🥁 Drums (SD3)

Your drums aren’t recorded with microphones: they’re Superior Drummer 3, so the “instrument” is really a virtual instrument inside Studio One 4. That shifts the focus: you’re not fighting bleed or phase between mics, but dealing with MIDI, kit choice and output routing.

The central decision: stereo vs. multi-output

• Stereo (fast): SD3 delivers an already balanced internal mix on 2 channels. Ideal for getting started and for sketching the guide song without getting stuck.
• Multi-output (full control): each piece (kick, snare, toms, overheads, room) goes to its own channel in Studio One so you can mix it separately. More work, more control.

MIDI is your DI

This is the equivalence that organizes all the work on the drums: on guitar and bass you keep the raw DI so you can change the tone without playing again; on drums, MIDI plays that role. As long as you have it, you can change the entire kit, the library, the internal balance and the routing without redoing anything, and fix in seconds things that would take a re-record on a real kit.

What’s critical now vs. what can wait

• Critical now: the groove talking to the riff (the kick landing where the guitar’s accents land) and velocities with dynamics. Without that it sounds like a machine, and no plugin fixes it.
• Can wait: the kit, the fine balance between pieces, the routing and all the processing. MIDI keeps them open.

Shortcut: if you want the whole journey on a single page, see the recipe Drums that hit, from zero.