Adding drums to existing rock tracks.

I have about 45 minutes of music done with guitars and bass. Some are complicated, in terms of there being time changes, and occasionally straying from a metronome.

I'd like to find a drummer who's as good as I am a guitarist (which is to say, pretty darn good), who'd be willing to put the time into adding tracks to this. He/She'd have to be willing to put the kind of time I did on my parts. It would be days and days of work.

I can't afford to pay studio rates, so the drummer would have to figure out how to get that done, either at home, with a midi drum configuration, or whatever.

How hard is it going to be for me to find someone willing to do this?

You should be able to find somebody. The problem you'll have, IMHO, is that even though you're "pretty darn good" (modest too, I see ), if your time is wandering all over the place, it's going to be tough for ANY drummer to really lock into your playing.

Next time, record to a click and you'll probably end up with better results. What you're really asking a drummer to do with this is several things:

1.) create a drum part that YOU like without any direction from you

2.) lock that part into a song that he not only doesn't know but will have to spend a lot of extra time listening to in order to match your tempo problems, and

3.) do all the regular 'recording stuff' to actually add the track to your parts.

Like I said, there are plenty of people out there willing to do this kind of stuff. Some might even do it for free if they really like the song. Maybe you should post a sample of the music or at least explain the style of music you're doing so that you don't get a bunch of jazz players responding to record to your death metal, or vice versa.

One other thing to consider here....the reason you're willing to put in a ton of time is because this stuff is "your" music...your baby so to speak. It going to be tough to get the same level of commitment from ANYBODY is they don't feel really connected to the project.

Look at it from the drummer's perspective for a minute: guitarist is obviously pretty particular about what he wants done. It'll take significant investment of time and energy. I'm not getting paid for it. Why the hell should I spend my time working on this?

Imagine a drummer sitting out there asking "what's in this for me?". If the answer is "nothing", then you'll have trouble finding somebody. If you can come up with something better than "nothing" (money, fame, drugs, hookers, world peace, personal fulfillment, etc.) your odds of finding somebody increase.

Thanx for the insight. I said I'm "pretty darn good", cause that's accurate. . Point being, I'm not looking for a relative newbie on drums - or a casual hobbyist, so just wanted to get an idea of what to expect.

I totally hear what you are saying about it being my baby. Wandering from a click track was something that I think now was a big big mistake, and I don't do it anymore.

As for what's in it for the drummer, that's a good question. Typically, the drummer looks at these sorts of engagements as a job, since the composition more often starts with one of the other instrumentalists.

But I'm a musician, so it's not like I'm the Bank of Hong Kong. I think the way it's going to have to be is the right drummer will be interested because he/she thinks it is promising, in terms of a record contract or good things to play live for money.

Nevertheless it's surprising to hear that I may not have so hard a time finding someone.

Ok, first you were pretty darn good. Now youre pretty damn good...I dont know if i can trust you.

Oh, come on guys, don't hijack my thread with this nonsense. Try not to ruin the thread, please.

Yes. Yes. No.

yeah, you're right - people are usually honed into a specific genre.

Do you think the best idea is to post my music online and see who takes interest?

Cause I am reluctant to just post this stuff on the web. I want to have a little more control over who hears it.

And it's the kind of thing where snippets ... I'm not sure if it would do the music justice.

What I'd really like to have happen is go to some studio in NYC (where I am) where drummers congregate and might be agreeable to this sort of thing.

Btw, I think genre-wise, it fits somwhere between rock, jazz a little, and maybe like Yes or Zep or the Dead a bit, but different. A little more experimental.

I was hoping I could go to a studio some place where I can meet drummers, talk with them about what I'm looking for, and see if they have any interest. Maybe I'd bring some music on a CD with headphones. I don't want to just hand the music out, and there's a lot of it, and its varied. So, no one sample is going to give the full idea.

A couple of questions:

What is the final purpose of this recording? Demo to shop to labels, demo to get gigs, or just "to see what it sounds like?" If it's one of the first two, then you stand a better chance of recruiting someone, in my opinion. (You can promise them the drum chair if the project goes anywhere)

Have you copyrighted your material? Costs $30 per song, and well worth it if you're going to go outside your own circle of friends to do this project. Even if you just take a recording of what you have already and mail it to yourself (Certified Mail....and DON'T open it until you're in front of a judge suing someone for infringement!), that will protect you, and you can freely shop your material around to drummers.

Just some thoughts. Good luck with your project!

Here's how I would approach it....

First off, I'll tell you that people have come here before and asked the same thing, and had guys sign on to do it for them remotely, so you're hunting in the right woods.

In your "ad" here, I'd specify the following: type of music (led zep meets yes, experimental, etc.). That'll narrow down the list, and the odds are if you describe it well enough, the newbies and others who doubt their ability handle the tracks won't respond anyway. Say that you're looking for somebody to add drum tracks to your pre-recorded demo....period end of story. If interested, drop you an e-mail.

The goal here is to narrow the search...get some people interested, and then pick the best choice from a pool of candidates.

Some guys here are also into recording and have the gear to turn out a high quality demo for you based on your tracks. Odds are you won't find somebody willing to pay their own money to record YOUR song, so I'd try to find somebody who's band already has recording gear, or who has their own home studio.

Once you get a dialoge going on with a couple of people, then go ahead and send them the tracks (or one track at a time) and see what they come up with. If it's crappy, it's not like you've invested much in the process anyway.

