Midwest punk rock stuff but two of us are former jazz players so we throw in some interesting stuff from time to time.

I put together demos originally just playing everything myself (excepting using MIDI programming for the drums).

Originally, we were going to use an e-kit to capture the drummer's performance into EZDrummer (embedded as an effect in my DAW):





I am using Reaper for my DAW, and in my home studio I use a Behringer interface.  I've been happy with the setup so far.

We were really happy with how the drums sounded, but not very happy with our ability to capture parts of our drummer's performance.  He plays LOUDLY so his dynamics were lost in the sensitivity settings of the e-kit and trying to go back in and fix the velocities manually kinda sucked.  Plus manually changing some of the notes in MIDI because of the limited nature of my cheap-ass e-kit was awful.

So we decided to do a "proof of concept" in my machine shop to see how the room sounded.



I just hooked up a single AT4050 and played around capturing room sounds and my shop is a fantastic place to track drums.  It is super lively *but* has so many nooks and crannies and angular surfaces and large masses in it that the decay was super vibey-sounding.

So we enlisted the help of a fallen ARFCOMmer and got drums tracked for four of our songs.  Our drummer was super nervous about it but other than a few errant hits here and there was basically a one-take machine all day.





I intended to use this setup:



...but the 8 channel DAC/preamp unit didn't come in in time so I used eight channels off an old Soundcraft board that we had laying about.  Ended up with 13 tracks for the drums plus I played guitar live into the interface directly so the drummer could hear me but without room sound.

Everything sounds fucking GREAT.

So last week I had the bassist over to my studio to track a few songs but didn't grab any pictures.  Our engineer wants them retracked with both the DI from the GK rig as well as a mic'd sound.  Que Lastima.

This weekend I tracked my guitar parts and had the other guitarist over to track his.  I do all the real writing in the band and some of these songs I actually had fully formed before the band started up, so the new guitarist is playing catch up on some of this stuff.  I'm a very melodic player and he is a bit more of a metal guy that brings some chromaticism to the table.



I'm on vocals now (I hate tracking vocals... listening to my vocals in solo is one of the worst ego hits I can take) and I'm editing all the tracks to cut all the noise manually (I hate gates) and getting stems ready to send over to the aforementioned, formerly-resident, engineer.

We are only going to release a single with three songs at first, and then hopefully an EP or full-length late this year or at least by this time next year.  We really want to start playing shows but need a few more songs to fill out a thirty minute set.

Any questions, let me know!

My current rig, might not fit your situation

CA-14s in Action by FredMan, on Flickr

Jones Landing_The Villages Taping Rig_Stand by FredMan, on Flickr

Sony PCM-A10 by FredMan, on Flickr

I had a buddy that used to bootleg stuff in the 90s using a setup like that but with the microphones and recorder hidden on his person (and in his hat) so he got a ton of great recordings.

Not really in the same league as what we are trying to accomplish but I won't certainly denigrate what can be done with simple setup on a great performance!

I wanted to use the Glyn Johns method on the drums but the engineer wanted a traditional setup.  I got some pretty cool audio of the former, however.  Sounds good but we lost some definition on the cymbals for sure.

Rawk On!!

@RickFinsta
are you going to put up some of those drum tracks?

LOL I am currently engaged in cutting up and regluing all the guitar/bass/vocal stuff (I hate tuning gates).  I am also trying my best not to attempt to mix down any of these songs because I want to send it off to our mix engineer and producer and see what he does with it.

I'll see if I can find a way to host a quick 20sec clip of just the drum buss or something.

in for the audio

That'd be great..
Thanx, no prob if ya don't

Oh, yeah nerd shit.

Kick In: Beta 91, placed on a piece of foam about center of the drum
Kick Out: Beta 52, with the grill just even with the resonance head
Snare Top: 57, angled about 1/3 in from the rim
Snare Bottom: Beta 57, same
Rack/Floor Tom: MD421s, same
Hi-Hat: SM81, angled away from the other cymbals
Ride: SM81, same
Overheads: AKG C3000s (was supposed to have a pair of C414s but they came too late) One over the snare, one over the floor tom
Whole Kit: AT4050, 8-10' in front of kick, pointed directly at drummer's crotch
Stereo Room: SRM75S (this is a Stagg/Chicom copy of the Royer 121 in a Blumlein configuration) directly behind the AT4050, about 15-16' back and around ribcage level

Interface is a TASCAM US-16x08 and the board is a Soundcraft FX16 of some configuration or another.

