Recording drums with only 2 inputs.

[wretchedspawn]

Some friends of mine in a local band want me to record them. The problem is that I use Tapco Link usb which only has two inputs. Like the majority of drummers this guy has more than two drums. I don't have the money to buy an eight pre interface. The way I was thinking of doing it is this.....

Mic the set and record many hits of individual drums at a variety of velocities. That way I will have lots of samples of his kit. Send all the mics to a mixer and mix it down to a left and right channel. He records the song. Now I've got two tracks of drums. I make copies of the tracks and cut them up for each individual drum. Then, I use the cut up tracks to trigger the samples I made of his kit. That way I'll have each drum on a seperate track and mixing will be WAY easier. Lots of work. Lots of time.

Would this be the best way to go about it or is there a better solution?

 

[KeithRT99]

that sounds like alot of work. I would just skip the separation and samples and either make a stereo mix of it, or just do a stereo mic setup like a M/S or XY in the the room.

 

[ahjteam]

Three ways I could come up with:

A) Buy a 8 input interface, they really aren't that expensive as you might think. The firewire version of Terratec Phase88 is 285€ (TRS inputs), PreSonus Firepod and Alesis IO|26 FireWire (both have +48v and XLR/TRS-inputs) are 385€ on Thomann
B) Use a mixer (rent or buy) with as much inputs as you need. Cheapo solution would be Behringer Xenyx 2442 FX, it has 10 mic inputs (costs 315€). Mic the drums and make a stereo mix of them in the mixer and send it into your interface.
C) Mic the overheads and trigger the drums

 

[greyskull]

record the overheads and program the rest

 

[Skinny Viking]

I would suggest just renting a good mixer (have the band pay) and spend a lot of time getting the best stereo mix of the drums you can. If they've asked you to record them chances are they are aware of what your tracking limitations are and they are just looking to get something good enough sounding to say they have a recording of their band. Take your time and just really try to capture a great stereo track of the drums. The biggest problem I can think of with your idea of cutting up copies of tracks is if there is any timing problems or fuck ups on the main tracks you're forced to actually reinforce those boo boos with samples because if you try to quantize and fix the sample parts in any way they of course will not match to the main track and that really is just so much work to be doing for something like this. When tracking have the drummer play through like he normally would but when he fucks up, as long as you have punch in capability, stop and have him go back to the previous part of the song and punch him in on the cymbal hit or whatever that leads into the section he screwed up. It actually works better than you might think and any weirdness will easily be covered up once you have tracked the bass/guitars/vox etc... Just keep doing this until the song is done and you'll be good.

I've done this several times and its always worked ... put the time into the tracking and performance.

Cheers!
www.myspace.com/shadowdancemusic

 

[wretchedspawn]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll try to get the best stereo mix I'm capable of. I will let you guys know how it goes.

 

[deathtotaliban]

+1 on getting a mixer and just mixing down to a stereo track, if you have the mics and whatnot go for that, if not just rent everything.

 

[if6was9]

yeah i'm no expert but when I was recording my own band for our first home recordings all I had was stereo ins and I just got a mix of the drums with a mixer and recorded the stereo stem- obviously it is limiting but if you think about what your going to want in the mix and if you spend enough time eqing/micing the kit right from the get go then the results are totally usable and can sound really decent in the end result.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

If you're going to rent a mixer, you might as well rent a firepod and get 8 clean tracks, add a digimax fs for 16. It sounds like you don't have a lot of experience, I can only estimate that you probably haven't done much analog recording and mixing with a console. If you don't have a background in recording "live to tape" then going with just the mixer will likely bite you in the ass.
With that in mind:
1- is it an album or a demo?
2- how much are they paying you?

 

[wretchedspawn]

Yeah, I have only been recording for about 6 months. I've never recorded a full kit though. It will only be a demo and I'm doing it for free. These guys are my friends and have helped me out with things.

 

[JBroll]

Even with that, -8.5 on the mixer. Yes, I have eight and a half votes... deal with it. If you're renting or borrowing, it'll be less work to rent a decent interface like one mentioned above, and since I'm not guessing you've gone all-out on buying a good interface yet the mixer-to-interface wouldn't work all that well even by pre-mixed-to-tape standards. Either that or figure out some way to get his playing *directly* to MIDI.

Jeff