Overdubbing drums

i've tried this twice, mind, without the guide of a drum machine track and it's been sheer hell. very hard to capture a good feel. however, i'm not really a solid drummer. you might be in very good shape.

yes, done it, with spectacular drummer tho - great results.

make sure he gets the click he needs and let nature do the rest

or she. sorry Janet

Should work the same as a click track.
I'd take out the fills and leave the most basic stuff. High hat and snare or whatever you set as the most steady drum.

If you can, that is.

I've done this a bunch. During the recording process, you might want to bring the looping tracks up in the mix. If you have a pair of noise cancelling headphones, let the drummer wear those, the more they hear of what's actually going onto the recording vs the noise from their own kit, the better. Also it helps if other people aren't in the room being adolescent douchebags.

I have done this from time to time with credible results, but it's so very inferior to having live interplay. And it can be very frustrating, especially as I tend to lose the sound of the click in among what I'm playing, if it's a cross-stick or hat. Best click for me is a BEEP.

But then, I don't like clicks or metronomic time anyway. The drum-machiney tracks I've done recently were all played live, with sticks, on an SPD-20.

i'd go against any basic beat stuff. maybe have a loop as a reference in case but, you need to have an anchor point for the drummer to flow around without messing mojo. have lots of click options and be ready to change them on the fly.

if he's drifting, make it more defined and give him more click volume - if he's playing like a robot lower it a bit in relation to the rest of the track.

if you're trying to rock rather than groove and if the drummer's good, don't let him/her 'jam' or get too comfortable over the track. set the sounds up, get it working and start recording immediately. people play differently outside their 'zone'(man) - you get more mistakes and more magic too. if you can record multiple takes and comp them later it might be the way to go.

I love metronomic time.

I've got a eight click in the front of these recordings, but most of it is just a sequenced kick/snare with some hat sounds. My thought was for the drummer to maybe to put down a high hat line first off over just the kick and snare patterns, so he would have something there he would know how it goes, then try overdubbing stuff on the kit.

It's difficult to overdub drums well, and it definitely makes the drummer play more conservatively. This may be a plus or a minus for you, but it's something to consider. In other words, no drummer wants his time proved bad by a machine, so he'll probably play more machinelike than he otherwise would.

> no drummer wants his time proved bad by a machine

I used to worry about that, but then decided that it's the machine's time that's bad.

Works fine if you have a drummer with good time and can play to a click track or loop and if you have proper recording kit (good mics, good placement and good room) and most importantly - good ears! If any on the list are amiss, manage your expectations...

Bleeps/beeps-as-click highly recommended! Ideally, the drummer will be playing something on the counts where the click sounds, and if it's an actual "click" sound, it's harder to hear against a kick/snare/etc.

Also, I have found that, working with drummers that aren't as familiar with playing to metronomic time thingies, sometimes it works best to ease them into it, maybe have them just lay down a buckwild rock roll/fill here or there, a cymbal splash breakdown there, etc. In combination with the drum machine holding the bulk of the beat, this works to get those live drum flourishes incorporated, without completely crushing the drummer's confidence.

in response to captain -

i think alot of drummmers prefer to NOT have those noise-canceling headphones - although it might make it easier to hear the click, you end up losing all the little subtle acoustic rings/cracks/noises that make acoustic drums worth it. .

maybe one ear on, one off - whatever they're comfortable with.

we did this for a track (kavan, which you can hear on our myspace page: http://myspace.com/cartamusic). the song was written around a guitar loop which was obviously imprecise, and was just bass/guitar/piano for a long time. we did the drums over it in an afternoon a few years later (and the cellos later than that). the drummer had to practice A LOT, and we had to do a fair amount of editing later on because I'm anal and wanted things to sound really precise, but it worked.

I would not, however, recommend that anyone do this unless you absolutely had to. it was a pain in the ass and took way longer than it should have.

I love this thread, it makes me feel like I am some kind of SUPERBADASS drummer for never having had any problems doing this.

, you end up losing all the little subtle acoustic rings/cracks/noises that make acoustic drums worth it.

Ideally, they will be able to hear those things in the headphones though, as they are (hopefully) being picked up by the mics.

Ideally.

Too bad nobody writes rock songs where the notions of accel. and rit. are in play, thus mooting the question of engineer-controlled click vs. real drummer.

I remember reading about how some big rock bands (I don't know, Smashing Pumpkins or R.E.M. or something) would set the click at, say, 130 for the verse and nudge it up to 132 for the chorus, just to get that excited push.

thus mooting the question of engineer-controlled click vs. real drummer.

?

I was thinking more along the lines of Black Flag's No More than an itty-bitty bump in tempo.