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Drum recording with electronic drums

Sometimes you need to record a drum track but it’s just not feasible (bad acoustics, bad neighbours). Or sometimes you just want the flexibility to be able to play around with the drums after they’ve been recorded (quantize them, try a different snare, etc.). Enter the world of electronic drums.

What you’ll need:

  • electronic drums (surprise!)
  • computer equipped with a sound card and MIDI interface
  • software sequencer
  • drum VST instrument (optional but highly recommended)
  • a drummer 🙂

Step 1: choose your e-drums

What to look for:

  • Multiple trigger zones per pad: you’ll probably want at least two (the rim and the head)
  • Mesh pads: these feel much more natural than rubber pads. Try to get at least a mesh snare.
  • MIDI: this should be fairly standard
  • Playability!

If you don’t have $1k+ to drop on a decent kit you may be able to rent a kit at your local music store (I rented a Roland TD-6 kit for about $100/month)

Step 2: choose your plug-in (optional)

I have yet to hear a set of e-drums that sound believable. The sample sets are usually pretty small and you’ll get only a few highly-processed multi-samples per drum. Of course as you spend more, this becomes less of an issue, but I’ve found the best bang for your buck is to use a VST plug-in. With VST plug-ins you just use the e-drum kit as a controller to trigger the plug-in via MIDI.

There are a number of options out there: Addictive Drums, EZ Drummer, BFD, etc. I’d recommend Addictive Drums – they offer a freely available demo (one kick, snare, hihat and crash) with no time limitations. Even the demo alone is enough to lay down some basic tracks.

Step 3: Setting everything up

Connect the MIDI out on the e-drums to the MIDI in on your MIDI interface and fire up your sequencer.

If you’re using a VST plug-in, you’ll now need to map the e-drums to your sequencer. You may need the manuals for this 🙂

  • Create a new preset on your e-drums
  • For each trigger zone, decide what exactly you want to trigger. You’ll probably want the snare head to trigger a straight snare hit, the rim to trigger either a cross stick or a rim shot, etc.
  • Map the MIDI note for the pad/zone to the corresponding note on your VST plug-in, i.e. if the straight snare hit is C3, configure the snare head trigger zone to send MIDI note C3. This part can get a bit tedious.
  • Save your preset!

Note you may also be able to do the exact opposite of what I’ve said above: instead of mapping your e-drums to your plug-in, you may be able to map your plug-in to your e-drums. It depends on the plug-in.

Keep in mind that most plug-ins have many different types of hit per drum (i.e different locations on the drums). You’ll probably have way more hits in your plug-in than trigger zones on your e-drums. For this reason you may want to create multiple presets, or map multiple pads to one type of drum (i.e. pad 1 triggers straight snare and cross stick, pad 2 trigger rim shot)

Step 4: Recording

Now it’s time to record:

  • create a new MIDI track in your sequencer and map it to whatever channel the e-drums are sending to
  • adjust the tempo
  • turn on the click track
  • record!

If you’re not using a drum plug-in you’ll need to connect the MIDI out of your interface to the MIDI in on your e-drums so you can actually hear what you recorded. You’ll also need to connect the audio output on your e-drums to an audio interface when you actually want to record a “final mix” of the drums.

In closing…

The major downside to recording drums this way is that you lose some of the subtleties and nuances of recording an acoustic set. For some styles or techniques this just won’t work at all – brushes for example. Otherwise, if the e-drums can capture it, then go for it. I think you’ll be happy with the results.

We actually regret not having done this for The Wax EP, and are contemplating taking an afternoon to re-record with a e-kit!

Blocksmith

Hey gamers,

Blocksmith is a previously unreleased puzzle game I made 5 years ago. I figured I might as share it with the world rather than have it collecting dust on my hard drive.

Please post your comments below, whether good, indifferent or bad (if bad please try to keep it constructive 🙂 If enough people enjoy it I will polish it, add some new features, tune the gameplay, etc. For example:

  • audio (sound FX, Snug BG music!)
  • allow players to start with a greater difficulty level
  • UI tweaks (make it more obvious that you can only undo once, the game has ended, etc.)
  • high score board
  • perhaps new gameplay elements?

