When my son went into the Marine Corp, and left me his drum kit (5 pc CB-500 or the like) I started to practice and try to get my chops back (after about 20 year hiatus from playing a full kit).
The Creed album, Weathered was just released and I wanted to try playing modern rock. I started out just recording to critique myself and improve my playing. The recordings here are from those practice sessions.
Recorded with a cheap Radio shack dynamic mic placed in front of the kit about 3' high, into a windows computer. I panned the CD audio to the left channel with ambient audio to the right, in order to clearly pick out my playing vs the CD.
Very surprised how well I was able to record with such a simple setup!
I did not attempt to learn these note-for-note... Just played along:
Weathered - Creed
One Last Breath - Creed
My son had a double kick pedal, so had to try it out on this one:
Stand Here - Creed
This one is the song that turned me on to Creed. The lyrics connected with me in a couple of different ways, but resonated with playing drums again - 'Hello my freind, we meet again. It's been awhile, where should we begin' - Ha!
I had gotten 4 track software so recorded the L/R CD audio on two tracks, Drums on another and had one left over so added vocals:
My Sacrifice (Drums/Vox) - Creed
This is the firt one I learned note-for-note. My son left a Metallica song book with his kit so I had to learn this one. Another one that resonated with my son going off to serve in the military after 911. -'Off to never never land...'
Tuned the drums as fat as I could get. Recorded the same way with single dynamic and only stereo tracks, but later remixed it with the 4 track software. Still only mono track of the drums but put a CD audion on two tracks and a copies of the drums on two tracks and then painstakingly went through and panned prominent notes, i.e. crashes and tom fills to left and right channels. Probably too exagerated in some cases, but thought it was cool.
Enter Sandman - Metallica
These next two, a coworker who was the drummer for a house band at a country bar said he couldn't quite figure these out. Kick pattern mostly, as I recall. So thought I'd give 'em a try:
Interstate Love Song - Stone Temple Pilots
This one I learned note-for-note and wrote the entire sheet music for the drum part out on music staff paper:
Remedy - The Black Crowes
I'm sure not many will know this one. My favorite Prog/Rock drummer from the Dixie Dregs/The Dregs - Rod Morgenstein. This is from a later project he did with players from Dream Theater and KingsX - Platypus, from the album 'When Pus Comes to Shove'. Just played along to see if I could keep up. Started to run out of gas towards the end... LOL!
By this time I was fully back into playing and had gotten my dream kit - 7 pc Pearl Reference Series kit and fully miced up with a set of Audix drum mics, i5 on the snare, D2 on the high toms 8,10 and 12", D4 on the 14" Tom, D6 on the floor tom, a AKG D112 and stereo pair Audix ADX51 condensors for overheads.
All ran through a Mackie Onyx 1620 and into a Windows computer running Tracktion software via firewire.
Rock Balls/Destination Unknown - Platypus
This is from my favorite band of all time and inspired to play it by a instructionl video by Steve Smith or Journey playing the cowbell/intro. Absolutely loved playing this one. Almost got the 32nd note triplets with a single kick pedal down...
Added this one to our song list for live gigs with Classic EDGE band. Don't think we ever got it down well enough to perform it though. Maybe once?
Recorded the same as above with on the fully miced Pearl kit.
Good Times Bad Times - Led Zeppelin
After this, all recording was with the band Classic EDGE until we disbanded in 2017. Back to no playing for a time until...
This song is the first recording from my new Roland electronic drum kit that my beautiful wife got me for Christmas! Woo Hoo! (Still have the acoustic kit).
So back to a 5 pc kit. This was through the Roland TD-24 sound module and recorded to hard drive on a Mackie DL32R mixer and mixed down on widnow computer with Audacity software (Haven't tried to record direct to PC via USB3 and have all the drums / cymbals on individual tracks. Can set pan and volume, etc. individually on the sound module, so no real reason to.)
Over the Hills and Far Away - Led Zeppelin