Tips for recording Drum plugins?

seachto7

Hi all,

Just wondering what advice you would offer for recording some drums using a plugin, but not using the pre programmed grooves.

I would be using a midi keyboard, and my thinking would be to record the kick snare tracks separately to the cymbals and crashes.

It would be easy to record "kick snare kick kick snare etc" live using my left and right hands into one track.

If I then set up another track and only recorded the ride and crash etc, then it would just be a case of quantizing both these tracks?

Some of the pre programmed grooves and fills could be used here and there then to embellish......

madtheory

I usually do kick snare and hats with two hands, and the toms and crashes as well, in one take. Then some severe editing and overdubs! 99% of the time the kik and snare get quantised, 50% of the time the hats, and 25% of the time the fills. I have drum pads too but I much prefer a weighted keyboard, I can make some sort of a musical stab at the dynamics on that.

seachto7

Yeah, I see what you mean. I have good timing, so would like to possibly do the kick/snare/toms on a separate track to the cymbals.

I take it you can't overdub on the same track? Silly question I reckon.......

DamagedTrax

seachto7 wrote: »

I take it you can't overdub on the same track? Silly question I reckon.......

you can if you're recording midi data.

seachto7

ah, I did not know this. So I assume it would be better to wait until I have both recorded before I quantize the track.

I am using Reaper so must look into this. I thought that with midi data, you wouldn't be able to overdub, you'd have to go to a new track. So I could record kick and snare, then record cymbals over them. Sweet!

madtheory

Reaper has a great wiki and lots of tutorial videos on youtube. Dig in to those.

seachto7

will do. Thanks.