Hi there

I am a guitarist and not a drummer. I am more a songwriter and less of a producer, however this modern age has me squeezed into engineering and producer and I'm getting much better thanks to a lot of painful years of learning.

My question today is about laying down drums. I like to use Session Drummer 3. I was taught, or rather the opinion given to me was to do your drums first before other tracking. I understand the logic of this. Yet, I'm not inspired and my drum tracks are very boring (doing them in step sequencer).

So I like the phrase "There is more than one way to do something right!"

What I'm thinking to do is just do a click track, which I know they do in pro studios. I guess that would be just be a 4/4 closed hi-hat in tempo with the project. Then I'd like to my other tracking - guitars, bass, pianos, whatever...

Coming back to drums I'd like to play them live, not live as in real drums, but live as in my fingers on my midi keyboard. Now, here is the part that I could use help with. Of course, if I play them live chances are they will be a bit off, even with a click track. I've heard of this thing called 'quantize' though I've never used it and don't really know how. But basically, my notion of it is that I could select say my midi track and click quantize and it would analyze my 'hits' and then nudge them to say a certain snap point.

Does this sound reasonable? And any help with learning how to use quantize would be appreciated.

Looking forward to your reply and expertise! Thank you,
Ryan

The easiest way to learn to use quantize is to set up a click track to some tempo.

Then, play your drums and record the midi track.

Then, open the PRV editor and look at the drum notes.

Select "Quantize" and select something like 1/16th notes for starters and see how your free play notes snap to the grid that the click track is on.


If you like working that way you can learn about some of the Groove Quantize methods later and that will offset some notes in a "groove" of sorts.



Good Luck.


best regards,
mike

If'n it were me, I'd lay an instrument track to a click track and then play the drums to that.
Then redo that instrument to the drums.
Quantizing will take whatever you play and move the notes to the nearest grid setting. ie: 1/16, 1/32, 1/8 etc.
Quantizing en-mass will also remove all realism and feel to your track. 
Quantize is not a magic bullet. It is just another tool that you probably should learn the ins and outs of.

We all have a lot of "painful years of learning". trust me. you're just beginning.

As timidi says. That's the same kind of process I follow. But in a little more detail:

 - I'll start by making a very rough drum track and setting up my markers and any tempo/timing changes etc
 - The rough drum track might just be hats and a kick on the 1, or kick on the 1 and snare on the 3 etc. Depends on the groove of my playing, sometimes I'll not have the snare cause it's too out of time. I used to generally prefer playing to this but these days I can play tight to a click anyway so not too fussed.
 - Record a rough scratch track of your whole song. All main guitar and vocal parts etc. Enough to get the feel
 - NOW record those drums. You have something there to inspire you and let it build. The more time you spend getting your rough tracks pretty good, the better your drum feel should come out
 - Quantize - I'm not a drummer so I need to use this. But you don't want to do it 100%. It'll sound too programmed. I typically work at about 50-70%, cause I'm not super tight at drumming. You want some natural variance still.
 - Now do the rest of your drum editing and get it so you're really happy
 - NOW it's time to go back and re-record EVERYTHING. You might want to spend a bit of time before this adding any more rough scratch tracks to fully know HOW you're going to record each part and to know where all your hooks and licks etc are going to sit in the mix. This will help you be able to record them more effectively second time round. Basically put on your Mr Producer hat and produce the **** out of your song (so it still has life and soul though, of course).
 - Then mix and post her up on the songs forum for some friendly critique :)

Wow you all are great and I love your approaches. I'm glad to hear the simple approach of just setting up a click track and then doing my other tracking to it and then PRV and quantize some keyboarded drums. I always felt the step sequencer was unnatural and I could never think incredibly mathematically to write a very good sequenced 'fill' or snare 'roll'. But I can do all that playing my midi keyboard. I like what you said about not quantizing 100%.... that would unnatural too. I will play around with it and see what I like. I will have to look into the groove quantize for the future. I also thought there was a lot of stock to the suggestion to record everything and then get the drums how I'd want them and then retrack everything. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's a good suggestion on an important song. And really, how many times do I end up retracking quite a bit anyways so that my full mix works together! So even though it sounds like more work, I'm doing it already! I will experiment tomorrow on a small project and see how I fair! Thank you!!!!

