I'm Venturing Into The "Get Really Good Players to Play On Ur Shyt Online" Thang ?!?

[seafoamer]

As an alternative to hiring a drummer & paying him to bring his stuff to my place, set up, mic up everything & record, I've contacted some drummers I know (pro/famous cats) who have studios & do some session work throgh the internet by sending files & talking on the phone/email. Anyone have experience with this kinda thang?

[ratherdashing]

Yeah! Except I did it the other way around. We recorded the drums plus some guide tracks on a Yamaha hard disk recorder, then transferred it digitally to Cakewalk PA 9.

I moved away and the band split up, but we wanted to finish the recording, so what I did was set up an FTP server in my house (just a cheap old computer with Linux on it) and we moved the session files back and forth. I started by cleaning up the drum tracks, then the bass player downloaded them and added his tracks. Next, I downloaded his version and did the guitar tracks. If I was doing vocals, I'd do them at that time, then the bass player would put down his vocals. We'd then do some touch-ups, I'd mix it, then it was done. We did this all across the Internet just using that FTP server to transfer everything.

The result is about an EP's worth of songs - two of which I posted here a while back.

If you want more advice on how to set up an FTP server, I'd be glad to help. You could probably do it on whatever computer you have.

[J Moose]

Sorta kinda.

I do a lot of mixing for people that never set foot into my room. Generally they'll snail mail DVD's over that contain broadcast wave files, I load 'em onto the DAW, mix the tune to about 80% & upload an MP3/MP4/whatever for them to listen to and make requests for changes, talk about the mix and whatever...then I'll make the requested changes and print the mix. After that we start the process again on the next song(s) until it's all done.

I've done a few remote 'sessions' but they're generally "overdub" instruments rather then a 'basic' one like drums. We'll send out stem-mixes for the tunes and have the session cat blow down whatever number of takes he wants to...then we get it back here & pick & choose what we want.

What do you wanna' know about this stuff?

[seafoamer]

Thanks guys for ur replies.

I guess, I'm looking to hear experiences that ppl have had involving paying someone to play on there stuff, long distance.

Singer/songwriter type stuff is what I'm doing this for.

I'm looking at the heavy session guys. I want heavies, because, 9.9999999999999999999999 times out of 10, they'll get the track down correctly & quickly, compared to some local hack.

I just have never done it the "new wave way".

[J Moose]

Hmmm.

That's a tough nugget man. If you have a really good idea of what you want them to play or are somewhat of a control freak then you might want to stick to local players. The biggest thing that's lost with the remote session deal is "instant feedback" of playing takes and to me, that's HUGE. If you can chart a part out for the remote cat then maybe it isn't a big deal, but for my productions I really need the ability to say stuff like "try quarter notes at that place" or "lay back on that section" in 'real time' rather then going a couple rounds over a few days.