Ronan’s Recording Show

I’m a Drummer Myself- I can vouch for the Hihat technique. I Usually play the whole kit, but sometime My project calls for that more poppy drum sound- so I’ve been sequencing the Kick, snare, and Toms, and then Micing my kit and playing only Hats and cymbals. If I know I’m going to quantize and oversample the tracks, I just will sequence them from the start. I find that Gives me more to work with in the end.
But- for anything that calls for a loud rock band sound, nothing beats just playing it!

great sounding drum tracks and i play drums dude keep up the good work!

really cool idea!

i haven´t seen this trick before,so this episode was really helpful for me .
I´ll try that on my next projekt for sure
I also think it´s much faster to record a hihat than to programm it for hours.thank you very much!

Simon

Hey Ronan,

Another excellant show. I love the way you push for peeps to give up their excuses and value their own productions.

Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into these. You are a genius and most definitely God sent.

Bob.

Great stuff. Thank you for saying it like it is… but then giving a solution for the problem. Even for “drum machine” music, I think I’ll start doing this for the hat parts.
Do you prefer panning drums in drummer’s perspective? If you switch it around, what are some deciding factors in the decision?

em em em em, i like beer… HA!

I spent almost 20k in sound engineering school and never learned this!! Ronan I Should have gave that money to you!! haha!! I can feel your passion and its very inspiring, keep rocking!! we love you!!

I have recorded midi drum kits played by real drummers before, but insisted that we use real hi hats and cymbs with a couple of mics on them, just to seal the deal. This really makes all the difference!
Ronan, we are all waiting for each video post, checking often! Have fun at NAMM.

“Em em em em, I love beer!”

Punk Rock Chicken did it for me. Thanks Ronan hope you had a great holiday. I sure did. As for the drum programming tips for more realistic sounding tracks video it was very helpful and insightful. Just another of your great and informative media outreach to us who really care what we want to say artistically. Your knowledge and experience has put many on the front line, to which we can build from there as you have laid some of the most important groundwork. That’s my take on it and I’m sure there are many others who will agree. Keep up the good work! I’ll be back. No pun intended.

Great tip!
One thing you should really mention, is when programming drums (especially cymbals/hats), use Velocity, Randomize each hit a bit. Drummers usually play the HiHat a bit harder when they are hitting the Kick or the Snare at the same time, same thing with the Ride cymbal.

You’ve got me subscribed tough

they keep getting better. awesome episode.

-shane

Excellent video – hand played percussion in general helps add human feel and variation to a recording. Most music stores have plenty of cheap percussion stuff to try, so why not experiment a little.

Hey Ronan! Great show!

great show ronan…awesome tip…i’ll definitely give this one a try in my home studio….thank you…

Hey Everyone, thank you so much for all the nice comments I really appreciate it

This is a really good question. The first things to try is to send the samples and the real parts out to the same processing, for instance the same reverb or same compressor, or even send all of them out a speaker and record the output to a new track and blend that in with the individual tracks. It does not have to be loud. Make sure that doing the latter does not induce any really bad phase problems. -Ronan

I almost always pan drums from a right handed drummers perspective for one simple reason. I like to play air drums while I mix and I am right handed. If the artist wanted it the other way, I would have no problem changing it.- Ronan

now I just need to find a deal on a cheap hi-hat&stand

tips?

I tried the hi-hat trick on a project of mine and it really helped!!

Thanks Ronan!

Awesome tip, Ronan. Thanks!

Can you show us how you got the GUITAR sounds?

-Jay

Great info, Ronan… I’m not a drummer so I’ve been looking around for an inexpensive used hi-hat setup to use your little trick. Not having any luck on Craigslist because people don’t want to break up their kits, I took a trip to GC. I found brand new PDP (Pacific Drums) hi-hat stands that normally sell for $79 selling for $29! The catch is that reduced price is only for their custom red or blue color scheme stands (pedal and foot pads) and not the black ones which are the normal price. I grabbed one for $29; I could care less if it was pink, I like the price and I’m just using it for recording anyway. So if anyone’s looking for just an inexpensive hi-hat setup to use for what Ronan suggested, run over to GC and grab one of the blue or red ones for $29.
Now it’s time to get back to Craigslist so I can find some hats for my new stand…

I havent re-watched. but i missed if there was a hi hat in the original programmed track. I’m trying to get a good blues sound with easydrummer. All of the files in easy drummer have Hi hat already.Sorry if this seems dumb, i’m really new to recording. Seems the guys at easydrummer didn’t include a real lush bluesy shuffle. I have a semi good kit in my room, and a great drummer in my band. Is it worth while persuing a good blues sound with midi samples, or do you recomend a dedicated drum room in my studio enviroment. I have a big open finished basement. I’m desperate to get my first cd out, and i’m trying to do it in the most realistic way. I need it to be pro quality. Any feedback would be great. Your show is really helpful, thanks bigtime.

Johnny Cox

I’m a bit late, but another trick I learned for making programmed drums more real is to play the programmed drum track through a speaker on a snare drum and record the rattle of the snares. Cos with a real kit, the kick drum makes the snares rattle. Mix it in just a touch..

i used an alesis sr-16 for a while and recently have aquired ezdrummer and a korg nanopad for my super low budget fake studio.

what does everyone think of ez drummer?

thanks for this tutorial not alot of people like to give away thier secrets!

Great show Ronan, I’m enjoying these a lot. I too felt like I pointlessly handed my money over to a certain workshop in Ohio…

duffman: I started using EZ Drummer with a little keyboard and I like the sounds OK. I always record it live instead of programming or whatever. I actually miss using the sr-16 that I used for years and years. I guess the pads just are comfortable for me.

Gonna head over to my storage space and record some hi hats with a laptop! Thanks Ronan!

This information was extremely inspirational for me. Thank you thank you thank you. I ordered a hi hat set immediately after watching. this will give me hours and hours of creativity and fun! I think this is great advice because someone who may not feel confident with a drum kit (like me) could certainly play around with a hi hat, then maybe after some time decide they can go for a snare, then a tom, then a kick, then before they know it they’re a drummer! Then, the alesis goes on ebay! Thanks man!

Nice, I’ve heard about this trick before but I didnt give it much thought . Now I am thinking about different acoustics of the hi-hat room and drum samples room. Is that why you used dynamic mic, so there is less room ambience in the recording?

I actually used the dynamic because it was close and easy, and I wanted to show the technique without using something that was out of the reach of a home recordists. Any mics will work, its just a matter of the sound you want, and a little extra ambiance might actually be a good thing (unless you have loud computer fans and such)