Drum software?

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

I have ableton live lite, which is a pain, and might get a reaper free trial.

But while I have bass and guitar and will have a mic, I don't drum. How is it best to get a decent drum track? Needs to cover alternative to funk to pure double bass tech metal.

Also, must be easy to use - create a bar or two, loop it then work from there.

Deijavoo · February 2014

@DrewFX is your man here I'd say.

octatonic · February 2014

Logic's inbuilt Drummer plugin is the most intuitive of all of them.

Otherwise BFD, EZ Drummer, Superior 2.0 etc are all great too.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

Also, just to add, cheap is good. Free is better, but doubt that exists.

daveww · February 2014

Probably not much use to you unless you've got an ipad. I use garage band, the smart drums and preinstalled are great, or I use an app called Drum Beat+.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

Thanks, but no ipad I'm afraid.

Isn't it about time Android got some great daw stuff? It's inherently more open and powerful...

ToneControl · February 2014

I usually use Kitcore, gives you a starting point, then you can tweak. I tried drum programming from scratch, and realised I am not that determined to be good enough at it

RvB · February 2014

Beta Monkey?? It's samples and loops, loads to choose from, just drop them into abelton and off you go.

PolarityMan · February 2014

BFD 2 is pretty awesome (need to upgrade to 3!) I also got on pretty well with EZDrummer but the sounds compared to bfd are pretty pants.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

Beta Monkey have some nice samples on site... Are you good to use the free trial ones for loops, or do you need to purchase a set? I'd need hard rock, hard rocking funk and probably a double bass one... It'd rack up costs!

LastMantra · February 2014

I like EZ. I think the basic kit sounds great but maybe not so good for the heavier stuff...good for old-school rock sounds. Plenty of room for expansion though. Nice to use.

PolarityMan · February 2014

There's a drum kit from hell expansion for heavy stuff which i used for ages. Still prefer bfd though.

Drew_TNBD · February 2014

Sorry, the tagging system does not work too great on TFB just lately. I did not get a notification.

But yeah... full disclosure, I work for FXpansion. That said, I truly do believe that BFD is the best product on the market. With BFD2, for a lot of harder styles, you really did need to get an expansion pack or two. But BFD3 has an AMAZING factory library. It's really good. Recorded by top engineers, and are basically usable out of the box.

Check it out here:
www.fxpansion.com/bfd3
Audio demos:

Now... if you want a non-FXp product, and you want cheapness, and you want a reasonable sound and ease of use, I can recommend Addictive Drums or Steven Slate Drums 4. They don't sound as good as BFD3 (imho) but they're better than the Toontrack stuff (again, imho)

^ None of the above is endorsed by FXpansion. Just my personal opinions

Deijavoo · February 2014

That's a point. Where the staff discount for FB members?

;-)

A friend of mine was showing me BFD3 the other day, I must have it.

vasselmeyer · February 2014

If you're just looking to play with a simulated drum kit to get your head around how it might work with a DAW, then you could try MDrummer Small which is the free taster version of the full MDrummer Large package. According to the website it's got 30+ drumsets, 400+ drumset components, 200+ samples, 50+ multisamples, 60+ rhythms, 200+ base-rhythms, 2500+ loops.

You can download it here.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

@drew_fx that's cool, I'll definitely look into it. Plus it means, if I need help, there is someone at hand...

Ill try mcdrummer, seeing as it's free, at least I'll learn how to use it. I doubt it'll have the rhythms and sounds I want though...

PolarityMan · February 2014

Drew_fx said:

stuff about BFD

Sorry to hi-jack, usually i'd look for a youtube tutorial for this but no internet access at home currently. Any idea how to program cymbal swells in BFD2?

Drew_TNBD · February 2014

BFD2 doesn't have the cymbal swell technology that BFD3 has. So all you can really do is go from quiet velocities to loud velocities, in a sort of ramp shape.

PolarityMan · February 2014

what's that? an excuse to upgrade?

Does BFD 3 have them as articulations?

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

FUCK SAKE

How on earth do you do this?

I have MDrummer small, which is like a free version with fuck all on it, and according to a demo, to use it, you need to load it into reaper.

