Drum software?

ThePrettyDamned

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

@DrewFX is your man here I'd say. 

octatonic

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

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

daveww

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

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

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

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

PolarityMan

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

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

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

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

Drew_TNBD

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

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

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

@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

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

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

what's that? an excuse to upgrade?

Does BFD 3 have them as articulations? 

ThePrettyDamned

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

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