It's a lot of work recording everything and then re-doing it again, but it's worth it. I'm using that process for every single song on my album. I started recording the final drum tracks in November last year (not to mention the time spent before I even hit record) and I'm only up to recording the official electric guitars after having done drums, bass, then 4 months of producing and finally up to the point I'm at now. So in 9 ish months, that's Drums, Bass and half of the guitars. That's how long it's taking ;) Still got acoustic guitar, percussion and vocals before I'm even ready to start looking at mixing. It really teaches you patience....

This is close to my normal method.  Also good advice on quantizing. I have had pretty good luck at just zooming in on clips with timing problems.  With drums I'm usually working with 9 or 10 tracks.  Quantizing can also cause other problems such as phasing issues.  In a lot of situations I just quantize the measures with noticeable problems. 

timidi


If'n it were me, I'd lay an instrument track to a click track and then play the drums to that.
Then redo that instrument to the drums.
Quantizing will take whatever you play and move the notes to the nearest grid setting. ie: 1/16, 1/32, 1/8 etc.
Quantizing en-mass will also remove all realism and feel to your track. 
Quantize is not a magic bullet. It is just another tool that you probably should learn the ins and outs of.

We all have a lot of "painful years of learning". trust me. you're just beginning.

ryryrecords


  Hi there

I am a guitarist and not a drummer. I am more a songwriter and less of a producer, however this modern age has me squeezed into engineering and producer and I'm getting much better thanks to a lot of painful years of learning.

 So I like the phrase "There is more than one way to do something right!"

  Ryan

That is me.   But here's how I do things. 


I do not record until the song and it's structure is pretty much worked out and in place. I use my guitar or sometimes a piano to write the song.  It's totally freestyle and in my head, written on a sheet of paper or into a computer program designed to aid in the writing process.


But I never turn on the DAW to start the recording process until the song is pretty much finished from the writing aspect.


When I do start the recording, the drums and timing go in first. Once the drums are there, everything else simply falls into place and there are no timing issues to resolve later. 


Using this recording / writing method still leaves plenty of room for creative production later on.

Just my opinion: quantization is a great evil, a scourge that needs to be stamped out.

I'm not talking about fixing mistakes, that's a fundamental part of the process of production. The difference is in the definition of what constitutes a "mistake" versus normal human variation. The former sticks out and detracts from the song, the latter is essential for establishing groove and feel.

The biggest drawback to the one-man-band approach of building up a song track-by-track is that you lose the interaction between the virtual "players" that would normally occur with a real band playing together. 

In the real world, each musician would be taking cues from one another, altering their timing and dynamics based on what the others are doing. A crash to emphasize a word in the vocal, a pause in the bass line to open up space for a drum fill, coordination between drums and rhythm guitar to reinforce the overall rhythm, synchronizing kick and bass, a lead guitar fill to answer a vocal phrase, and coordinated dynamics between all instruments. These things tend to get lost when you construct a song in layers. 

The defense is to lay down simple parts initially and then revisit each part later. I will often re-do all of (or parts of) my basic rhythm tracks after all instruments have been recorded, attempting to make them more complementary to one another in the context of the full ensemble. 

Drums in particular are an ongoing process, rather than a single step. The song may start with a basic drum pattern that's little more than a click track. That'll get continuously modified as the song is constructed, right up till the end. The very last thing I do before calling a song "done" will usually be some minor drum edit.

This is just a roundabout way of saying that I think your proposed method is a good one. Start with a click, then come back to the drums later on, and continue to refine them throughout the process. Don't be afraid to scrap and re-do entire sections that aren't fitting well.

But whatever you do, don't quantize! (OK, if you must, quantize just the kick, but stop there.)

Political correctness dictates that I have to make an exception to my no-quantize rule for EDM and hip-hop. Some genres expect machine-like quantization, so if you're into those genres, disregard everything I've said so far. And go sit in the corner until you come to your senses.

I am not a drummer either, but I work much the same way Herb does. 

The only thing I could add is that I usually look for a midi drum pattern that is pretty close to the way I want the finished over all beat to sound.  I then use that drum pattern as my click track; to which I lay down a scratch guitar rhythm track.  Maybe lay down a scratch vocal next to keep my place in the song.  From there, I go back an complete the drums.  Redo a rhythm track.  Add bass....redo vocals....etc.