Recording drums after guitar?

[Cacoph0ny]

Here's the deal, I want to start a band and I have an album written, no musicians I know that would be interested so I am going to record it and then look for musicians. I'm a guitarist so I was going to program the drums and record guitar/bass. I was wondering though, when I find a drummer is it feasible to record real drums over the guitar/bass? I know there are some drummers who like to play along to the tracks instead of recording drums very first. BTW, this is the kind of music that doesn't have to be played super tight (chaotic/hardcore)

I'm either going to do that, or just record 2-4 songs as demos and then record from scratch with members (which would probably take a while to find). What do you guys think? If all else fails I guess I could keep the programmed drums but I really hate the idea of releasing an album with programmed drums.

 

[arin]

aslong as you record it to a click you should be able to sort something out.

 

[Rhys Llewellyn]

Here's the deal, I want to start a band and I have an album written, no musicians I know that would be interested so I am going to record it and then look for musicians. I'm a guitarist so I was going to program the drums and record guitar/bass. I was wondering though, when I find a drummer is it feasible to record real drums over the guitar/bass? I know there are some drummers who like to play along to the tracks instead of recording drums very first. BTW, this is the kind of music that doesn't have to be played super tight (chaotic/hardcore)

I'm either going to do that, or just record 2-4 songs as demos and then record from scratch with members (which would probably take a while to find). What do you guys think? If all else fails I guess I could keep the programmed drums but I really hate the idea of releasing an album with programmed drums.

How you describe it is pretty much how anyone in a recording environment would do it anyway.

You'd generally record guide guitars or play along live to the drummer so you've already got that part sorted. And as mentioned, hopefully you have recorded with a click track!

Just hit play, and let the drummer loose.

On a side note, obviously I'm not aware of what equipment you have or studio space, but sampled drums will nearly always sound better (and can sound very realistic if programmed correctly) than mic'ing up a kit yourself unless you have some really good gear, knowledge and space. I wouldn't totally rule that out.

 

[B36arin]

It takes a bit of knowledge and skill to get programmed drums to sound good as well, and if the sound that you're going for isn't very polished I'd definitely recommend good, real drums. It's not easy though.

The best way to do it (imo) is to record preproduction demos first. Make sure that they are reasonably tight so they can be used as scratch tracks for the proper recording. Pitch the demos to band members, and start jamming when you've found your guys... The songs will probably evolve a bit if you jam them, but with a bit of editing it's very easy to move stuff around to make the demo work. Then you just mute the drums, record real drums with the demo as a backing track, edit the drums(if you want them edited it's VERY important to do this before you record anything else) and then start recording the rest of the stuff.

It depends very much on who you are, but in my case, the music that I write benefits a lot from jamming it with the rest of the band a few times before going into the studio.