Recording with electronic drums

[lateralus462]

I am about to start recording a new demo with my band, and instead of using mic's on the kit, we thought we might try using the drummers electronic drums.

I'm a bit dubious about this, as I'm not sure of the quality of sounds that the kit will produce (it's a Yamaha DT Xtreme if that means anything to anyone) although I might try using the kit with EZ Drummer & DFH cos I know that sounds fantastic.

has anyone had any experience of recording in this way and got decent results?

[cheddatom]

Not had experience but make sure to record the data as well as the sampled sounds, that way you can mess with it later.

[The Funk]

I'd go further than Tom and actually only record it MIDI - then run it through every conceivable drum sample and soft synth you have access to, just to find the best possible snare, kick, hats and toms.

[ped]

I have been recording with some Roland V-drums this weekend and the results are amazing, I much prefer it to the hassle of having to mic up acoustic drums and got sick of them sounding different every time they are played because they are not constantly tuned/kept at the same temp etc etc. The Vdrums were fantastic. Just for making 'notes' we all played into a mixer and out into a laptop with garageband just via the firewire input and the results are on a par with many CDs I have!


ped

[lateralus462]

[quote name='The Funk' post='271092' date='Aug 27 2008, 03:38 PM']I'd go further than Tom and actually only record it MIDI - then run it through every conceivable drum sample and soft synth you have access to, just to find the best possible snare, kick, hats and toms.[/quote]

I was kind of thinking that - I have EZ Drummer and pretty much all of the expansion packs so I'm sure I can find something that sounds decent.

[wotnwhy]

we've just done some recording with roland v-drums. and as ped sed, amazing.

theres none of the hassle of trying to mike up a kit and having to make sure it all sounds spot on before you hit the big red button.
but with an electric kit, with EZ drummer especially, the sounds are far beyond what average joe public (or even, dare i say it, a lot of studio boffins) could do with a live kit. and you can play about with your hearts content afterwards.

eg. got the kit sounding fine, but then you add the bass guitar and find it clashes with the bass drum, no problem, just change it for one that doesn't.

does your drummer catch cymbals, do rimshots or coax a variety of sounds from the ride? none of this is a problem for a high end roland kit. but for cheaper electronic drums you may have trouble with these. otherwise, dive in and have fun!

Edited August 27, 2008 by wotnwhy

[Ba55me15ter]

Absolutely - plug it in to EZDrummer via midi and you're away. Don't bother with the on-board kit sounds unless you have problems getting the latency low enough for responsive live playing, in which case you can use them just for monitoring (at the expense of some feel for the EZ sounds, but you can always tweak later).
I record using a DTXpress with Superior 2.0 (big brother to EZDrummer) and it sounds phenomenal.

[bnt]

A couple of points:
- record the MIDI where possible, so you can fix things afterwards, replace the snare, etc. You don't have to quantize the MIDI(unless you want to), just record it all. At mixdown you can run the MIDI back out to the drum brain, and/or use a drum sample plugin.
- Drums often benefit from a good room feel when recording, which something you can emulate using reverb. Depending on the reverb, you may be able to select stone walls etc.

[Mr Fudge]

Results in studio and live are incredible. Here is our drummer. He prefers acoustic cymbals, but does maintain an electric one. Go for it. He has had a few kits .. and yes i have included this picture because it was our most infamous gig ... not a usual Saturday night.

Edited August 28, 2008 by Mr Fudge

[ironside1966]

I probably would use real hi hats and cymbals, especially the ride cymbal if they are important part of your groove, maybe just use two overheads or you can use spot microphones if you prefer.
If you use just the close miked samples of the drums along with the cymbals and Hi hats microphones or over heads, you can use your own reverb, a good convolution reverb can imitate some great drum rooms, or a plate for a more processed sound.

If possible I would record both audio and midi then pick the sounds most suitable.

Try to stay away from big overproduced sounds as the can sound artificial in the mix.

Using sampled drums can sound seamless and great if done with care, if your drummer uses a lot of articulations and drags it might be worth considering using a real snare.

If you are new to recording I would try to keep things simple and just use midi with triggering Ez drumer.
But if you have plenty of time experiment se witch works for you.

Good Luck
Post the results if you can

[lateralus462]

[quote name='ironside1966' post='271748' date='Aug 28 2008, 01:23 PM']I probably would use real hi hats and cymbals, especially the ride cymbal if they are important part of your groove, maybe just use two overheads or you can use spot microphones if you prefer.
If you use just the close miked samples of the drums along with the cymbals and Hi hats microphones or over heads, you can use your own reverb, a good convolution reverb can imitate some great drum rooms, or a plate for a more processed sound.

If possible I would record both audio and midi then pick the sounds most suitable.

Try to stay away from big overproduced sounds as the can sound artificial in the mix.

Using sampled drums can sound seamless and great if done with care, if your drummer uses a lot of articulations and drags it might be worth considering using a real snare.

If you are new to recording I would try to keep things simple and just use midi with triggering Ez drumer.
But if you have plenty of time experiment se witch works for you.

Good Luck
Post the results if you can[/quote]

Thanks for the advice - I think we're going to try going for a purely midi approach to start with, but as we have as much time as we want we can mess around with things as much as we need to - I have done some test recordings using EZ Drummer and it sounds way better than we could of got with a real kit and the equipment we have.

We're going to start recording on Monday (Just an acoustic tune to start with as the drummers on holiday) but I will post some clips over the next couple of weeks to show how it all progresses. We're planning on doing 4 songs at the moment b may record more depending on how they turn out (I am fairly confident that we'll get good results) - it would be good to get some different opinions of them though.

[TDM]

We did our demos with EZdrummer and the DFH expansion, But that was pretty easy since our guitarist (who writes all the songs) does it in Guitar Pro, so we had all the drums on midi anyway. Have a listen [url="http://www.soundclick.com/lucridend"]here[/url] if you want, they could do with a little tweaking, since some of the fills sounds a little robotic. We play metal though, and I know for a fact that sampled drums (at least the bass drum) is used in metal double bass, for consistency. Meshuggah did a whole album using the DFH samples, and it sounds real enough.

Edited August 28, 2008 by thedonutman

[Muppet]

I did it once by using the onboard kit sounds and recording the stereo signal. The kit sound was OK in itself but you can't balance out the various parts of the kit so you need to make sure the levels are spot on before you record. If I did it again I'd record via MIDI definitely.

[thedontcarebear]

Get DFH superior, use the kit to trigger it, will sound real if done well.