Anyone ever track drums/cymbals separate?

[madbutcher]

My band is tracking drums this weekend and want to try it out this way. Anyone here ever done that, have any tips for doing so?

 

[cloy26]

What would be the purpose? No drums in the overheads?

 

[madbutcher]

Yea sort of...no bleed and more compression options. I've heard of it being done and just want to try it.

 

[ronnan]

Queens of the stone age do it alot as far as i know...

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

so what are you gonna do? have the drummer track twice...take 1 is just drum playing and take 2 is just cymbals? you might end up giving yourself alot more work trying to line everything up when its all said and done...lemme know how it goes im def interested in this

 

[crazykarl]

I always wanted to try that, but I'm pretty sure it'd be very hard to do on a metal record. Go for it though and let us hear how it goes!

 

[Xcentric]

similar stuff...

http://www.chipritter.com/DV/thedrummersviewchrisadler.htm

CR- Can you tell us something that NOBODY else knows about the recording of Ashes of the wake / Lamb Of God? Or Any little known but possibly interesting fact we may have about recording ashes of the wake?

CA- One very interesting thing with the drums. Machine wanted as much separation as possible with the drum sounds – meaning he didn’t want snare sound bleeding into the kick mics and cymbals washing into the tom mics. This is an age old problem of drum recording – when you go to mix you try to bring up the toms and the cymbals get too loud – you try to bring up the kicks and the snare gets too loud. So, what we did was very interesting. We’d record the song 2x. The first time we’d cover each drum and cymbal with sheets or rubber heads except the bass drums. I’d play the song and Machine would record only the kicks – this left a pristine kick recording with no bleed from the other drums. Then we’d record the same song again with the sheets and rubber off the other drums and the kick drums covered up with blankets to deaden them. This way he had some great separation when it came to the mix.

 

[madbutcher]

so what are you gonna do? have the drummer track twice...take 1 is just drum playing and take 2 is just cymbals? you might end up giving yourself alot more work trying to line everything up when its all said and done...lemme know how it goes im def interested in this

Yep. Everything is being tracked to a grid/click in PT. We tracked the demos for the album this way, but just with a electronic kit. Drummer had no problems pulling it off.

 

[musickey]

Yep. Everything is being tracked to a grid/click in PT. We tracked the demos for the album this way, but just with a electronic kit. Drummer had no problems pulling it off.

He can do it, Your drummer is a badass. The benefits to tracking that way give you a huge amount of freedom to mix the actual drums the way you want without the mass amounts of cymbal bleed. I wanna try it too.

 

[BLUElightCory]

It's DEFINITELY not metal, but I used this technique when we tracked drums for The Maine's cover of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" -

www.myspace.com/themaine

We tracked the kick/snare/tom pattern for each section to the click, and then overdubbed the cymbals. I used Beat Detective to make sure everything lined up properly as we went.

This technique gives TONS of control, there is no cymbal bleed, and you can use compressors to bring out the room mics in ways that are impossible with normal drum tracking.

There are ZERO samples on the drums on this song, just lots of parallel and room compression.

I LOVE this technique, but I can only see it working well with a good drummer and more simplistic drum parts. You could use it for metal but be prepared to spend a LOT of time tracking.

 

[Trevoire520]

Would be cool to try I think but it all depends on the drummer really. I struggle to get some guys to play well to a click, so getting them to play the same thing twice while staying in time might be a struggle. Though the freedom in beat detective'ing without dealing with bleed would help.

I did have an extension of this idea the other day that you could do kicks, cymbals, and snares&toms all separately. A bit overkill yes, but I think it would be a good way to make the drummer really think about what he is playing and why he is playing it.

 

[[UEAK]Clowd]

I know a fairly well-known producer that does this on most projects, and I used to do it myself all the time. The benefits are not only that you can have maximum separation, but also because it's easier to add/take away fills and stuff later on down the road. If you don't have a lot of time to do pre-production this can be a real life saver if when you get to vocals and you decide you want to have a fill that goes with a vocal line or etc.

You just record the drummer normally, do your editing, delete the overhead tracks, then record again but don't have him hit the drums. Edit the cymbals as necessary, and you are good to go.

 

[AllanD]

Megadeth did it on SFSGSW.I think Chuck Behler had a problem with it though.

They didn't, the producer wanted it done this way, then he was fired because of it.

 

[Jaymz]

LOG did it on Wrath, well they did takes of all the drums together then cymbals only so they could mix and match.

 

[Morgan C]

LOG did it on Wrath, well they did takes of all the drums together then cymbals only so they could mix and match.

AFaik they only did kicks separate, same as Ashes of the Wake.

So record just the kicks, then pack the kicks to the brim with stuffing, then play the rest of the drums (incl kick, but you will barely hear it). But both times Adler was playing the entire kit.


For metal I honestly don't think there are many drummers who could pull this off. I tried it once and its much harder than you think. That, and EVERYTHING needs to be pretty much written down and learnt by heart. I improvise all my fills and stuff, which I'm sure a lot of drummers do, and this method will just kill that.

 

[Erkan]

Yeah as Morgan says basically. I've tried playing the drumkit without playing the kicks and boy, it was soooo difficult compared to playing with kicks! I thought I was on time, but I had to do excessive editing on that project. The blast beats were a nightmare, I was like 1/32 ahead of time ALL THE TIME on the snare... still don't know how the fuck that is possible. When I play blasts with kicks I'm usually fairly tight.

But yeah, it would be awesome to have all that separation but then again... you might as well just sample the drummer's kit and build it up again in something like Battery and just program it for the same perfection and separation =[ Doing all drums and cymbals separately might be okay though, but doing every piece individually seems fucked up.

 

[Jaymz]

AFaik they only did kicks separate, same as Ashes of the Wake.

So record just the kicks, then pack the kicks to the brim with stuffing, then play the rest of the drums (incl kick, but you will barely hear it). But both times Adler was playing the entire kit.


For metal I honestly don't think there are many drummers who could pull this off. I tried it once and its much harder than you think. That, and EVERYTHING needs to be pretty much written down and learnt by heart. I improvise all my fills and stuff, which I'm sure a lot of drummers do, and this method will just kill that.

Your half right, I remember he did 3 full takes, full kit, cymbals only and kicks it will have been. With the cymbals only he had his feet on the floor and pads across the kit. I should have captured some of the live stream he did but I watched it as I could.

I personally think it was a waste of time, I don't even think it sounds that good tbh.

 

[sk8ersick666]

Wow, I'd really like to give this a shot, I've actually thought about trying this before but I don't think I know any drummers that would be able to pull it off. But I think, whatever time you'd spend mixing/editing those drums you are probably going to spend it tracking with this technique. Unless of course you get one of those rare drummers that actually WRITES his music and plays it note by note, the same way every time.

 

[madbutcher]

He can do it, Your drummer is a badass.

For all the "it's too hard to do" posts. I am totally confident in this statement.
I'll try to picture/document everything and post it up here if any are interested. Begins Friday!!!

 

[Morgan C]

Your half right, I remember he did 3 full takes, full kit, cymbals only and kicks it will have been. With the cymbals only he had his feet on the floor and pads across the kit. I should have captured some of the live stream he did but I watched it as I could.

I personally think it was a waste of time, I don't even think it sounds that good tbh.

Well, all the drums were sample replaced in the end (you can hear the real drums in a short snippet in 'Reclamation' and they sound AWFUL), so not sure what the point in that was.

Anyway, was thinking about this some more and.

Doing it this way is going to kill all and any groove your drummer has.

You're going to get a more natural performance, as well as better sounds, by just sample replacing everything.