Adding electronic drums to a recorded song

Some_randomer

Hi all,

Quick question regarding a particular scenario I'm trying to figure out. I used to be a sound engineer years ago but it was all live work I did so I'm not really familiar with any studio or DAW stuff.

My friend is a singer and has recorded some tunes (I think mp3 format with with Ableton) but we live in different countries so can't physically get together. I'm a drummer and he wants to send me the recordings he made and then I put some drums on them. I have an electronic kit with midi out but I don't have a sound card / interface, so I'm thinking I can use a DAW (with built in drums) to import / play his recordings, and then I can overlay the built in DAW drums on his mix to make a new recording.

- What would be the best approach to do this?
- Does his recording need to be in a particular format?
- Is there a particular DAW that would be best suited for this scenario?
- Which is better or easier, get a sound card with midi in and record my electronic kit or use a DAW with built in drums?

TIA

ZV Yoda

TBH, it really depends on how much you want to spend. I've played drums on recordings / collaborations with a few different people.

Does your kit have a stereo output? If it does, then you could get a cheap stereo RCA to mini jack cable (less than a tenner). Something like this:
.
Connect your stereo kit output into the mini mic socket on your laptop. Dunno how good the sound quality would be, but it's worth a look. With this option, you'd listen to the mp3 on an iPod & record the kit directly into the laptop (e.g. using basic free software like Audactiy)

I play a Roland TD12 kit through a Digidesign 003 rack (sound card). I use it to trigger samples in Superior Drummer (top notch drum samples) into Pro Tools (my DAW). Superior Drummer is fantastic software. I get very professional sounding results, but it's not a cheap option.

TroutMask

Since the tracks have a drum/click track then it will be easy enough to sync. You'll be better off recording the electronic kit in MIDI because then you can edit and use nice samples later. Any DAW that handles both audio and MIDI should work. Your friend should send you non-lossy files rather than MP3s. If you can get Ableton - then it would be ideal, because your friend can send you the entire project

hulkey

TroutMask wrote: »

Since the tracks have a drum/click track then it will be easy enough to sync. You'll be better off recording the electronic kit in MIDI because then you can edit and use nice samples later. Any DAW that handles both audio and MIDI should work. Your friend should send you non-lossy files rather than MP3s. If you can get Ableton - then it would be ideal, because your friend can send you the entire project

You could even set up some sort of file share (dropbox, google drive, sky drive, etc.) and work out of the same folder. Or at least keep them up to date.

TroutMask

^^ this is a great way to work as you'll always be synced

GTE

Aye, I would agree with the Ableton route along with a MIDI to USB cable from the below link, not bad for around a tenner though I have never had to use one before.

http://www.adverts.ie/for-sale/q_midi+usb/

It looks like you can get Ableton for a free trial of 30 days so that could work quite nicely. I would be wary about buying a DAW just for this. Very handy getting the DAW your friend uses but it is forcing you down a path if you need to shell out money for it. Same goes for getting a sound card, you would really need to be able to get some use out of it yourself for other things but thats a personal decision.

Some_randomer

Thanks for all the info some useful stuff there. I've bitten the bullet and bought a Native Instruments KA 6 interface which has midi in and comes with Cubase LE 6, so I'm going to play around with all this and hopefully start getting some drums down.