Enjoy!

E-mail etiquette

You know what really grinds my gears? People who don’t seem to be able to grasp the simple but apparently subtle ways of electronic mail.

The boy who cried wolf
If you send every e-mail with with “Urgent” priority, how can I tell what’s actually urgent? Eventually I’m just going to tune out all of your e-mails. It’s like going to a party and talking over everyone. You’re only going to have people’s attention for so long before you’re shunned.

Punctuate this!

Hey guys……..what do you think about this?????? I think it would be awesome!!!!!!!!

Every time I see something like this I die a little inside.

If you need to put a pause in your sentence, put 3 dots. It’s called an ellipsis.

If you have a question, is one question mark not obvious enough? Is the question so burning that you need to fill my screen with obnoxious characters to the point where they lose all meaning?

I recently heard an interview on the radio with David Shipley, the author of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. He made the point that e-mail can come across as cold, and that throwing in the occasional exclamation mark can give things a more positive tone. I’m with him 100% on this. Consider the following.

Thank you for having us for dinner.

It seems like it’s sincere… probably… I think?

Thank you for having us for dinner!

Wow, he must have really enjoyed it! Dude is totally sincere!

Unfortunately David went on to say that people are equally, if not more receptive to multiple exclamation marks.

Thank you for having us for dinner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you ask me, this comes across as if the sender just had a lobotomy.

No subject
Everything has a subject. If your e-mail is to say hello, then the subject is “Hello”. If the e-mail is about a meeting, then the subject is “Meeting”. If your e-mail has no subject then I also assume it has no content. Delete!

The Wax in Montreal August 8th, 2009

It’s official! The Wax will be playing in Montreal on Saturday August 8th at La Sala Rossa, 4848 St-Laurent. Looks like a cool place.

Update: We’ll be playing with The Naked Light, Tallest Trees and local band Ghetto Pony

We’re going to try to setup some shows around the same time (i.e. Ottawa, Quebec City). More details to come.

Harmonic mixing 101

Harmonic mixing is where you mix two songs either in the same key, or in complimentary keys. When I used to play vinyl I did this by ear. Now that I’m using Final Scratch I actually index all my MP3s by key.

The nice thing about Final Scratch is that I can “lock” the pitch, so if I’m playing one record at -4% and another at +6% they’ll still match. With vinyl I had to account for the pitch difference, so it took much more effort to work out harmonic mixes.

Here’s the basic process that I follow with my digital collection:

1. Whenever I buy a new MP3 I’ll play it back and try to identify the key using a softsynth. You have to have a bit of an ear for this. Basically, you’re looking for the root note. Typically this is the note that the bass line revolves around. I’d say something about being able to differentiate between major and minor keys, but it hasn’t come up with any of the electronic music I’ve bought (it’s all minor!)

2. Once I’ve identified the key I’ll stick it in a few different places:

  • At the start of the filename (i.e. A#_song.mp3). This allows me to find complimentary tracks without having to even load them up.
  • In the ID3/4 comment tags
  • At the end of the song title, i.e. Title (A#)

3. When I load everything in FS I just sort on the comment, and when I’m playing a track I can see the key in the title at the top. Yes, there is a place to put the “key” in FS but it’s not a standard ID3/4 tag so it doesn’t get written to the MP3 AFAIK.


When mixing, I keep a spreadsheet open in the background with all the complimentary keys:

As you can see I’ve highlighted a few cells in yellow. This is because it can be annoying to move to and from sharp/flat keys, so I’ve highlighted where these transitions can happen. Lately I’ve been pitch shifting some songs to create more possibilities (more on this in another post)

An alternative to my technique would be to use the Camelot wheel, and index everything based on key code. This way, when sorted the complimentary tracks would appear side by side. Frankly I don’t mind working with the keys though, because they’re more meaningful from a musical perspective. It just means a bit more scrolling.

This post brought to you by the letter S

I’ve determined that approximately 30% of my song titles begin with the letter S. Do I have an affinity with the letter S, or are there just that many more words that begin with it? I tried to find some information on the subject to no avail. If you have any links please post them. Note that only about 5% of the words in this post start with the letter S, not counting “S” as a word. Curious.

