# Recording a rock songThe key here is recording the best takes possible . Get the best musicians you can . If it ' s you , then make sure you ' re the best person to play those parts by rehearsing the shit out of them . Another key here is making choices and committing to them . Flexibility means indeciviness and has you spend a ton of time in the mixing process . If you make choices during recording that fit together , then mixing becomes easy . When you record , sacrifice individual tone for a better overall result . The order is a rough guide , this works great for rock . For other genres the order can be flipped . You can always just record an entire band with one or two mics if the band sounds great in the room , but this generally works better for more acoustic music . First you record the rhytm section , so that the vocalist has something to help them sing good takes . Then you record the vocals , then everything else . ## DrumsRecord drums first . Use the rough demo or the acousticvocal scratch track as a guide for the drummer to play on top of . Vocal and acoustic is often enough here . There ' s two ways to record drums with two microphones I ' ve found useful . One is the Glyn Johns method , and the other is recording the drums in two passes one for kick and snare and maybe hihat , the other for the overhead mics . The latter was used for Slayer ' s first album , the former for Led Zeppelin . You can make two microphones work if you want to . If you ' re not recording real drums , then use something like ezdrummer to set up the loops . If you ' re using loops and want some more life to them , just borrow a hihat and record just that acoustically and the rest via loops . This works suprisingly well too . You want to do some editing of the drum takes and fix any timing issues before moving on to record anything else . Timing issues do not mean locming everything to grid , but rather making sure the thing grooves and has a consistent feel . Either way , commit to the drums . Finish the drums for the entire song before moving on . Make sure it grooves . ## Bass guitarUse new strings . Stretch them out and make sure they hold tune . Tune your bass between takes . Tuning is really important . The bassist must be able to play groove and also play in tune . You can often get away with just recording the DI signal and doing amp sim in the box . If you have a specific tone in mind , then go ahead and record the amp . Or you can do both , but that requires setting up sampledelay . I prefer recording the bass amp when possible , because that forces me to commit to a sound which saves time ! . Do a rough bass comp from a few takes . If it sounds good , it is good . Commit to the bass track . Make sure the drums and bass groove together . You want to feel the result in your entire body . If you can do that , the rest is a piece of cake .