I'm looking for some opinions.
My son has a Pro Tools LE studio in a former Guest Room. He is using it for his own music which is being recorded to CD for sale. Since the room is small, it is not conducive to recording drums. I've been playing with the idea of building a studio in the garage for him, but the costs add up quickly. So, I was thinking about how we might make do with the current setup. Of course, he could record the drums in another larger room or in a studio, and then bring the tracks in. But what about electric drums?
I know, I know, electric drums are not as good as real drums. But, considering the situation, would not the best electric drum kit, coupled with what we could do with it in Pro Tools and its plugins, produce high quality sound still? This isn't hard rock where there are intense drum solos; more like John Mayer type music. It's mostly just accompanying the rest of the instruments and the vocals.
Opinions?
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I think you would be better off to go with midi drum tracks and
I think you would be better off to go with midi drum tracks and use soundfont (or some other kind of sampled drum) sounds. The sampled drums these days can be pretty amazing (althogh still no replacement for a complex carbon and water-based drummer). Just make sure the sampled drums aren't doing things a human drummer simply couldn't do ... like buzz rolls on the kick .....
But seriously, there's nothing that says "cheese" like a drum module in a recording. The idea of recording the drums remotely and bringing the tracks back to the studio makes way more sense.
Invest what you would have spent on drum pads (they can get pretty pricey themselves, look at Roland V-drums for instance) in the garage studio or better recording equipment such as microphones or preamps. Or for that matter studio time in a professional studio.
Keep in mind that eventhough there are those here that would say you have to have 6' thick walls made of a zillion sheets of drywall, and two sheets of 1" bullet proof glass angled at 5.023491582903 degrees and so on .... you can actually make some decent sounds in a "regular" room with some wall treatment; most of them are creating a "professional" studio meant to be rented out. That way too, when you want to use the garage for its original duties .... like parking a car in it .... you don't have to break your back tearing all that stuff down.
I used to do this. Started with drum machine, then drum module t
I used to do this. Started with drum machine, then drum module triggered from keyboard, then drum pad triggers.
My son's band wanted to record some stuff, and insisted on using their drumset, so I started trying to get a decent sound, reading a lot of stuff about it here and on other forums.
That was about 4 years ago, and I'll never go back to pads. Just my opinion.