If I hear one more commercial with a ripoff of Coldplay’s “Clocks”

Seriously, it’s been 7 years already. You’d think this would stop after 2, maybe 3. Was some sort of study done that shows that this song, or reasonable facsimiles, causes consumers to let their guard down? “Hey, this soothing melody sounds familiar, I think I’ll go buy a car”. Yeah right!

And on that note:

Drum recording for The Wax

So my indie pop/rock band, The Wax, has started recording a 6 song EP. We ripped through the drums in a weekend. Here’s what we used for gear:

  • Overheads: Samson C02 pencil condensors
  • Kick mic: Shure Beta 52A
  • Snare: Shure SM57
  • Audio interface: ART Tubefire 8

We didn’t have the best room so I tried out the Recorderman technique for the overheads. Overall I’m pretty happy with the results. Here’s a clip of an early mix of one of the tracks.

Bi-annual update!

Well it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been busy getting engaged, buying and moving into a house, recording, putting on shows, etc! I hope to start doing updates more regularly, mostly pertaining to my various music projects and what’s going on with them. So without further ado here’s the first one!

If you live in the Halifax region come check my indie pop/rock band, The Wax, at the Garrison Brewery on Thursday May 7th


We actually did a show there a couple months ago. Here are a few pics:

Choosing a delay pedal

I like delay, a lot, and when a like something a lot I generally get all obsessed with it and need to know everything about it – how it works, what the options are, how much they cost, etc. And so here we are!

Analog vs. digital:
In the audio world many seem to think that analog is better than digital. In some cases it may very well be, but in many it’s just “different”. I think delay is one of those cases. Some of the key differences between digital and analog delays:

  • Delay time: analog delays cannot achieve the same delay times as digital. Typical delay time for an analog pedal is around 500-600ms
  • Looping: to my knowledge there’s no such thing in analog pedals (tape delay is whole other world though)
  • Reverse delay: ditto
  • Tap tempo: a very useful feature, but rarely one you’ll find in an analog delay (and when you do, expect to pay a premium, i.e. Diamond Memory Lane 2 @ about $550)
  • Tone: with digital what you hear is what you get. With analog the delay is much more “coloured” – each repeat comes back a little “warmer” (less highs/more lows) and with less definition.
  • Cost: expect to pay more for an analog delay, and expect the price to increase alongside the delay time.

Other considerations:

  • Tone/filter control: very useful for making your delay warmer or brighter (boosting highs and/or cutting lows). In a digital pedal this will allow you to achieve a more analog-sounding delay.
  • Reverb: I’ve only seen this in one (digital) pedal (EHX Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai). It’s pretty handy for making the delays spacier and transparent. It also allows you to achieve some basic reverbs by rolling back the repeats and delay time.
  • Modulation: that is, modulating the pitch of the delays to get a haunting chorus-like effect.
  • Multi-tap: this can have different meanings. In some cases it means multiple delay times (i.e. one delay at 300ms, and one at 600ms), in others it means “repeat exactly X times”.
  • Expression pedal: some pedals will allow you to control certain parameters via an expression pedal. This can be handy if you like to play with feedback but don’t want to break your back in the process.
  • Stereo: usually stereo outs equates to ping-pong delays (repeats alternating back and forth between left and right), but in some cases you may have more control over it. Unless you have two amps or plug directly into a PA, this is really only useful for recording.
  • Self-oscillation: this is when the feedbacks build up and start to resonate, resulting in a wacky “spaceship” sound. You’ll hear this in some digital pedals, but it’s inherent in analog.

If you’re wondering, I personally own the EHX Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai. It’s a great pedal that can get some fairly warm and transparent delays via the filter and reverb knobs. My second pick would be the Diamond Memory Lane 2, but I don’t have $550 to drop on a delay. In a perfect world I would own both 🙂

If you’re on a budget and want a decent analog delay check out the MXR Carbon Copy. No tap tempo, but it does offer modulation (you’ll need to open it up to change the speed and depth though). For a good basic digital delay you can’t go wrong with the Boss DD pedals (they’re up to the DD-7 now).

I hope these points give you something to think about next time you’re in the market for a new delay pedal. Happy shopping!