Drum kit is a Varus Morpheus acrylic and the snare is a GMS 7" deep Birch.  The only cymbal I remember is the Zildjan 16" China Trash.  I am not a drum gear guy, but he runs two crashes, the ride, and the chyyy-naaaa.  A little bit of tuning and some gaffer's tape flippy-floppy-loopies on the heads.  Nothing done on the kick other than the small piece of foam supporting the Kick In mic.

If you ever want to revisit the e-drum approach, consider swapping out that Alesis module for an eDrumIn

https://www.audiofront.net/eDRUMin.php

Infinitely better signal processing and tune-ability.

ETA:  example of the UI

It isn't just the module.  It is the kit itself.  There are severe limitations to anything other than very high end kits and to be blunt I could buy all the mics and the interface I need for less than the eDrum kit at that point.

Hell I'm drunk enough to post something give me a few.

Ha! I once recorded vocals in a bathroom with towels draped all over the place. I love recording and mixing. The challenges. But do yourself a favor and check out RME interfaces. Expensive but worth the hit. I was skeptical but even I heard the difference and I rarely hear the difference. And their driver support is top notch.

One thing I know is mixing lousy source material is a right royal pain in the ass. You can't squeeze a diamond out of a turd. Awesome post. I enjoy hearing about this kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, high end interfaces are not going to happen just due to budget.  I'd love an M32 and Dante rack set up as a mobile unit but money is very tight.  I really do prefer mixing on a console just because that is how I've always worked live.  My Presonus Faderport is better than a mouse but still nowhere near as easy to do the basics like EQ.

I've got three tracks stemmed out ready for mixing and I'm working on a fourth today.  I've gotta do all my guitar retracks and then depending on how my voice is doing (my dumb ass is mainlining coffee right now like an idiot) maybe track some vocals later on.  We're considering adding a lo-fi intro with some weird filtering and static effects to this song and I've gotta figure out the arrangement before I do any more recording.  Then I'll bring in the other guitarist and we'll be ready to stem that out as well.

We are working out another two songs and then we will have three more (total of seven) to record drums.  We decided we would bulk the drum recordings up simply because of the time required to set up and tear down.

Are you recording one instrument at a time? How are you recording vocals? Are you using any kind of vocal tuning plugins? I'm using melodyne (after the fact) but damn I'm not very good with it. I don't do much recording. But please check your damn phase.

I'm working on roughing out 5 songs right now and I actually like the tunes. Damn snares kill me though. Seems I'm never happy with what I come up with. I didn't do any of the recording. One tune has some major phase issues. Trying to figure that out. Got a demo of a plugin that I hope helps.

I played scratch tracks live into headphones on guitar in the room with the drummer so he had some bearings, and then I get the bass player to come in and he tracks to the drums along with scratch guitar and vocal that I did for the original demos, then I do all the rhythm guitar stuff, and any solos, and then the other guitarist comes in to track his lead lines and supplemental rhythm stuff.  Last I go back and do all the vocals and the bass player does background and doubles and such at the same time.

My vocal chain is an AT4050 in Cardioid with a few gobos moved to kill my computer fan noise into my UMC404HD interface and then I'm currently using a Century Tube Channel Strip in Reaper because I got it free with a compressor plugin pack.  Honestly I'd be fine with stock plugins but it is faster to just dial knobs on familiar equipment with the visual plugins.  I do track through the channel strip for vocal effect stuff but otherwise I prefer to track dry with only a limiter so I don't clip an otherwise great performance.

The only time I tune vocals I use Reaper's native plugin and manually scootch things where BG vocals are slightly conflicting or something (like my vibrato went sharp and the bass player's went flat or something).  I never tune the main vocal or doubles - I do my job until I've got the performance I need.

For phase we tried to make sure all the microphones on the drum kit were phased for tracking and got it pretty good other than needing to swap the Kick In and Snare Bottom which isn't out of the ordinary but not ideal.

A decent plugin for vocals I came across is a free plugin Spoton. Spoton But I did finally break down and buy Melodyne.

The biggest thing with drum phase is just start with the overheads and make everything match those as best you can.  Start with OH to Snare top, then mute OH and go Snare Top to Kick Out.  After that check Kick Out against Kick In and Snare Bottom against Snare Top.  The Toms just gate the hell out of those and if you need to sidechain to duck the overheads when the Toms are up.  I've done live sound for so long that having to hit the phase switch on a channel isn't out of the ordinary for me.  If you need to, use trigger software and samples.  If you need I can do a few passes with Superior Drummer and get you MIDI tracks for overlaying samples or audio tracks of samples for you to blend in but to do 100% replacement is a huge task even with good source material.

If you need a hand I can tune vocals for you as well.  Bottom line on that is if the performance sucks, it sucks.  You need an earnest performance with some small mistakes not a terrible mess that needs 80% tuning.

There's no way to send a file to you here.