes. If u have time and meter changes, just create a tempo track or click track to use. playing to a metronome is great for editing and basicaly it sjsut more professional for ur drummer to be on time... obviously though dont let it rule the session, flexibility is key

2. record all the way through and punch-in where necessary, drums r hard to splice together coz things like cymbals and stuff make it very obvious that two parts were cut.

3 dynamics r good, forget teh compressor going in and just set ur gain and level so that even his hardest hits dont get into the red zone. U can compress the hell out of it later in ur DAW.

My personal tips for drum recording, especially with stuff ur talking about. Have ur drummer practice with the click for weeks before actually having ur "session", the point of having a hoem studio is so that u dont have to worry about time and stuff and can take all the time u need to get relaxed and do things right. So have ur drummer come in and see how his playing shows up on the meters and in the wav forms and let him get use to playing with the click and "recording". No pressure of actually getting stuff on tape, so that the day u do have to get stuff on tape, itll just be any other day.

www.witchsmark.com
Member
Since: Aug 13, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 11:31 am

Thanks Crux. I have another question. Is it possible to raise the volume of a particular Kick or Snare hit within the track by highlighting the section within the track and then bumping the volume up or down, using Sonar6PE?? I have seen where you can do it using a Volume Envelope, but that's a pain in the butt... is there an easier method?? That being said, is there a way to do it within Drumagog as well, raise or lower a particular beat??

Member
Since: Sep 30, 2009


Jan 28, 2010 12:08 pm

I prefer automation for enveloping. When you edit the volume automation, you are basically telling your DAW to move the channels fader up or down. Just do a search in your manual for the word "automation" and read that chapter (i know, its VERY stressful and hard to understand but the manual helped me a lot with cubase).

As far as Drumagog someone else will have to help you there, i have nooooo idea what that is lol. Unless its just like any other midi drum program.

Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 02:09 pm

My suggestion for tracking drums is this...

1. Have the guitarist play the entire track to a metronome, sacrifice fancy picking if needed to get the best "in time" take you can. Then have him double it and pan accordingly (it will be fuller and help the drummers performance imo). This will not be his final take as he will probably play it better (more feeling) once the drums are added. It is simply a doubled scratch track.

Doing this makes it so the guitarist does not have to perform perfect takes over and over again until the drummer gets it right. Having two people tracking and trying to be perfect at the same time just adds room for error.

2. Now have the drummer record to the metronome and the pre-recorded guitars (which are perfect every time). I would track each song all the way through as cutting pasting live drums can be a nightmare during transitions.

3. Once you got drums, it's all downhill from there.

On dynamics, he needs to control them better. Comp will help a tad on the overall loudness per hit but the tone of a soft vs. hard hit (say on the kick) will still be obvious. When intentional and a good fit it's great, but when not it makes mixing tough.

Hope that helps

www.witchsmark.com
Member
Since: Aug 13, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 03:25 pm

Two more questions:

1. When you apply a Envelope, i.e. Volume, does it always span the entire track and then you create Nodes along it to raise or lower volume??

2. What is the difference between Volume Envelope and Gain Envelope??

Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 03:42 pm

1. Yes, I don't reccomend them as they pretty much disable the channels volume slider. If you need to notch -.05db then you have to adjust the enevelope as you can't adjust the slider anymore (it snaps back to what the envelope designates). It is workable for sure but definitely adds time to a project when it comes to final mixdown.

I personally prefer (say on a kick drum) to just edit the individual file, highlight the hit in question and do a gain boost/cut on only that hit to bring it in line with the others. Done and done, don't need to mess with it again and I'm free to adjust overall kick volume as needed without tweaking an envelope.

2. I don't think anything if we are talking about it being applied after tracking.

www.witchsmark.com
Member
Since: Aug 13, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 04:02 pm

<quote>I personally prefer (say on a kick drum) to just edit the individual file, highlight the hit in question and do a gain boost/cut on only that hit to bring it in line with the others.</quote>

That's exactly what I am looking for...How do you do this??

Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 04:34 pm

In audition I simply dbl click the .wav in question which brings it up in "edit" veiw vs. "multitrack" view. Once tweaked I save it and never touch it again. I am sure Sonar would have an edit function for single files but I have never used that particular piece of software.

www.witchsmark.com
Member
Since: Aug 13, 2006


Jan 28, 2010 04:38 pm

Can anyone who uses Sonar chime in on this?? Does Sonar have this functionality??

Typo Szar
Member
Since: Jul 04, 2002


Jan 28, 2010 10:37 pm

I dont use Sonar but its one of the bigger DAWs so im sure it has all the functions u can imagine

I use to do wat u and Cpt r doing as well, simply jacking the gain for certain parts but i found that in terms of creating a good mix this adds more problems than it solves in the end. With a volume envelope, even though it takes a bit more care to setup, gives u more flexibility.

Here r a few of the drawbacks of just pumping ur gain in the wav form:

Ur wav form is basically ur "input" after tracking, so changing the gain there will change ur compressor settings, eq, everything, since the wav form has changed it will alter how ur effects r processing.

Jacking the gain turns up noise much more noticeably than using ur fader

Its actually much harder to chase down that turned up gain to turn it down afterwards vs changing ur envelope settings

many times when altering gain u get weird peaks and possibly clipping

that kind of became a rant, but yeah i use to do that and it just didtn work out well for me. After u learn autmoation (which i hear is quite easy in Sonar) it wont seem so hard and it will give u many more skills for use wiht plugins and such

Edit: after reading wat CptTripps is doing i realized yeah i still do that, for rogue peaks and such so the compressor doesnt have to work so hard. But if ur talking about a whole passage changing volume then definitely automate

Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006


Jan 29, 2010 01:12 pm

Crux, you are correct indeed. I don't usually boost things honestly, I reduce the super hard hits but that is only if there are a couple of them.

Now, on the gain adjustment of a passage I will have to disagree. Say on a soft spoken passage that is part of a main verse, everything is loud but the spoken part (normally I would do that on a seperate track but for examples sake). I find that highlighting said passage and giving it a 2db boost is easier than enveloping and I don't notice a sonic difference (as it boosts everything in the wav the SNR is no different than before).

You are correct the comp will act different, but for the most part that is what I'm looking for, to bring the soft spoken in line with the rest (ballpark) so I don't have to work the comp as hard and make it sound unnatural.

Enveloping works fantastic, don't get me wrong, I just think it's a pain in the butt.

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