Leaderboard

Here are some shots of my band and me playing a gig last night. A friend of mine is a professional photographer who has photographed many jazz legends up close in performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival and (and many other venues) for decades . https://michaeloletta.com/. He’s a real pro and can make even an amateur like me look like a real musician. I had no idea he was photographing. Consummate professional. The guitar is way more photogenic than me…

I have NI Groove Agent, XLN Addictive Drums 2, a handful of other "drum machine" VSTs (because they're like Pokemon, you have to catch them all, right?), the built-in stuff that comes in Ableton Live and Cubase Pro, and a Roland TR-8. For "quality" sounds, Groove Agent of Addictive Drums win. For "just lay down a foundation to jam along with", the TR-8 wins hands down. Several years ago, though, Roland superseded the TR-8 with the TR-8s, which has some different functionality. Never bothered to "upgrade" because what I have works for what I want to do with it. If I'm building a track, the work flow, generally, is to just get that four on the floor going with the TR-8 and then eventually replace it with better sounding/more complex MIDI patterns from Groove Agent. Just depends on how much effort I feel like making at the time and whether I'm truly "building a track" or simply "futzing around", aka "noodling."

Looks great! I can almost hear it.

I'd think most recording software would handle this with ease. Just record your drums on one track, then play/record your guitar tracks while listening to the drums track. That's basically how all my recordings are made. Reaper is excellent software for this purpose, and is free (well, in theory you're supposed to pay $60 for it after a trial period, but it can still be used whether or not you pay for it).