THE EASY GUIDE TO RECORDING DRUMS
Record drums? Why would you bother when it’s so easy to simply launch Superior Drummer or BFD, bash out a quick beat on the keyboard, hit the quantise button and get stuck into recording everything else? It’s certainly true that some of these virtual drums/drummers sound awesome, and offer a mind-boggling choice of sounds and patterns. Not only that, but they don’t argue, and they don’t issue demands for payment, writing credits or bowls of Smarties with all the blue ones taken out – so it’s effectively a no-brainer, right?
Well, here are some other things that those pieces of drum software – and all the rest of them – don’t do. They don’t know how your song goes; they don’t have ideas; they don’t have a background of musical influences; they don’t know how to make your songs come to life; and they don’t sound unique. If you’ve ever spent hours trying to program a fill that sounds right, or hi-hat parts that groove, or grace notes on a snare, or a convincing crash-ride, then you’ll know that for all their amazingness, these superb virtual instruments require a lot of work to produce totally lifelike results.
But isn’t recording drums a total nightmare? No, that’s a myth – recording drums is actually surprisingly easy. Admittedly, it’s often the sound of a badly recorded kit that makes an otherwise great track sound like a ‘demo’, but if you follow some simple rules, you can avoid the pitfalls. Of course, a big, posh recording studio would make things easier, but we’re going to assume you haven’t got one of
