Mar/070
Studio Recording
This weekend I went down to Philly to practice with my band and also record some live drums at a studio. For the past couple of months or so I have been trying to record drums at home but nothing really worked on the acoustic kit or the electric. Actually I did make some recorded demos with my electric kit and my band seems to think those are good, but I honestly don’t like what I have recorded. The reason for that is the sound. Sure the electric kit can almost sound like an acoustic and if played creatively it can fool anyone to assume it is an acoustic setup with some recorded effects. However, in my opinion and probably most drummers will agree that nothing can compare to the true natural sound of an acoustic setup.
Anyways, since I have been trying to get the acoustic kit recorded for the drum tracks I could never get it right for two reasons, software and hardware, for both I need a ton of cash so I guess that makes a third reason as well. Bascially in terms of software I would need a really good recording tool which is not cheap and a computer to support it as well. In the hardware department I would need to get a couple of drum mics and possibly some sort of interface to connect the mic outputs to the mixer our band has to record each drum of the entire kit. I could go on and on about other issues and ‘excuses’ I have made not to shell out the cash and time to get the stuff I need.
So to make a long story short, my vocalist told me that one of his co-workers has a studio with a drumset that I can play and record my drum tracks with. I checked this place out yesterday and it was great. Pretty much solved all my problems with software and hardware, all I had to do was play my parts and the studio guy would do the rest of the work in terms of recording and organizing the tracks. I think I will get those tracks today via email so if I remember I’ll post them here along with a short video of my self warming up and getting used to studio drumset. (Updated: Video of me testing the drumset)
Though I was quite happy with the fact I got an acoustic sound on record that my band can use, I am sure that I will have to go back to the studio another day and re-record the tracks since they really were not perfect the first time around. But nonetheless going into the studio and seeing how drum recording is really supposed to be done was a new learning experience for me and should hopefully help me improve my drumming skills in terms of recording and following live music.