Hit it

How to start recording?

Well somehow we learned to start in a particular order :
1) Drums + Percussion
2) Bass
3) Guitar
4) Additional instruments
5) Vocals

So at first we recorded the drums. We had 7 drum mics, i.e.:
1 Bassdrum mic
1 Snare mic
3 Tom mics
2 Overhead mics

Because we had another XLR port left in our firewire mixer we decided to use the extra port for a hihat mic. Placed from the above to get the stick hitting the hihat in our sound, like this :




Only it seemed we could've used the extra XLR for something else. The hihat is heard pretty good in the OH's and therefor the hihattrack is muted or else it would've been too much hihat in the drumtrack. Our other problem this way is the absence of a real snaredrum hit. If you remove the snares from the drum, hit it and the sound you get then is almost the sound that we have. That sucks. We should have used the extra port for the snare bottom to get that real hit-effect. No harm no foul. Thank god for VST instruments.

We placed the overhead mics about 60 - 70 cm above the drumkit on both sides. Because our drummer has a lot of crashes (11!!) we had to spread the mics pretty wide to get everything at the same level. Although a lot of crashes we're picked up by other mics as well, we couldn't help but spread those two because of all the gating which was going to be done when the mixing started.




The other mics were placed as usual and therefor, the recording could begin. Oh one other note to remember!! If you going to record with the artist this close to the mics, make sure the headphones are closed. We had to gate almost everything because of the clicks from the clicktrack. It's a pity, cause gating isn't always the way to go!

We also recorded a wooden block being hit by our guitarplayer. This time we used our Audiotechnika condenser mic. I have to say, condenser sounds awesome. We intended it to be played the entire song, but there is an invention called copy and paste.

How would the drummer know what to play and where to play it?

Good call! It seems that usually the bassplayer and/or guitarplayer plays along with the drummer to give him the perfect idea of where the song is. Because of technical difficulties we decided to go another way and give him the vocals as well. Before we started to record the drums, we made a few pre-recordings of the guitar and vocals simply DI-ed these and used a VST plugin amp to make it at least sound a little like a guitar and vocals. This however requires a skilled guitarplayer who can stay on the beat. If you got that I recommend that you do it this way IF you are going to use a clicktrack. If not, then record the whole bunch live so you at least have a good feel for it.

But why this way? As a musician you always listen to the rhythmic part of the song for the tempo, so the musician just plays along with the drums (unless there is a quiet part for the drums of course) and the drummer has to concentrate on both things. In my experience, which isn't much I acknowledge that, drummers find that pretty much irritating. Therefor if you pre-record this stuff, the guitar player minds the clicktrack, which, in his subconscious, he always does while playing, so there's a lot less trouble for your guitarplayer. The drummer can play on the clicktrack and if he doesn't know where he is anymore, he listens to the guitarpart. In any other way, it results in pure chaos. Trust me, I've seen it. It ain't pretty.