You Send Scratch Tracks
In order to nail the track for you, I need something to play along to. There are called the scratch tracks. On the basic side a simple acoustic guitar or piano with vocals recorded at the tempo you want for the song will do the job. The more you do with your scratch tracks the easier it is to lay down a killer drum part that perfectly fits the song. Think of this as my guide. I'll use these to figure out which drums to use, what the feel of the song will be, my dynamics. It's really my roadmap to what your song is going to be. The better these are, the more likely that we're going to nail this thing immediately!
I Play Some Drums
Now the fun part! I’ll do 3 full takes of the song, doing my best to nail down the feel and build a great foundation. The takes will offer variances in the grooves, variances in fill patterns. I’ll make slight feel adjustments and make sure there are plenty of options to choose from. I do not typically do punching where I play half the song and come back to it. 99% of my takes are from top to bottom to avoid having volume variances, etc. My goal is to make it as much like we are in the studio together as possible. Even though we may be doing a remove session, it should feel like we've collaborated together to make a killer song.
File Delivery
I deliver the files in a ZIP format through we-transfer. That will send you a ZIP file that has the files broken down into 3 takes (usually, it’s 3, it could be 4 or 5 depending on the track). Those takes will have independant .wav files recorded at 48K in 24 bit. You can import those .wav files into any recording software and mix them however you desire. The drums are separated so you'll need to be sure you or your mixer can get them into your session, but it's a very easy process. If you need to have them fully mixed and bounced into an MP3 - like you just want to mix the entire drum kit - I can do that but it requires special pricing.