Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

I have a Tascam Dp-02. I am looking to run drums into this for the use of recording demos. The way I see it there are 3 choices. I can buy about 5 mics for the drum set I have set up and also buy a separate mixer or i can buy a drum machine ( thinking about the Alesis SR-18 ) that will plug right into the back of the DP-02 or I can download a drum kit ( thinking about easy drummer ) but then I would have to create the drum tracks on the computer and somehow get them back over to the DP-02 and be in sync with the song that is recorded on the DP-02.

If anyone has had any experience with what i am trying to do and know the gear I have or am thinking about, I would love to hear your suggestions.

Thanks,

Bob

You'll get the best drums by using a real drum set - but when using a mixer and recording down to a stereo (or mono) track, you've got to get the mix right (all levels and EQs), because you're stuck with it at that point.
Drum machines (even the best ones)give a very monotonous backbeat to songs. Depending on the type of music you are making, this may work. It's good for dance stuff.
Virtual Instruments (like EZ Drummer) have a lot of advantages to use - when using a computer for recording, not for using a stand-alone recorder. You could certainly create a drum track, mix it down to stereo, then feed the audio from your computer to the recorder, then record your other parts on your recorder to the drum track, but you will never synch a computer-made drum track to already-recorded tracks on your recorder.

I suggest you read up on recording (in general), Homerecording.com (and the user forums there) have a wealth of information.

+1 vote for using a real drummer and sampling the drum line.

Drum machines and canned drum programs are only going to do so much unless you want to spend some serious time trying to augment the basic riffs you can readily choose from. (Zzzzzzzzzz)

Then the real fun starts, trying to make sure that everything is synched up and ready to go, time wise.

"EZ drummer" s/b "Cheesey Drummer".

Great question. Drums are necessary for most modern music and getting good results isn't easy. Really good drum machines are ok, canned drum samples might work, and a nice drum kit carefully recorded in a great room by an experienced engineer sound fantastic! Drums are the toughest to record and get right so don't buy mics and a mixer until you have recorded live drums on someone else's dime and got great results. Your money is better spent in a studio with a room, carefully tuned kit, excellent mics, and engineer with proven success.

My recommendation:
If you are doing simple demos so people can hear your songs, do it the way Les Paul did it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uSnOhLUw9c

If you need a full-kit sound on the cheap use good drum machine samples
http://www.loopmasters.com/product/details/988

There is no substitute for great live drums recorded brilliantly. Don't try this at home
http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Summoners-Tal ... 975&sr=1-8

Thank you for the above comments. I thought it might be a nightmare to mix the drums on the computer and then transfer them over to the Tascam and have everything sync up. Your response confirms that.

Having played in bands and been around music my whole life, I understand the value of a real drummer vs the one that lives in a box. I have the drum set as well as the drummer. Not really interested at this point to invest money into booking a high end recording studio just to add the drums. I also want a system at my house where I can continue to punch out demos without going in debt paying of outside recording studios, which is why I have created my own studio. So for me, at this point in time, it comes down to getting the gear I need to use the drum set i have or go with a drum machine such as the Alesis SR-18 that can plug right into the back of the Tascam. I have heard some really decent rock and blues as well as pop drumming coming out of these little beasts, it just takes time to record them.

A couple of examples:

On my player, all of the drums were recorded live in a tuned room with about $2k in mics. The setup took about 5 hrs and we recorded in 3 sessions. I did the engineering and am still not totally happy with the results. The pros do it way better. It was intentionally mixed in mono for a video soundtrack project and now that annoys me. I should have done a stereo master and a second mono mix for the video. If I were to do this project over again I would probably not buy the mics and spend $2k in a pro studio instead. YMMV

There is also a video listed on my page the we use a Roland drum machine to create and it sounded pretty good when originally done. Unfortunately the vid was done in 1986, old tape-to-digital transfer, overloaded audio levels that ended up sounding pretty rough on youtube. You can get the idea though.

Acoustic58 - I'd recommend you think about moving to computer recording as soon as your budget allows. Any fairly-new computer (at least 4G RAM) will work, and you just need an audio interface to move the sound form analog to digital.
An AI like the TASCAM US1800 (on sale recently at Sweetwater for less than $200) will let you mic up a drum kit with up to 8 mics and record all them to separate tracks for mixing.
If its purely for demos, you can use a 3 or 4 mic set up to easily record drums, as long as the room is not too bad acoustically. At the same time, you can use software drums when you want to throw something together in the middle of the night and not wake up the household playing drums.

Hi Bob,

Shameless plug - I'm a drummer who does exactly what most every sane musician here hates to do (with good reason) - depending on the project I do remote live and sampled drum tracking. I understand the "ZZZZZZZ" comments above - but it's nice cottage industry for guys like me who can do drums justice.

To your original question, if you've never recorded live drums before, be prepared. Short version - it's a pain. Long version, no instrument has so many variables and sensitivities that need to line up correctly in order to get "that sound". Heads, tuning, sticks, mics, bleed, good sound isolation and absorption - and not to mention the drummer's ability to play appropriately!

