Track using Superior Drummer 2

ZV Yoda

There were a few posts here about Superior Drummer 2 vs real drums last week. For the past 18 months or so, I've been trying to get a decent drum sound out of my acoustic kit in my 12 x 12 set up at home. I was never really happy with the results (despite all the great advice I got here) and after seeing/hearing Dadumtish's set up a couple of weeks ago, I took the plunge & went for a TD12 with SD2.

Now, it's still very early days for me in terms of using this software (I only got the vdrums & software last week), but the 1st thing I did when I got it all working was to re-record the drums on an old track of ours (we recorded it over a year ago originally).

You can here the original version (recorded with my acoustic kit in my 12x12 garage) here . The track is called Easy.

Here's the version I recorded last week using the vdrums/SD2. The drums are completely unprocessed (since I hadn't even figured out the mixer pre-set/eq/comp at this stage). While the vdrums do sound a bit flat (no processing/reverb), I think there's a huge improvement. A little bit of machine gunning going on (but that's kind of how I played those snare rolls anyway)... but that's down to sensitivites & thresholds etc.

So.... vdrums vs. acoustic? Discuss.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

now i can finally hear you , you play good mate .

nice one - its a fecking world of difference .

woodsdenis

Do you record the midi and then trigger whatever sound source or do you record the audio ?

ZV Yoda

Cheers Damdumtish... it's great just to go in, sit down & bang out a few drum tracks without worrying about mic positioning, phase etc. To be fair, it makes me realise the real value of a good engineer.

Hi Denis... it is possible to use the stock sounds that come with the vdrums, but I'm not mad about the Roland sounds & my kit can only output 4 simultaneous at once, which means either combining toms (and hence having to mix them as a group in Pro Tools) or else re-bouncing the track to get all drums on individual PT tracks.

Essentially, I’m just using the vdrums as a midi trigger – the drums & cymbals are both velocity & position sensitive… so you get different sounds depending on where you hit each pad/cymbal. All I do is this:

1. Set up an instrument track in PT
2. Load SD2 as a plug-in on the track
3. Hit record… and play

It really is that simple.

SD2 is clever enough to assign each pad/cymbal to a specific midi note, so no messing around there. SD2 also has it’s own mixer & Sonalkis plug-ins (with multiple presets for each individual drum… and each mic on each drum… and each ambient mic!), so you can do all the drum processing from within SD2. It’s scary really… must be some voodoo stuff going on in there… It leaves the PT session so much cleaner & less cluttered.

The real beauty is that I can monitor my playing in real time with no latency (simultaneously using SD sounds while playing to the click/music in PT). Previously I had to use headphones to play to a click… now, I can crank up the volume in the room & play without them. It “feels” more like live playing that way, which is an added bonus.

woodsdenis

Sounds great and you can cough quantize :rolleyes: a bit if needed.

eoin5

Great clarity, nice stuff man.

Jabel

Nice drum sound Yoda
I like the song too and if you don't
mind a bit of CC I think your bass player
should keep it a bit 'tighter' with your drumming.
It will help to drive the song along a bit better.
Just an opinion, keep up the good work!
J

ZV Yoda

woodsdenis wrote: »

Sounds great and you can cough quantize :rolleyes: a bit if needed.

Thanks… and yeah, the midi approach definitely opens up all sorts of possibilities for quantising some/all of the drums… but if you go too far down that road, you may as well just program the drums rather than bother playing them at all.

What I’ve found to be a real advantage of working in midi is the ability to go back & redo small sections without having to worry about joining the audio…. So when the guitarist comes back & says “I changed the solo… “….which invariably means I’ll need to play a different fill/accent/crash at 1:10… I can just go back over that section rather than redo the whole (perfectly good) drum line. It’s a great time saver.

eoin5 wrote: »

Great clarity, nice stuff man.

Cheers Eoin

Jabel wrote: »

Nice drum sound Yoda
I like the song too and if you don't
mind a bit of CC I think your bass player
should keep it a bit 'tighter' with your drumming.
It will help to drive the song along a bit better.
Just an opinion, keep up the good work!
J

Thanks Jabel… and well spotted… funnily enough, the guitarist/bass player said the same thing when I sent it to him last week… he said he could actually hear my kick drum properly for the 1st time & wanted to redo the bass so it was much tighter.

Have to say though… I’m really having a blast with this setup… I got the NY vol 2 & Total Metal Foundry expansion packs this week (there’s about 70-80Gb samples in all), so can’t wait to really get stuck in to these & spend some time assembling my perfect drum kit…

Dravokivich

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

Don't rule out 1 of these!

:pac:

alan kelly

What packs are u guys using with superior drummer.Ie:new york kit or nashville ect. Thinking of buying it. Sounds really good.

flyswatter

Just a quick question for ZV Yoda. Do the Roland V-Drums come with a drum rack or do you have to buy that seperately?

i57dwun4yb1pt8

depends on the package - any kit i had came with a rack
but to save money - you could use your own gear .

td20 rack has inbuilt cabling which is handy .

ZV Yoda

My kit (TD12) came with rack... it's not a standard drum rack - it has cables running inside the tubes, so it's nice & neat.

The clip I posted was just using the standard samples provided with SD2. I also got the NY vol 2 & Total Metal Foundry expansion packs... they all sound amazing

flyswatter

ZV Yoda wrote: »

My kit (TD12) came with rack... it's not a standard drum rack - it has cables running inside the tubes, so it's nice & neat.

The clip I posted was just using the standard samples provided with SD2. I also got the NY vol 2 & Total Metal Foundry expansion packs... they all sound amazing

Where did you buy it if you don't mind me asking? I see on thomann, the drum rack is not included.

ZV Yoda

flyswatter wrote: »

Where did you buy it if you don't mind me asking? I see on thomann, the drum rack is not included.

I got mine from www.dolphinmusic.co.uk. I use them a lot & have never had any issues. They're also negotiable on price.

... and before anybody mentions supporting my local music stores... I did try. I went in to a well known Irish music "superstore" ready to buy. I tried out the various TD kits. I asked the guy what was supplied in the box with the TD12KV & he was vague to say the least:

• He said it was only supplied with one crash cymbal - it had 2 on their website pic, but the store version only had one. (It is supposed to come with 2 crashes by the way)
• He “didn’t think the hi-hats stand was included”. (It wasn’t)
• When I asked him the difference between the TD12 & TD20 he said "eh, I think the TD20 just has more outputs... other than that, they're the same"... what, for a €2k difference in price?... I don’t think so...that was completely untrue... which I learned after a bit of online digging, there’s a lot of other differences
... and to top it all off... the TD12 would have cost €500 more in that store than from Dolphin (including delivery) ... Dolphin also included a stool, kick pedal & sticks in their bundle. Plus they also gave me a NY vol 2 SDX expansion pack free when I ordered SD2.0 with the TD12.

eoin5

How do you find monitoring on SD2, is it quick?

i57dwun4yb1pt8

if you mean realtime latency yes

but you must only run one plugin ( the SD vst ) while tracking , and no effects in SD itself.

you can then track in realtime with no delays .

it will not track without delay if you use cracked software such as the famous cubase sx3 with fake dongle

i use licensed REAPER and its spot on time wise - no delay .