There comes a time in a man's life when he has to cast off the shackles of his band (
@Drew_fx may relate to this) and do something totally introverted. I came to that realisation over the summer when I wrote an album of songs inspired by the refugee crisis and came to the conclusion that my band definitely wouldn't be interested in the project, but I really wanted to record it properly. I didn't really mean to write all those songs, but the thing about making music is that sometimes it just happens quickly and without too much of a struggle!
PreproductionDoing a solo record is in some ways quicker than working with a band but in other ways much slower and more cumbersome, and nowhere is that more apparent than pre-production. Sure, if you've got a band you've got to teach them the songs and do a bit of firefighting, making sure everyone's playing parts that compliment each other, but once you're there it's really easy to spend a practice or two kicking ideas round, trying different arrangements, tempos, dynamics etc. If everyone's on the same page, you can quickly go from *song idea* to *band arrangement*, having fun and being inspired in the process.
When you're working on your own, the songwriting bit is just as fast but fleshing out the arrangment can take a while - you have to play all the parts one after the other to make a production demo, then listen and if you want to try something different - a different tempo, a new section - you have to record it all again where with a band you'd just say "Hey can we try xyz here?" and know whether it's better or worse within a few minutes. You miss out on those moments of spontaneity and it becomes a bit more cerebral and methodical, weighing up different ideas in your head rather than trying them all out.
So I fleshed out the demos over a couple of months, attempting to overcome my discomfort at my singing voice with some help from members of this forum
here, and kinda used the demos to learn what does or doesn't work for each song. Then based on that, there's a bit of a leap of faith involved in making structure changes for the REAL recordings and getting stuck in, because you might have a good idea what you're aiming for but you never actually hear the full arrangement as a performance until you're mixing the track. With a band around you, you've heard the intended arrangement before you start recording more often than not.
So, preproduction complete I spent the last week in my band's rehearsal room recording drums for 20 songs. I record in Cakewalk's Sonar X3, and based on the demos I set up a tempo map in each song for the click track - sometimes it's the same tempo all the way through, more often than not there are slight bumps of 1 or 2 bpm for choruses to add some energy, or you let it get a bit faster towards the end for excitement or program in a slowdown in the last bar etc.
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Setting up the drum recording session, I was aware I'd be doing everthing - playing, chosing sounds, miking stuff up, evaluating takes and doing the inevitable punch ins etc. It's not ideal wearing the songwriter, musician, recorder and producer hats but to try to make things easier I had the screen, keyboard and mouse to my right next to the floor tom - I work best recording until I've fucked something up, then punching in just before that point; never really seen sense in recording the stuff I can play easily over and over again just to keep trying for the hard bits!
This seemed to work pretty well, I could keep momentum going once I was warmed up and in the zone. Drums are a really physical instrument and you've got to work fast! (just don't rush the beat too much!)
The room's hardly the world's finest acoustic space but it's a reasonable size, has quite a high ceiling (maybe 4 meters?) and we've made rockwool wall absorbers and corner traps to control the low end. It's not got much reverb but it does have some early reflections/ambience and I wanted to capture it. Before the panels were in, I always used the recorderman overhead setup to get the mics as close to the kit as possible and avoid capturing much room sound. This time, I went for a spaced pair of AT4050s directly over the kit facing straight down - wide enough to get some overhyped stereo image and pick up a more roomy tone, and high enough - maybe 1.9 meters off the floor - to not be too cymbal- heavy and to make sure the direct sound didn't totally swamp the room tone. It took quite a bit of fine tuning to get the kick and snare roughly central, in the end the left Ohead was maybe 10cm higher than the right one.
I had fun with the kick miking. Instead of the usual mic inside the hole in the front head, I had the main kick mic - an RE20 - maybe 60cm out in front of the kit; I moved it back and forward a bit to find a position where the phase relationship between the kick and overheads was complimentary and 60cm was about right with the phase inverted. Then a den of sofa cushions and a thick duvet went up to keep the cymbal spill out; I was amazed how well it worked. Subjectively I'd say it cut out 75% of the cymbals and meant I could push up the treble without runing into a wall of nasty off axis cymbal bleed.
To get a bit of beater definition I also threw an Audix I5 into the drum, sitting on top of a pillow. It's vital in some songs, for others I probably won't bother with it in the mix.
The other mics were fairy bog standard - SM57s on the toms and snare top, SM7 under the snare just to get a little rasp which again, I may or may not actually need... I'll probably be thankful for that track in some of the tracks.
Then finally, a lone Oktava MK012 way up high and pointing at the ceiling - basically just to get a bit more room ambience, I'll probably compress it loads and sneak it up in the mix to give the drums a bit of life.
How did it sound? Well once the kit was re-skinned and tuned up, I was pretty chuffed with it! it was a long week of recording and being slightly out of practice on occasion it took a while to nail more difficult sections. I'll put together some clips maybe tomorrow eve to put up.
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Re pre-production, unless it's a very rootsy-sounding style I've recently taken to roughing out entire songs in MIDI at the initial stage so I can do anything I like regarding tempo, choice of instruments, song structure and even key within a couple of mouse clicks.
I don't start recording real instruments until I've sat back, listened with my eyes closed and decided that the whole thing works and flows the way it should.
Judging from your drum recording method though it looks like you're far better than me at making decisions!
Bandcamp
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Bandcamp
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Bandcamp
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Bandcamp
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