Recording Live Drums LAST!

[Demonstealer]

Okay I made a topic yesterday and can't it now. I assume it was deleted because I made it in the wrong place. I'm a little tired to type out the entire thing but my main question was Why do we record the drums first?

Why can't I record them last?

I'm working on a new album and for reasons my drummer is going to be the last one ready to record and I'll be wasting 2 good months waiting for him and I'd really like to finish recording the rest of the band. This is a death/symphonic band with lots of blast beats and double bass

Now I just did another album which was not as much metal and more groovy alternativish stuff where I recorded guitars and bass first and did drums after but then ended up re-recording my guitars because I played sloppy and got a better tone the 2nd time around. This seems to be fine. So I was curious as to the whole why drums first type thing if everyone is the band is playing to the click and playing very tight.

Thanks in advance

 

[infectdsniper]

you can do it with great results. it just tends to be easier doing drums first to get that solid base for everyone else to fallow. but if everyone is tight and can play well to a click then it wont matter. and also alot of the time you have to be careful not to make it to fast for your drummer or else you will be redoing alot because he cant play it.

 

[viralz]

You can do what ever the fuck you wanna do!

 

[Demonstealer]

you can do it with great results. it just tends to be easier doing drums first to get that solid base for everyone else to fallow. but if everyone is tight and can play well to a click then it wont matter. and also alot of the time you have to be careful not to make it to fast for your drummer or else you will be redoing alot because he cant play it.

hahah thanks man yes we're careful on the tempo aspect of it especially because the new material is faster than what he is used to playing. So very careful about that.

 

[slaytah]

You can do what ever the fuck you wanna do!

+1 man!

 

[Clark Kent]

I answered the original topic but it was deleted so... I'll quickly state my point.

Recording other instruments first would mean that they are recorded to a metronome, right? If a drummer plays afterwards he should play tightly with the metronome also but that might lead to the drums feeling uncomfortable/ungroovy etc. I'd personally choose to have my drummer as the metronome and every other instrument will add their groove to that drummer and this is what is unique about your music. Every player will naturally play a bit off-beat and that is your sound.

Worst case scenario you'll have to time fix instruments to groove together (which can take longer than re-recording the instruments) but it will never be the natural groove you would've had if the drums were recorded first.

Ofcourse you can do what you want. I just recorded an album with my band and there are some songs where I had recorded guitars prior to drums and I can definitely tell the groove difference but I'm sure most people don't care about such things.

 

[heshian46]

Like mentioned above, there's nothing wrong with recording drums first, you can do what you want to do.

The main reason to track drums first is to provide a solid rhythmic base with which to build all of your other instruments on top of. It just tends to be easier to do it that way.

But there's no reason why you couldn't track everything else to a metronome (or maybe even quick programmed drums) and get good results. The only downfall there is that some guys feed off of the groove of the drums, adding subtle elements to their playing that can make a part unique in its own way. By playing to a metronome you may loose some of that. Just a thought.

 

[Demonstealer]

Yeah I'm playing all the Rhythm guitars anyway and we've always played the programmed drums or click tracks so far and everyone is comfortable with that plus being kind of in the more rigid death metal space there really isn't much of that 'groove' in most of the music it's pretty solid to a click.

 

[Clark Kent]

Yeah exactly you can do what ever works for you and recording drums works for sure. It's probably more challenging for the drummer though.

The groove that I was talking about is the natural habit of a musician's perception of the beat. I for one am naturally a few milliseconds ahead of the beat so my guitar attack will be perceived before f.ex. a bass player since they usually play a bit behind the beat. These are small factors in the end but very essential if you want to at least create the illusion of these musicians playing music together rather than in different times.

 

[Linerndunch110]

Your in control.

You can absolutely do drums later. As was said, it general helps with the overall groove of things. That said, one style of tracking I really enjoyed is do a live full band track, and figure out what your strongest track is, be it guitar, bass, or drums(generally vocals are a bad way to start obviously), and build on that.

Also another way to do, which I think most prefer, is make up a MIDI track of drums and guitars in guitar pro and simply have everyone track to that, or more often, drums track to midi and guitars can use it for a guide if need be.

 

[MartinTTT]

In my own very basic experience, drums first works better for me because my band uses some sections the guitar rhythm follows the kick rhythm, and so this gives me messy results when guitars are done first. It may work fine in other situations though.