Software drums as mentioned before are great for demoing, but also are very canned and need to be lovingly and carefully crafted. If nothing else, it helps establish a tempo if you ever need a real drummer to track real drums.

Then there's option #3. Record your songs to a click track or demo drum track and then send them to a guy like me who can either track live drums or help tailor your software drums to sound great.

Regardless, good luck and remember to have fun. That's what it's all about. Let me know if you need any drum pointers.

Hi Bob,

Shameless plug - I'm a drummer who does exactly what most every sane musician here hates to do (with good reason) - depending on the project I do remote live and sampled drum tracking. I understand the "ZZZZZZZ" comments above - but it's nice cottage industry for guys like me who can do drums justice.

To your original question, if you've never recorded live drums before, be prepared. Short version - it's a pain. Long version, no instrument has so many variables and sensitivities that need to line up correctly in order to get "that sound". Heads, tuning, sticks, mics, bleed, good sound isolation and absorption - and not to mention the drummer's ability to play appropriately!

Software drums as mentioned before are great for demoing, but also are very canned and need to be lovingly and carefully crafted. If nothing else, it helps establish a tempo if you ever need a real drummer to track real drums.

Then there's option #3. Record your songs to a click track or demo drum track and then send them to a guy like me who can either track live drums or help tailor your software drums to sound great.

Regardless, good luck and remember to have fun. That's what it's all about. Let me know if you need any drum pointers.

+1
We love drummers who "get it" and are able to record excellent results for reasonable cost. Honestly, 98% of home studio drumkit recordings are simply quite awful because musicians don't understand how truly involved the process is. It's not that they can't do it. It's that they get in a hurry and don't do it right.

Jackodrummer,

Thank you for the offer and it could be a road that I may go down at some point.

I am a guitar player, I understand all the gear and how to make it sound exactly the way I want it to. If I want to record it, I just plug it into something whether it's a computer based system or stand alone. Drums are a different monster all together. I have a full drum kit set up in my house, which my son plays. Myself, I can keep a beat and impress people that don't know anything about what a real drummer is supposed to sound like.

I know recording drums is a craft in itself. Can I put up 4-5 mics and point them at different parts of the kit and have it sound ok once mixed, sure. BUT, it's not going to sound great. The canned drummers in a box ( like easy drummer ) can sound amazing if I am willing to invest endless amounts of time tweaking and creating fills. My preference is to always work with a real drummer !

I am also considering sliding from the Tascam world to something like Pro Tools. There are pros and cons to both. In the ideal world, I would just go to a professional recording studio and just pay the money and get the best of the best. If playing music was my #1 income source, that would be my choice. What I am doing is basically making demos both for myself and to hopefully get the music into the hands of the right people.

Jackodrummer,

Thank you for the offer and it could be a road that I may go down at some point.

I am a guitar player, I understand all the gear and how to make it sound exactly the way I want it to. If I want to record it, I just plug it into something whether it's a computer based system or stand alone. Drums are a different monster all together. I have a full drum kit set up in my house, which my son plays. Myself, I can keep a beat and impress people that don't know anything about what a real drummer is supposed to sound like.

I know recording drums is a craft in itself. Can I put up 4-5 mics and point them at different parts of the kit and have it sound ok once mixed, sure. BUT, it's not going to sound great. The canned drummers in a box ( like easy drummer ) can sound amazing if I am willing to invest endless amounts of time tweaking and creating fills. My preference is to always work with a real drummer !

I am also considering sliding from the Tascam world to something like Pro Tools. There are pros and cons to both. In the ideal world, I would just go to a professional recording studio and just pay the money and get the best of the best. If playing music was my #1 income source, that would be my choice. What I am doing is basically making demos both for myself and to hopefully get the music into the hands of the right people.

There's no replacement for getting into a studio with a good engineer and laying down your final product. And with the state of things today, there are deals to be had from many paid studios depending on your location - off hour slots, pay advance discounts, etc.

But if you're at the demoing phase, I'd say you're close. Going with a DAW solution is great because it's digital and with plugins can get you a good deal of functionality on a modest budget. There are even free solutions out there to dip your toes in - Reaper being one of the premier free DAWs.

As for micing, you could setup one SM57 boomed about 30-50 inches directly pointed down over the center of the snare and get usable results. Check out "the recorderman technique" on youtube. It's a way to use two mics to get a fairly decent, full range stereo kit with only two hopefully matching mics. And it works like a champ.

Again, remember this is a demo to build on top of - not what you publish to iTunes just yet. Just make sure you try to play to a click track and are able to export that click track on a separate channel than the drums. Your (or your son's) playing doesn't need to be perfect - it's a demo! But having that click syncs the project to future musicians to come in and collaborate. We know where the "1" is and all verses and choruses, etc. From there, it's a process of iteration and building to the final product.

Before playing $500 for the full version of PT, look at Reaper. Its a full-featured DAW, you can download the full version for free to try out and pay only $60 to register it.