this is just a short update on the new project. i’m working on the drums right now. the sounds are selected, so i’m working out the parts. as you may know already, this record is something new for me and i’m learning while making it. for the first time i’m doing everything myself, including writing of the music and the lyrics, playing and programming every instrument involved, recording, mixing, artwork…well, everything. although i have been in studios many times and i have recorded many times, i never did both of it on the same project. either i recorded somebody else or i sung, played guitar or drums while someone else pushed the buttons… so there’s lots of new experiences and learning involved – especially one important lesson: not getting in the way of yourself. so now i’m creating drumparts on the mac and right now i do not know if i will keep them or if i will use them as kind of a map while recording real drums. yeah, i know what you think: sampled drums suck, do the real thing! and until now i would have been the first to say so (at least in certain musical styles). but i guess that’s something i learned through the last few weeks. programming drums is quite challenging if you want them to sound authentic. you have to play and record them rather than draw small events with a pencil tool. so there’s a click and you track the drumpart live. only instead of a real drumkit and a bunch of microphones you’re using a midi-controller of some kind. again, i’m talking about seemingly genuine drums appropriate for certain genres – no copy and paste here, everything’s played. and you have to know quite a bit about drumming because otherwise it just wouldn’t sound like a drumpart, more like a keyboard track with percussive sounds….

as i said, i don’t know yet if the drums on the final versions of the songs will be real or sampled ones. and come to think of it, maybe i should keep this a secret :-)

it’s the same with guitars. modeling units and reamping are quite common but no one uses them, right?