Final advice: remember that the written word is perceived entirely differently than the spoken word. So while saying "I'm good" out loud can be easily interpreted by a listener based on your vocal inflection, facial expression, and/or hand gestures, writing it on a bulliten board seems a little conceited. Remember, YOU may think your music is the {censored}, and YOU may think that your playing is amazing, but other opinions may differ. You're certainly not the first person on these boards to make exaggerated claims of their rock-godliness. More often than not, these folks are more talk than action. You DON'T want to be associated with that group if at all possible.

If you take a more "nuetral" stance, you can avoid some of the flack that a misinterpretation of your words may cause. If it were me, I'd position it more like: "Hey, I've recorded some tunes that I'm pretty proud of, but I need drums to complete the project. Anybody interested in helping me out? Send an e-mail to....."

Good luck with your project...if my own life wasn't so busy I'd be willing to give it a try (I'm in Westchester County..not too far away). Just remember the first rule of sales (and this IS sales....you're trying to sell somebody on doing some work for FREE): make the "customer" feel good about the deal. In this case, it needs to be less about you and your project, and more about buddying up with a drummer out there.

- the DW -

I know about copyrighting and I've done it, but I still think it's a good idea to put some sort of bounds on how much gets heard, how often, and by who. Hearing a piece once is one thing, but giving out a CD or putting it on the web means people will have time to dissect it. That's why I prefer people come to my home studio and look at the ProTools sessions. It's the best environment. I might bring a CD to a public place as a sample.

As for the intention, definitely, I'm thinking drum chair. Once the drumming is done, I'd want to recruit at least one, maybe two more members for a performing ensemble, and go from there to see what gigs or contracts could be found.

Old Steve - all that is good advice. I wasn't planning on blowing my trumpet later on. I figure I'll just let the music do the talking and let the drummer decide what he thinks.

It's an interesting thing - drumming, because they do a lot of work and very often don't get a lot of credit.

I think you're right with the simple advertisement/description that you penned out. Thanks. It's to the point, and like you said, I could give the guy one song and see how it goes, and if he likes it and it works out, go from there.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I hope it's easy finding a drummer who can take my music to new places.

One more thing though. Some of these pieces are less beat-laden, in the respect that they'll need percussion more as an accent than a constant sort thing. More like percussion in a symphony, it would be there to provide a focal point, drama, or something like that. I wonder how I'd word that without scaring somebody off.

Ask for a "percussionist" seperately from a "drummer", maybe? It might also work the other way...lots of us drummer types get psyched when the music entails something other than slamming backbeats on 2 and 4.

One other thing to think about, especially if you're in New York. Between NYU, Julliard, Columbia and several other schools right in the city, you probably have access to several hundred people studying percussion right now. It might be worth doing a little digging around and finding out where you might be able to post a message at the schools' performing arts departments, etc.

Anyway, good luck.

I've thought about Julliard, but not for drummers. But the key for to the brilliance of your thought was to allude to "percussionist" rather than the typical backbeat "drummer". Great suggestion. Thanks, Old Steve.

Is that bad? What if some major band wants to record some of them (with their influence, of course), and it becomes a platinum hit? You'll start receiving royalty checks (well, the publishing company you set up will, anyway) in the mail on a regular basis!

Or maybe some A&R guy will stumble across it and pitch you to his label. You never know.

I understand that you want to keep control of your creations, and I am not trying to tell you what to do. Just rattling off some thoughts.

Have fun!

EDIT: but then again, I guess you'd kinda need some drums on there to make the song 'whole' before putting it out there. Forget what I just said!

lol what a knob

Originally posted by the DW EDIT: but then again, I guess you'd kinda need some drums on there to make the song 'whole' before putting it out there. Forget what I just said!

That's exactly true. It's weird, but you show someone the same song with and without drums, and it's the difference for them between liking the song and not. That's a generalization, but it kinda holds in a lot of circumstances, especially with peoples' expectations.

But as for when that's done, I'm not sure how to promote it at that point, but that's another thread.

whatever. Like someone else said, it was a poor choice of words, but you know what, from my experience working in a studio recently, there's lots of kids who talk a lot of talk, and look the part, and can't play for {censored}.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't want one of those. Pardon if I've offended you.

Try to think of it as any other discipline. Like Math. It's one thing to say I need a tutor. It's another thing to say I need a tutor for high school calculus and another to say I need a tutor for number theory. I'm just trying to lay the groundwork for what relative skill-level I'm looking for. I realize that upset your applecart and others here, but I think a lot of that has to do with yourself.

You didn't upset me man. I find it easy to tell someone they're a knob when they are without it adversly affecting myself...

Obviously it rubbed you the wrong way. I just checked a couple of your posts in other threads. You drum on stage to a click? Why do you do that? I would think that in a live format a drummer would prefer to go without a click, unless it was some pretty unusual circumstances.

It's one thing if you're layering instruments in a mix, but on a stage, I can't imagine. What kind of music are you making?

Playing with the click keeps the guitarists honest.

Also, if you're playing with anything sequenced or any other timed electronic type stuff, a click is absolutley mandatory.

Indeed.

There are backing tracks on minidisc which fill out the sound of the band, even though there is also live bass, keyboards, 3 vocalists, and sometimes guitar. Not all tracks have click, a lot are just the backing tracks with either percussion to reference the time with, or even full drum kit to play to. Personally I prefer just click. I wear headphones in order to keep myself and the rest of the band in time with the tracks and the clicks, otherwise it would all fall apart and we'd find ourselves completely out of time with the tracks. It's pretty standard practise to work with clicks on live gigs. I used to do shows, broadway type shows, where many were playing to clicks, with ever changing tempos and meters. Once a drummer gets used to it, it actually makes life a helluva lot easier for him/her, plus it's great because it improves the inner clock.