Recording To A Drum Track Only

[Hobbayne]

Had an interesting day. While I was away on holiday in sunny Australia, my band started work on a demo for my covers band.
Luckily the singer has a studio in his garage (Yes I know) But I didnt have a clue that they had started work in my absence.
The drummer had laid down 7 songs with the other guys without anything else being recorded. Today I go to overdub bass only to find I have nothing but a drum track to follow.
They seem to think the bass should be done before the guitars. I agree to an extent, but I feed off the guitars and drums in a live situation.
So with the singer giving me cues, I done 7 bass parts in 2 hours!!
Not a very enjoyable experience for an old git of 48

The songs:
ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY- KRAVITZ
FEEL LIKE MAKING LOVE- B COMPANY
CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION- T REX
ARE YOU READY - LIZZY
OVERDOSE - ACDC
ZIGGY STARDUST - BOWIE
BORN TO BE WILD - STEPPENWOLF

[LiamPodmore]

I know how you feel on that one. When we're tracking we always either record scratch/guide tracks when doing the drums, or i just get the guitarist to play whilst i do my parts as well. I'm sure there's guys who can do fine with just the drums, but i'm not one of them.

Liam

[icastle]

I usually just hum bits of the melody to myself while I'm playing.

Fortunately, those are never recorded.

[mikebass84]

We've always had a guitar scratch track done that I follow along with the drums. Might be different from a covers band as the bass line is already known or maybe it's just personal preference.

[Dad3353]

You mean the drums went down with the aid of the guitars tracks and they've left you with the drums alone..?

What have you done to annoy them that much..? Have you paid your subscription fee..? Are they inching you out..? Seems dumb to me, if the guitars were there for the drums, to not leave a guide track for you...
On the other hand, they obviously have entire confidence that you can produce the goods, so feel flattered..!

[BigRedX]

Unless your drummer's crap or you don't know the songs very well, this should be simple.

[gjones]

[quote name='Hobbayne' timestamp='1366836112' post='2057995']
Had an interesting day. While I was away on holiday in sunny Australia, my band started work on a demo for my covers band.
Luckily the singer has a studio in his garage (Yes I know) But I didnt have a clue that they had started work in my absence.
The drummer had laid down 7 songs with the other guys without anything else being recorded. Today I go to overdub bass only to find I have nothing but a drum track to follow.
They seem to think the bass should be done before the guitars. I agree to an extent, but I feed off the guitars and drums in a live situation.
So with the singer giving me cues, I done 7 bass parts in 2 hours!!
Not a very enjoyable experience for an old git of 48

The songs:
ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY- KRAVITZ
FEEL LIKE MAKING LOVE- B COMPANY
CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION- T REX
ARE YOU READY - LIZZY
OVERDOSE - ACDC
ZIGGY STARDUST - BOWIE
BORN TO BE WILD - STEPPENWOLF
[/quote]

I had to do something similar with one of the bands I play with. But when I got to the studio there wasn't even any drums or vocals, just a clicktrack, going plippity plop and some piano. On one there wasn't even a clicktrack just a rhythm guitar and no vocals or other instruments.

Nightmare!

The tracks are now finished and I'd give them a 7 out of 10. Mainly because the rhythm is all over the place. It's not my band and I wasn't paying for recording time but I told them that if there was a prize for recording the totally wrong way they'd win it hands down.

Edited April 24, 2013 by gjones

[Ziphoblat]

Nothing wrong with recording to just drums, provided there's a metronome too. Certainly nothing unorthodox about it. It's usually the way I record.

[thisnameistaken]

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1366840109' post='2058059']
Unless your drummer's crap or you don't know the songs very well, this should be simple.[/quote]

But you're only going to get a good recording if your bass part relates only to the drum part.

I can't record without a vocal. Even if I could remember the structure of the tune and count the bars it wouldn't be a good performance.

[RockfordStone]

recording with a guitar is certainly easier

i guess it comes down to how comfortable you are with the song.

i can play along to drums alone on songs i write, as i know them inside out, but if i was dropped into a situation where songs were thrown at me id like either a scratch guitar track or at the very least a bit of warning

[Hobbayne]

It appears that the guitarists and drummer were wearing cans. They didnt want leakage on the drum track.
It went OK, I will have another listen when the guitars are down and see if I want to redo some parts. But recording on computer bits can be edited copied, pasted or even quantized, so I,m not that bothered.

[TomWIC]

I have to do this a lot. Our usual recording/demoing process is: work out the tempo of the track and set up a click track, program the drums in Reason (we're minus a drummer at the moment, but we used to do this when we did have a drummer anyway).

The next parts to be recorded depends on the song. If there's a lot of solo bass sections, I record my bass first to the drums. If the bass for that track pretty much follows the guitars, then we tend to do one guitar first, then bass, then the second guitar.

Then synths and samples if we're using anyway, then vocals last always worked out really well for us.