I'm lazy (and time poor most). I kind of a do a hybrid of what people have said above but it depends very much on the track. 95% of the time, the track is jammed - easy with a blues or rock track in particular.
I download the track, call up my recording template (it's a pain manually mapping all my drum mics otherwise!), set the tempo and get the track lined up in Reaper (most times it does line up from bar 1 but not always). From there, I listen to it through to check for any weird turnarounds or problem areas. I also make a mental note of any specific phrases I can map to drums fills - I'm always listening to the track for anywhere where I can join in the dominating phrasing of the tune. It's the key to getting drums to belong to a song for me. If the track is relatively simple, structurally, I just get stuck in and jam it, watching the waveform in Reaper for obvious dynamic or section changes as I play. Many phrasing opportunities are repetitive and easy to work out where they happen.
Then there's tracks which require more effort because they don't have a consistent or obvious verse-chorus-bridge-middle 8 type of structure. If these changes aren't obvious from the waveform, as is common with heavily compressed distorted guitars - for example Akethesnaker's heavily gain maximised templates are almost impossible to read. I listen through the track dropping differently coloured markers where the changes are - the colours map to the type of change so all chorus markers, for example, are orange. These will just say simple things like 'chorus' or 'build' or 'stop' or 'double-time'. Simple visual guides to the structure. It doesn't normally tell me what to play, just where changes are.
From there, I jam the track, 'sight reading' Reaper if you will.
Then there's some which require some proper thought and planning. Many of OliVBee's templates fall into this category, as do some of Marcey's and Kennyadry's, for example. These are the templates where bashing through a backbeat just simply won't do and often the section turnarounds aren't in obvious places. With these templates I often have to compose some patterns from scratch and this takes time because I have to rehearse these new patterns until I'm satisfied they're fluid. If it's especially complex, I record the track in sections as a last resort. I like to do everything in one take but sometimes it's just not possible to remember all of the track's complexities, so I record from the beginning until I make a mistake. Then carry on from the nearest convenient punch-in point before I made the error.
Ultimately, I rely on my intuition and especially musical experience a lot. This is what helps me gets songs recorded from scratch in well under an hour, even more complex ones. I've spent a lot of my musical career jamming and you soon learn how to get into the mindset and style of a piece of music.
And I've said this on several forum posts in the past: I operate a 'three take' rule. If I haven't got the track right within three attempts, I leave it and come back to it after a break. This helps the recording be energetic and fresh.
I am brutal with my performance standards (and I often fall short of them) but I always try to temper that with my time constraints and how much I'll let slip before the tune is unacceptable to me. Ultimately, I'd love to treat every loop I add to like a proper worked-through session but I simply don't have the time and I'd be uploading one track a week at best if I did!
You'll also notice it's almost impossible for me to type a short forum post!
Edited by
mpointon on February 26 2016 11:18