Monday Drumday: Flume

For #Drumday this week I have a song I recorded last week for the @radioliquorice show that our local music community put together.

I opted to cover the song Flume by Bon Iver. This is the first time I have used my newish Yamaha DD-65 drums in a song. Recording was done in Ardour on Linux (Ubuntu Studio).

I started by recording the guitar part with my Taylor accoustic. I did not record to a click, so the timing may vary a bit. Then I added the vocals with some backing vocals on the choruses. I also played my Tanglewood ukulele. Finally I played the drums. I went for a very simple pattern as I was more concerned with just getting through the song and just took a couple of takes. I will admit I did a little edit to get the final cymbal to line up with the last chord.

I used some compressor, EQ and reverb to polish the sound a bit. I really need to learn more about how to use those more effectively. I then used FFMPEG to make a video from the audio file. The whole recording process only took about an hour.

As I upload this the image I used in the video is not showing in the 3speak preview, but I will add it as a thumbnail anyway. It was just a screenshot of Ardour.

This has given me confidence to do more recording. I could try using MIDI drums to have more control. The only real issue with this is that the DD-65 does not transmit use of the high-hat pedal. I have tried it with Ardour and need to look more into it. It ought to be possible to split the drums into individual tracks so they can be treated separately. I could do this via Hydrogen.

Rock on!