How to record drums without drums

Keno Hellmann    Updated on 27 Mar 2023

Have you ever asked yourself how to record drums without drums?
In this blog post, I will answer this frequently asked question.

How to record drums without drums?

Disclosure: This article may contain affiliate links, which means, that I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase using those links. This doesn't cost you anything! Here's more info about affiliate links.

Good morning, and thanks a lot for joining me on Midnightdrummer.com today!

If you don't own a drum set, there are still quite a few ways to record drums for your latest project:

1st. You can hire a session drummer who owns not only a drum kit, but also recording equipment to record all drum parts for your songs.

2nd. There are several great VST drum plugins you can use for drum programming in your digital audio workstation, and I will show you some of them in this article.

How to record drums without drums

Recording drums is quite different in comparison to other instruments. You need a lot of recording equipment like many microphones, cables, an audio interface with at least as many inputs as there are microphones and quite some know how on how to record drums.

Hiring a session drummer

The good thing is, that recording drums without owning drums becomes easier these days. There are numerous session drummers available who can record drums and drum parts for your specific songs.

Record drums with a VST drum plugin

A VST drum plugin can do the job too, and today's software plugins sound fantastic. Probably, nobody will be able to hear how the drum tracks have been created.

Here are a few affordable solutions for your DAW:

Addictive Drums 2 | BDF3 | NI Battery 4 | NI Studio Drummer
NI Abby Road Drummer Collection | NI Drum Lab

If you are looking for special deals and discounts on these tools, you should subscribe to my mailing list and visit my blog post about the Addictive Drums 2 sale.

Keno Hellmann

Keno is a professional drummer & blogger from Hamburg, Germany.
In his career, he played drums for prominent artists like Elton John and popular German bands like Rosenstolz, Big Soul and others.
Since 2004 he's also teaching drums to students of all age-groups from beginners to advanced and semi-professional drummers.

He loves kitesurfing in Germany's North Sea & Egypt's Red Sea, cooking, and he is a big supporter of the HSV football team.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Learn how to play your
1st easy drum beats

>