How do you incorporate recording and DAWs in your practice?

[cannedsardines]

I recently bought an audio interface and Reaper. Mostly I've used Reaper in the past to slow down tracks to aid transcription.

How do you incorporate recording (i.e., recording yourself playing) in your practice? I've never done this in a systematic way and am looking for ways to improve.

Also, how do you set up drum tracks? I have an Alesis SR-16, but I'd like to do drums within Reaper. Any good tutorials?

 

[JonathanPDX]

The first question is: What are your practice goals? Then, how do these tools help you achieve them?

Recording can be good to listen back to your own playing, or to give you something to play along to, especially if you're working on things like playing over changes and want to be able to queue up the same thing over and over to work through. But, actual recording for the purpose of releasing music isn't really something I see as a practice routine, especially since practice is never perfect and when I record I want to be as close to "perfect" as I can be.

I can't help with drum loops, but Garage Band has some easy tools to set them up. There are tons of play along recordings and loops on YouTube, too.

 

[dave_p]

I am doing just this currently. When my teacher gives me a standard to work on, I will load a drum loop, usually jazz brushes at the tempo I want. I will record a track comping the changes with chords usually 3/7 shell voicings. Then record a walking bass line. Then I will record the melody. I then listen back, and redo whatever needs it until I have a clean sounding jazz tune. All done on bass.

As far as drum loops, if you want to make your own you can do it with the piano roll and a drum vst. Load a virtual instrument on a track. In this case drums. Then insert an empty midi item on the track. Lay out the kick, snare and hats etc on the editor. Take your time and get a good 2 or 4 bar beat. Then copy it and paste in and glue the two parts together. Now change something in the last bar. Add a snare or kick beat. Or drop one. Drop individual hi hat hits randomly. Then copy paste and glue. Change something again. Copy paste glue. You will quickly have a drum track with enough variation to be almost convincing.

 

[Jogobass]

regardless of what I'm learning I always like the option of being able to make a quick recording. So I usually practice with my bass plugged into my interface. I don't always record with the daw, I also load up audacity for smaller recordings. I make a habit of sharing my practice things to socials where other bassists can give their opinion. And sometimes I record things to teach others about a concept. Including video with my phone.

I often download backing tracks from youtube and put them in my daw and record a little solo on it. Then if it sounds good I might share it with others. And yea, you can program drums and chords with a daw and use that as a backing track.

 

[Bodeeni]

I do almost all of my practicing through my DAW and headphones. I play along with Youtube videos a lot especially the songs on my band's list. Occasionally I will use smart loop drum tracks that are easy to drag and drop onto a track to create a practice loop.

 

[brianrost]

I’ve always heard it’s good to record yourself, but I have very seldom done so at home over the years. I have plenty of recordings of rehearsals and gigs I’ve made with a Yamaha Pocketrak recorder and transferred to the hard drive on my computer for editing out dead air using Audacity and playback.

For practicing against recordings, I use Transcribe! on my Mac and an MOTU M6 interface. The M6 has a power switch so I can turn it on even when the computer is off when I just want to practice through headphones instead of an amp.

 

[Pacman]

Not technique related. Moved to Recording Gear

 

[vanderbe]

I play mostly jazz standards from bass clef Realbooks volumes 1 - 4. I have a very simple recording-for-dummies Izotope Spire (no longer in production) that works on my iPhone. I download the Quartet jazz backing tracks, volumes 1 - 6 from the App Store. You can configure keys, tempo, instrumentation (I just use piano and drums). I select a tune on Quartet that I want to learn/record, rehearse the melody, improvise a walking or Latin bass line and record. I play 3 passes of the form, 1) melody, 2) improvised bass line and 3) melody. The tunes are between 2 1/2 minutes - 4 1/2 minutes long. So far I’ve recorded 80 tunes. They are just for me so that I have something to show for my practice effort.

Here’s a sample

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[funkinbottom]

but I'd like to do drums within Reaper

As a Reaper user myself, I tried a few different things, but settled on Toontracks EZ Drummer 3. Functions flawlessly in Reaper. Completely programmable, and great sounds. I usually find a groove in EZD, drop it on to a virtual instrument track, then double click the track and you can edit the groove as much as you want. Very user friendly IMO.

 

[dbflats]

When I'm working on a new original song, or building a practice track to come up with grooves for same, I'll sometimes record drum tracks on Luna, using the BopPad midi drum trigger pad and embedded drums within the DAW VST. Unlike most, I like to actually play through the song. I'll edit/ fix stuff later as needed if this is an actual project.

Same with bass, guitar, vocals, whatever -it's not practice like I think you mean but that's how I use my DAW in my practice of being a musician.

 

[bullshark]

When learning an existing song, I use Moise to split tracks into stem, bring those stem in my DAW(Reaper) where I can solo the bass part, and slow it down if needed, to learn it. I can then mute the original bass and play along the original. I can also record my playing to see where I'm at timing wise; my ears and emotion can lie to me, a recorded track won't..

Another thing I do is writing drum grooves. For instance, if there's a piece of music with a unique drum groove that I like, I'll again split the track in Moise, import the drums in Reaper and use that as template to write a MIDI drum part. Then the MIDI get saved as a drum groove which I can recall at will, change drums sound at will, use it to practice or compose new music with.

 

[Polfuste]

EZ drummer 2 for rythm. Look for (or create) a pattern and play on it in Reaper. But it's generally when i want to create something. I don't record my practice. So i use Reaper the most of time to transcribe things (slow tunes, change pitch..) and write it down in Musescore.
For the jazz 4tet i was playing with, i was recording the rehearsal with a zoom H2 then cut it in Reaper to separate tunes. So basic use, but it's so easy than i wouldn't use anything else.