I'm gonna record my drums this week in a studio for my band's ep

Does anyone know how long it will take to approximately record one song that is around 4.30 minutes?

I know it depends on how much a person has practiced,I went over the material a lot of times and am confident,I just want to know the average time for a drummer to record one song. Including the mic check,setting up,actual drumming,post drumming? etc. we have to estimate a cost.

It truly depends on how confident you are..ive recorded in places where the studio has already been set up so you just come in and record..but ive also been to places that require the room to be set up..either way, most studios wont charge you for the setting up time, that is their problem..

Most places have got an 8hour slot, or a 4hour slot to record..and also make sure you find out whether the cost of the recording includes mixing and mastering, which is where the engineer balances levels and all that..sometimes it is included if the engineer is with the studio full time, but if not you may need to discuss with the engineer separately..

And on a final note, most sound engineers will give you 2 or 3 free revisions, meaning once they are done with the track, you have can listen to it and make revisions (stronger bass,drop snare,louder crashes,etc) free before you need to pay for changes..

Now that ive typed that out im not sure if that helps you at all but i hope it does.. Have a good one mate!

lol where u recording?

and whats the rates?

a serious rock band , takes around 3-4 hours per song ..so i guess you have 40 minutes - 1 hour ?

Metal bands much longer kua ...

track by track or live?

can you play with the click?if you cant....then you goin to need few hour,if you have no problem with click then there should be no problems,done in a couple of hour.

track by track

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Added on April 28, 2009, 6:26 amI can play with a click

How long is " a couple of hours?"

Like, I do realise that realistically, if a drummer were really good and played to the click in sync the first take then technically he would just take like 5 minutes to record the song right? if the song were 5 minutes..so why do I hear drummers going in for one song and coming out 2 hours later?

This post has been edited by Beachkid: Apr 28 2009, 06:26 AM

because people think they can play with a click but when you open up your pro tools session the engineer shows u its all over the place.

also it takes time to set up the drums for recording. if u get a 'simply also can' type of engineer, then itll be fast cause as long as every track doesnt clip then you an just straight away record. more dedicated ones will try to get the best mic placements that he thinks suits your playing.

but then again it depends what recording ure doing and where you're doing it. of course things i guess would be much faster if you are just recording in one of those smaller studios that targets younger bands, and have everything pre set up already and all they do is just go in and do their tracks.

@bahir,
mixing and mastering are 2 completely different things, and thats usually charged seperately. just be careful and not get cheated, as there are some people out there who claims to do mastering but all they do is just normalise your track and put in a compressor/limiter.
mastering is quite a specialised field. i think even JD doesnt do mastering.

wtf is play with a click ?

is it metronome ? can you guys just say metronome ?


it looks like .." I can play with a d1ck " from far

and its disturbing , so many guys saying that..

This post has been edited by gapnap: Apr 28 2009, 11:21 AM

lol. it's commonly know as click = metronome.

gimme the click track is more convenient than saying gimme a metronome.

you can always request for a d1ck track.

one hour or two...and playing to a click is not the only thing you should concern.you should be carefull with your dynamics control,overtones,and such...but as echo brain mention if you go to studio that target young musician they already have the instrument pre set and it might take as little as 15 minutes for to set up your stuff ie snares,pedal,cymbals,but if you go to a 'pro studio'it might takes more.from my experience in the professional studio where i bring two snares a few cymbals it takes me around forty minutes to set,and take around 30 minutes to lay down the beat for a 45 second jingle.its not about me all over the place but other things such as dynamic,overtone,annoying rattle etc etc...are you going to bring you own stuff?snares,cymbals etc etc?.

for a first timer i suggest you prepare(budget) at least 3 hour per song as even if you are a good drummer who never slips a beat in your entire life,once your go to a studio to record for the first time it goin to be different.the feel,the nerve,the click(it sound like a cowbell,and somewhat feel different from most of the metronome that produce beeping or what ever people refer to it.)...everything.but if you succesfully nail the track for a five minutes song in five minutes in one take.....whooooaaaa,RESPECT.

*Edited for censorship*

This post has been edited by blacktrix: Apr 28 2009, 05:32 PM

pro drummer in the house!

Please get a camcorder, record it, upload it to YouTube, and post it here.

This post has been edited by alwiser: Apr 28 2009, 06:37 PM

LOL

yeah,I have heard of some drummers who go in and get out after one take for each song. That's insanity.
Yeah I want to ask like you know some recording studios require to play from start to end for each track and if you do make ONE mistake,you have to record it all over again?
how come I have heard of studios where the sound engineer can go to that specific part of the song,,let's say bar 41 to bar 45 or let's say the pre chorus breakdown..and let you do your drumming there..

instead of like playing the whole damn song again when you just like screwed up the finishing fill.

so i guess I'm wondering if sound engineers let you edit a specific track or do you have to repeat it from start to finish if you just forgot to hit the crash on one beat.

you mean punch in? i thought its a norm to do (except theres more work to be done on the editing side).

If you're too familiar with the song , 1 take is very possible ...

nolah , like you said . sound engineers can edit that specific part of the song . that is why you're paying for track by track recording..
imo track to track recording is alot easier than live recording..just that it cost more only

if its Live recording then 1 mistake you start all over again lah..

clicks is a more common name for the timing counter la.

than metronome.

metronome is the device itself that emits the clicks.

well . i am sorry for the noobieness its my first time hearing people using "clicks"

punch in is an option....sometimes when you are too tired,burnout or you no longer 'feeling it' or the producer/engineer simply annoyed with your failure in keeping with the tempo,dynamics etc etc and decide to lay the 'knife',i dont recommend it though as the studio might charge more fee.but it is kind of easy.....ohhh one more thing are you goin to lay the drum first?or your other member have lay down the guitar,bass, etc etc?....

Oh okay,,

Then I guess I was freakin ripped off by a lousy sound engineer. The first time I ever recorded drums I remember doing like just ONE mistake-the finishing fill. The guy asked me to record the whole thing over. Then after that, I wanted to add something else to the chorus that I thought would be cool-like a fill or even adding in cowbell-he said I had to do it all over again. So I was like very WTF, cause I always see guitarists,drummers on videos record that particular part of the song they are messing up over and over again-like a guitar solo or drum intro. Instead this guy's mentality was that one single mistake or improv. a musician wanted to add at any BAR or PART of the song was immediatly a total retake.

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Added on April 29, 2009, 7:06 pmi am going to lay the drum track first.

Oh also I was wondering,,you know at the end of the song when drummers sometimes do a huge fill-that on face value has no tempo whatsoever? Like they'll do a 4 bar fill then like fill it with crashes,rides,double bass-basically they'll end with a huge noisy fill while the guitarists is doing a crazy finishing solo and everyone is going nuts?

Yeah,does the drummer have to follow the metronome then? I mean I hear drummers who go nuts and you know how they usually slow down at the song after doing crazy double fills then slow down slowly and the whole band waits for the final crash to end the song. So with all that havoc,does one still have to follow metronome?

Cause the last recording, I was doing this type of ending,where we had a big finish instead of a normal end to the song. So we were doin that crazy van halen style ending where all the musicians started going at it and doing flashy stuff and going to the end of the song my drums had to slow down to signal the end based on the "feel" of course, then ending with a crash(I hope you know what I'm talking about,sorry if I did not make it clear). However,I still had to follow metronome in that flashy ending. Is that normal? Like I had to literally slow down my drumming -not a constant slow tempo, but just like from fast to slow (not constructed but based on feel) to signify the stop WHILE the metronome was still going like 144.



This post has been edited by Beachkid: Apr 29 2009, 07:06 PM