Drum Tracks-Will any drummer do?

professional drum tracks and beats

You are a songwriter looking for live drums for one of your songs.  You  jump on your favorite search engine and search for, “drum tracks.”  The search produces many different drummers, offering to record custom drum tracks. What should you do, use the least expensive? Probably not! Would you get the least expensive doctor to take out your appendix?  When it comes to professional drum tracks, why would you take the song you have put so much work into and give it to  an amateur with limited drumming skills and even less audio engineering skills? You want a professional who records everyday. You want professional drum tracks that will take your song to the next level. The playing should be great! The sound should be as great! What makes that happen? ME! 🙂   No seriously.  First, start with great drums that are perfectly tuned, then strategically place microphones to capture the optimum sound. Run the mic’s thru great mic preamps that capture every detail. The preamps should be run into great A/D  (analogue to digital) converters, which take the drum sound and convert it into digital information.  You want a converter that captures every small nuance of the drums and transients of the cymbals. You want the drummer to be highly skilled, so each stroke of the drum or cymbal, is in the right place. You can have the best equipment in the world, but if the drummer has poor drumming technique, the sound will suffer. You’ll spend hours trying to repair the performance and the sound quality of the tracks.The technique of the drummer counts as much towards the sound as does the proper choice of equipment. Why do I care about this? Well here comes the shameless self promotion. I have recorded thousands of professional drum tracks. In that time I have worked with many producers, songwriters and musicians. Most don’t understand the amount of time involved in getting a great drum track. On average I spend about 4 to 5 hours per song. I talk to the client thru email, on the phone or skype. I want to understand what they are looking for. After they upload their song to my ftp, I  listen and consider my approach. If the client has given some direction, such as ( I want a vintage sound), I may put up one of my vintage drum kits and start placing  the microphones.  After the microphones are properly placed and checked, I’ll start writing a chart for the song. Ocasionally I get charts from my clients, but most of the time I don’t . I start recording the drum track, and by the way, you can now watch your drums being recorded in the studio, live on skype. I may have to go through several different grooves to find just the right one. Depending on the style, I might place some samples in conjunction with the raw tracks and I may process the drum tracks (gating, eq’ing, compressing,etc….).  I then decide if any percussion instruments are needed. For example,  I might add a shaker in a verse or a tambourine in the chorus. Once I am happy with the track, I send an MP3 of the song to my client. He/she decides if any changes are needed.  After the track is approved,  I’ll bounce the files (12 to 18 tracks).  Then I”ll upload them to my FTP and notify my client that they are ready to download. I love doing this and I hope it shows in my final product!! Check out my site Real Drum Studio

Professional Drum Tracks