How to be a pro software drummer.

Feelgood

I suspect most of you will probably laugh at this thread though its something I can't really master so any help would be most appreciated.

Right let me specify I am a guitarist. I'm at about intermediate level on most recording software such as pro tools, cubase etc. I'm using an MBOX 2 pro at the moment with Pro Tools LE. I can record my guitar tracks, bass tracks and vocal tracks no probs though am completely stumped when it comes to drum tracks.

What's the best way to do it?. At the minute I have a couple of methods, all of which are completely sh1te.

a) Use Groove Agent pre configured beats. Most of which never suit my own written material.

b) Use Groove agent with a midi keyboard. Sounds pretty cool, but its extremely hard to play drums on a keyboard.

c) Use fruity loops to create drum tracks. This is good too but takes way too much time.

How do you guys do it?. Like I said I am really at an intermediate level, so you will more than likely have to dumb down your answer quite a bit. Thanks for any info.

booooonzo

maybe get a trigger finger by maudio or a drum pad and some sticks like the roland spds (built in sampling too)

are you layering up the drum track or trying to play it all in one go?
ie. do you do the kick part first the snare etc... might be easier for you when using a keyboard.

I find ezdrummer by toontrack excellent and there is toons of different style kits and patterns to add on.

you can drag their patterns and fills on tou your midi editor and customise them so there has to be some beats that will work for you.

danjokill

I would recommend Stylus RMX and Spectrasonics Backbeat I found it much easier than groove agent

dav nagle

Feelgood wrote: »

I suspect most of you will probably laugh at this thread though its something I can't really master so any help would be most appreciated.

Right let me specify I am a guitarist. I'm at about intermediate level on most recording software such as pro tools, cubase etc. I'm using an MBOX 2 pro at the moment with Pro Tools LE. I can record my guitar tracks, bass tracks and vocal tracks no probs though am completely stumped when it comes to drum tracks.

What's the best way to do it?. At the minute I have a couple of methods, all of which are completely sh1te.

a) Use Groove Agent pre configured beats. Most of which never suit my own written material.

b) Use Groove agent with a midi keyboard. Sounds pretty cool, but its extremely hard to play drums on a keyboard.

c) Use fruity loops to create drum tracks. This is good too but takes way too much time.

How do you guys do it?. Like I said I am really at an intermediate level, so you will more than likely have to dumb down your answer quite a bit. Thanks for any info.

I am in a similar position as yourself so I purchased BFD 2 and I will never look back, check it out http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=53

BuddhaJoe

Feelgood wrote: »

How do you guys do it?. Like I said I am really at an intermediate level, so you will more than likely have to dumb down your answer quite a bit. Thanks for any info.

I'm also a guitarist who uses his computer to record songs. Using Cubase 4 and Drumkit From Hell Superior 1 (I should be getting v2 today yay!) my standard process is fairly simple. Say I'm composing a song and the first verse is 32 bars long the first thing I will do is create a midi track and draw a blank midi section 4 bars long. Then I'll open up that blank midi section in the Drum editor in Cubase and compose a beat like the one shown below:



Once I've finished programming the 4 bars I'll copy and paste it 8 times to fill the 32 bars of the verse and then put in a quick fill at the end of the last 4 bar section. The humanizer in Drumkit From Hell Superior will make sure that all the copied beats don't sound identical by slightly varying the velocity of each hit randomly.

By repeating this process for all the various sections of a song I can program a full song in under 20 mins.

ogy

+1 for BFD 2, best drum software and sample set available.

ZV Yoda

It's a funny old world... here I am trying my best to get a consistent, solid sound from my accoustic drumkit in my home studio, re-training myself to play drums as consistently as possible...

Then I read this this quote:

"Drumkit From Hell Superior will make sure that all the copied beats don't sound identical by slightly varying the velocity of each hit randomly"...

... us poor drummers get beaten up all the time by the desk techs about our inconsistent groove, varying velocities, snare pops etc... and here I am reading comments about how to get a drum machine to play like the drummer from hell...

I love this forum!

ICN

You could always learn how to Beatbox! LOL

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ZX5qdIEB0&feature=related

i57dwun4yb1pt8

ok, so now you know why guitarists need drummers ;-)
sorry to say but the pro way to do it is this

A
1/ hire a pro drummer to play live miced drums
2/ keep the drums tracks or replace the sounds with samples

B

3/ hire pro drummer to play midi drums ( roland td , or a drum trigger )
4 assign samples to midi events laid down

or

learn to play keyboards

or

learn to play drums and go back to section a or b as the pro drummer


you dont get a pro drum track with out said expertise
( or a pro guitar track without guitar expertise )


Im In the opposite boat - I play drums and need to put down guitar bass, and keys

so I went and learnt them - had to to get anything done .
now , im no jaco pastorius , or steve vai , or jon lord , but I can get by pretty well

also - and this is important -
any track that uses a groove is defined by its drum and bass track ( the over all groove ) and the vocal -
if any of these are **** - the track comes across as **** .
you can actually get away with anything else being weak if the drums/bass / vocal overall impact is great in the track .

treat the drums/ bass and vocal elements as the over all meat and potatoes of the track , the rest is ear candy to this foundation

Dagon

I've heard that addictive drums is one of the best out there, and it's intuitive, fast and easy to use (and works seemlessly with most other software):
www.xlnaudio.com

I've heard some examples from bands using it, and the result was amazing! You can save money and effort if you don't have the funds to get an amazing drummer + an amazing studio to record your drums. I'd rather use addictive drums than have a badly / cheaply recorded drum sound..

af_thefragile

There's even this one:
www.oceanwaydrums.com
Supposed has the best and highest quality samples.

noofty

Hi guys, I need some help...

I use fruity loops 8 on my laptop, but when I hook my laptop up to the pa desk, the volume is very low and there is alot of noise, so basically I need to boost the sound and cut out the noise....

I was thinking a pre/power amp and a compressor/di box... does anyone have any ideas or suggestions, preferably available on thomann, with a budget of about €200. What is the best way to deal with that? Should I be looking at improving the PCs soundcard or is that necessary?

Cheers

Thomas_S_Hunterson

noofty wrote: »

Hi guys, I need some help...

I use fruity loops 8 on my laptop, but when I hook my laptop up to the pa desk, the volume is very low and there is alot of noise, so basically I need to boost the sound and cut out the noise....

I was thinking a pre/power amp and a compressor/di box... does anyone have any ideas or suggestions, preferably available on thomann, with a budget of about €200. What is the best way to deal with that? Should I be looking at improving the PCs soundcard or is that necessary?

Cheers

External sound card for the laptop

noofty

Sean_K wrote: »

External sound card for the laptop

cool, wat will that do essentially? and what price are we looking at?