Okay, that's fine

So, I do exactly as the demo shows - Insert Virtual Instrument track, but MDrummer is not in the VSTi folder! Rescanning doesn't help.

How do you do this? I thought it would be a case of making a loop, then dragging and dropping into a track. Sadly, I'm sorely mistaken.

PolarityMan · February 2014

Is it the same word width as the host? ie/ if you are using 64bit reaper with 64bit MDrummer? If not then I think theres some setting to enable bridge mode so it picks up 32bit plugins

Alternatively have you checked that reaper is looking in the right place for the plugin? A lot of plugins install in the cubase default location which isnt on reapers default search path

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

I gave up with the plugin thing.

Instead, I downloaded some free sample loops from Beta Monkey to see if I could get those to work

LOL

Okay, you have to bear with this - from the title, I hope you can gather this was more an experimental bit of fun. You can hear the ones that are from the different sample packs, which obviously wouldn't happen if I downloaded the full version of one...

But I managed to get it to work - you just set the tempo, pick a loop that matches and drag and drop. LOVELY.

It actually worked! I just dragged some random ones on and it wound up like this before I decided to stop before I ruin it even more. But it's convinced me that Beta Monkey is probably a good bet for me, as it was very easy and I'm not necessarily after uber quality midi programmable shit so much as stuff that gives my riffs and ideas a bit of backbone.

I didn't cut the end thing off. And it's still the old recording, I've not gotten around to redoing it, but when I do I'm going to layer 2 parts with less gain and shiz.

PolarityMan · February 2014

Listening to your recording I reckon youd have been best just keeping one of those grooves going over the whole thing rather than chopping up, probably the quick double bass one but youve still run up against the problem that the drums simply dont fit that well with the riff.

......I know it seems like a steep learning curve but once you get started programming its pretty easy and at least for me I find it difficult to just write guitar parts in isolation. For heavy music especially the interplay with the bass drum is really important and you wont get the rhythms you need from sample packs.

Did you record to a click? If so if you like I could have a bash at programming something over it if you like.

ThePrettyDamned · February 2014

Haha that was just me throwing every free loop I downloaded at it in the excitement of actually working out how to do it, so that's not a representation of what I'm after!

There will be chopping and changing though - I was going for a Protest the Hero style chorus following a more classic metal type riff. But still, I think I know that Beta Monkey loops will be the best solution for me, the groove metal or one of the other double bass ones should cover most eventualities.

Drew_TNBD · February 2014

PolarityMan;167776" said:
what's that? an excuse to upgrade?

Does BFD 3 have them as articulations?

Nah guv, it's a setting in the inspector panel. >:D<

Bidley · February 2014

I use Drum Track, which sounds a bit naff, but it's relatively easy to use, and is free.

robwright · February 2014

EZDrummer - its easy!

Tunez · March 2014

I realise that I'm a bit late to the party, but:

I use BFD (currently BFD3)and have since the launch of the first one. I think it is excellent an work exclusively with it now. It's ultimately flexible with amazing sounds (Chris Dagley did an awesome job and is missed!) and I agree with Drew_FX that it's the best thing our there.

However, that said, you need to be prepared to invest a little time with it, especially in the mixer stage to truly get what you want out of it. Quite a few friends (some pro drummers at that) prefer Superior Drummer, I think because it's more instantly gratifying, but again I would say that in my experience SD has nowhere near the flexibility of BFD.

Fez · March 2014

Plus one for EZDrummer but I have some Beta Monkey loops and they are pretty good. It depends on how much flexibility you need. Too much can be a bad thing sometimes.

littlegreenman · March 2014

Unless you're going to go all out and get EastWest's Stormdrum etc, for megabucks, I'd agree with @Drew_fx that BFD is the best out there at the mo'.

I only use a fraction of the functionality it has on offer and have had so many good reviews on the drum sounds I've done using it. It's a big learning curve getting to grips with programming drums, but the results you can get versus loops once you get into it are worth their weight in *insert precious thing of your choice*

This Sunday's overtime is paying for my BFD3 upgrade, and as a rule I "never" work Sundays. Need I say more?

PolarityMan · March 2014

I secretly replaced 4 bars of our drummers out of time drumming with BFD2 in the last Xmas song we recorded and no-one noticed.

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