New. Need help. How to record ONLY MY drums?

How do I, using Audacity, record ONLY my drums so I can submit to the site? I have Roland TD-11K and can record my drums AND the track I'm recording over, but I can't figure out how to listen to the original submission and record my drumline over it without also recording my drums...? Also, how do I align my track over the original so it's "in time"? I'm not stupid, just new to this and trying to figure it out so I can contribute! THX.

For recording acoustically you have to use headphones.
Normally there should be no latency when you are recording, especially not when using a proper ASIO driver which corrects for latency. ASIOfor does not do this, so avoid.
Audacity has a tool for time aligning. It is placed in the center of the lower row of 6 toolbuttons imediately right of the transport controls.
Have a look here:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/toolbar.html

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I don't know what an ASIO driver is...When I record my drum track over another, previously submitted track, can I record ONLY MY drum track, or do I have to record both tracks and then subtract the previous track from the dually recorded track? If I can just figure out how to record and submit ONLY MY drum track, I can contribute to the site...I'm overly analytical. Is it as easy as unclicking (off) the "overdub" in "Transport"?! Sorry...

I need to know how to record ONLY MY DRUM Track.

Clarification: How do I record ONLY MY DRUM TRACK while listening to another member's submitted (ie: guitar track). When I listen to another member's track and record my drums over it, it records BOTH of our tracks. I can't submit a recording to the site of BOTH of us...I have to submit ONLY my track so other members can "choose my track to place over another" or record their instrument over MY track.?

Are you listening to the other material in speakers or headphones?

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hey there fellas,

first, a thanks to nilton for trying to clear things, now my attempt to give advice:
Your question is put a little comlicated, so I'll try to give answers to all possibilities :)

a) if you want to add drums to a wikiloops track, you are the one who has to mix track plus drums, upload mixes only, no drums-only-parts if you want to join a session.
To do a good mix, its best to have the wikiloops track imported in audacity and record your drums on seperate tracks, so you can adjust the sound afterwards. If you record wiki-rack and drums mixed into one stereo channel right away, you cant really edit the sound afterwards.
If your asio settings are OK and you record "next to" the imported track, you should not have any need to move the recording in-time. it should be right in time with the wiki track.



b ) if you want to record only the drums without anything else on them, you must make sure there is nothing else mixed to the drums when you send the signal into your computer. Find out where the signals are being mixed and where the played back track gets into the recording channels. You may upload drums-only parts to wikiloops to offer a new sessions start (called session template).

Thanks for the great advice, Nilton and Dick. I really appreciate your help!

Hi,
you can get the ASIO-Driver here:

http://www.asio4all.com/

It's Freeware and works fine. Good luck!

avoid asio4all unless you cannot find any other driver. Its just a wrapper a wrapper around n other non asio driver and does NOT report the correct latency

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Guess you got it right...

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hi everyone,

First, I download the tracks from here which I want to add drums on, than I copied them to a usb memory. than plug into my td11kv module and can play easily drums on the tracks:) and with audocity software (just using a usb-usb cable) so audocity can record both track and drums same time on the same line. When I tried to upload the mix(mp3 file) not only the mix, but also we need to upload the drums only track =/ so I searched in forum here and try to use the "mix" part of the audocity. I recorded only drums than import the track on a line and on the other line recorded drums only. than we have latency problem =( ok, now its time to synchronize two tracks together by editting the time lines, moving sound waves. ok than I can upload the mixed mp3 and the only drums track. but I just wonder the time blank which can be at the beginnig of the track or drums only track will be a problem after upload? or do we have to cut or crop the time blank and try to make the times of track and drums track the same?

How can we set the ASIO settings to prevent the latency?

Hey Laruno!

I'll try to answer your question in a more general way, so anyone using a setup like you do will hopefully benefit :)

So, one by one:

You wrote: "When uploading, we are asked to upload the single-track as well"
Mind: This is optional, you dont have to do it!

Then, you are running into latency problems when recording drums seperately from the backing (and solved that by "moving the waveforms").
This latency effect is related to the gear/software config you are using, so it can not be solved by some general advice that would help everyone - so I will not go there for now.

Third, you adressed the question of "How do I cut the start of my single track in a way making it easy to import by someone downloading the single tracks". Good question :)

Since you had to move the drums track to fix the latency, the two tracks (wave-strips) will not begin at the same moment any longer - so if imported into any software (which will "align" the waves so their beginnings sit in the same position), the latency effect will be back.
That is no huge problem IMO, for someone undertaking a remix should be able to re-align them quickly. It is inconvenient tho, so lets look at what can be done.

Generally, recording software will export/save all audio that "is there" in a project if not told otherwise.
Most software I have used does offer start-stop markers to create a time-range, and will then ask wether you want to export just the marked section or the whole project once such markers are used.
Imagine you want to export just one song of a recorded concert - thats when you'll need those markers to avoid exporting a two hour wave :)

So, the correct solution is: Set the start-stop markers to the beginning and end of the backing track, so whatever will be exported will be in relation to that track.
Record your drums and align the track by ear to avoid the latency effect.
1. export/save the mix
2. export/save the drums only (either by muting or deleting the backing from the project), the markers guarantee the exported file will be off exact same length as the backing - either by cutting off the overlapping part or by adding silence in case your recording starts later than the start marker.

hope that helps :)

Thank you for this great explaination :)

I will try to set the start/stop markers tonight ;)

I didnt know that we can only upload the mix file because "publish" button is inactive after upload is finished and just writes "processing mix..." I thought that we need to upload single track also to make it active. Although you wrote in tutorial "wait, be patient while uploading" =) I think we couldnt =)

In general guitar players knows more about this recording processes but we dont as we are drummers =/ we can only record at studios =) Since V-drums, digital drums technology grows up, we are going to learn more about this recording issues =)

I apologise for asking many amateur questions =( and also really appreciate for the long and helpfull answers.