Recording the drums- Audio tracks

Finally, now that I have the entire drums mic'd up and tuned properly, we get down to the real business- setting up buses and tracks on the computer. Buses are what I will be using to digitally manage the different audio tracks. "a bus is a connection of many different signals, seen sometimes as a channel strip’s send. The send controls however much of the signal you want the bus to send or 'transport' to a specified location, such as an auxiliary track"(Major 143). Buses are important to use because I want to be able to edit each part of the drum individually so that I can have as much control as possible over the outcome of the sound.

I have created a bus for each microphone input 

To create a bus, first I have to open up the recording application that I am going to use, which in my case is garage band. Garage Band is probably the worst choice as it has the bare minimum need to record, but since it comes free with a the mac, I am using it because I don't have $600 to spend of ProTools, the "music industry standard" for recording music. Since Mike doesn't specifically explain how to use Garage Band, I had to fiddle around with it until I found how to connect the interface to the computer and create buses.
After I have finished creating the buses, now the time as come for me to lay down some tracks.

By the end of the book I'm hoping to do a drum cover of a popular song and post it, so if you want to you can comment any song I should do a drum cover for and hopefully i can do it! 

Recording the Drums- The Interface and Digitizing

After I finished setting up the mics, the real challenge starts with trying to find that sweet spot in the sounds of all the drums. Though your drums might sound good when you hear them live, its a whole different ball game when recording them. There are a lot of issues you need to make sure you have under control, or else your drum kit will end up sounding like a wet fart in the recordings.

a closer look at the interface

Set up of the interface and drum kit 

One of the first issues, and probably one of the most important is clipping. Clipping is goes over a certain sound limit and thus the audio waves flatten off and you get a strange grainy noise. You have probably heard this sound if you have been blasting a sound trap with the bass all the way in your car and for some reason everything sounds distorted. Though sometimes clipping can be used as a tool to make your beats more personalized and can be added to music tastefully, but that should be left to when you messing with you audio tracks on the computer. When recording something you want to have no clipping at all so that you can get the cleanest sound possible, because while you can clip audio intentionally on the computer, you can also take off the effect. Clipping your base recroding mean that your stuck with that sound because that is what the mics have picked up, and if realized that the recording sounds like absolute trash with the clipping, you would have to go back and rerecord everything. Luckily, the interface I am using for transferring all the sounds the mics pic up to the computer has a feature that allows me to know when each mic is clipping. on the interface, you can turn the mic sensitivity up and down; having it to high will likely result in the sound clipping, but you don't want it too low either or else your mics wont pick up all the tones that the drums are producing. In order to get that sweet spot, Mike Major recommends in his book that you check each mic individually. To do this you must first turn the mic sensitivity all the way up, and then start smashing the drum you are fixing so that you can see that is clipping; then you keep hitting the drums as hard as you can and turn down the sensitivity until the clipping stops but just barely. This way all the drums are turned up as much as possible with out them clipping.

Next, you've got to make sure each drum is mic'd up to the way you like it. By using something called a monitor you can get hear what each drum sound like through the mics before having to record anything. The interface has a plug in for this and monitors can be any kind of multi driver speaker you'd like- from a studio pair of head phones, to nice full speakers. At this point its just about your preference so its up to the person to angle the mics in the way they want them to sound. For me, I like my tones to be a little more on the warm side- which means softer tones and less harsh sounds.

Now that I've gotten the mics set up perfectly in the way I want them, the next part is to get my computer set up for recording!

By the end of the book I'm hoping to do a drum cover of a popular song and post it, so if you want to you can comment any song I should do a drum cover for and hopefully i can do it! 

Recording the Drums - Tuning

When deciding what kind of book I should read for this project, I had trouble deciding on what new thing I should learn because I'm pretty much filthy at everything already.  I came to the conclusion that instead of learning something new, I should build on something I am already dope at. Once I realized this, it became clear what I should do. Since I've been drumming for so long, I think its time I learned how to get my drumming into recordings. That way I could give you all the gift of my tasty drum fills straight from my drumset to your earholes.

The book I choose to help me understand the subject of creating a home recording studio, was "Recording Drums: the Complete Guide" by Mike Major. The First thing the book tells me I should do before even getting the recording equipment out, is make sure my drums tuning's are top notch. Before reading this book I thought I had knew about everything needed to tune a drum and make it sound good, But apparently it is way more complicated than just tuning diagonally  across the head and  making sure everything is in the right pitch. My guy Mike Major  says that tuning a live set is very different than the what is needed to make a audio recording sound "phat"(his words not mine). To make you're toms sound good in a recording, they should be tuned to slightly match notes on a scale, " You can mix and match intervals. I find that you need a wider interval between the lower toms but you can get away with a closer interval between higher toms. for example on a kit ranging in 5 toms ( 8-10-12-14-16) [inches] try a tuning that goes (from bottom up) C-F-Bb-Eb-G." (Major 10)  By tuning the toms to these intervals it helps give them a good sound distinction between them without them sounding too dissonant when hit together or ringing out. after you get the basic tuning of the notes for each head, you've got to fine tune them to make them sound sexy.

"To start, multiply the frequency of the desired fundamental note by 1.75 and tune both top and bottom lug-pitches to that frequency. Then, measure the fundamental pitch of the drum and adjust the pitch of top and bottom heads accordingly"

After hours of fine tuning i have finally come to a sound that I believe gives that "phat" feeling Major was referring to. Of course because I am not using any recording equipment yet, it will sound really crappy when just heard through the microphone of an iphone so chill.

By the end of the book I'm hoping to do a drum cover of a popular song and post it, so if you want to you can comment any song I should do a drum cover for and hopefully i can do it!