Drum Software is cool

[TheGreatGreen]

So this is going to sound ridiculous, but for the longest time, I was hesitant to start messing around with drum machines, basically for no other reason than using them on a technical level was not something I just immediately understood how to do. I've been telling myself that even if I go out and buy drum software, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to setup and get working.

Well about two days ago because of all the black friday sales on drums software, I basically thought "screw it, now or never" and picked up a few virtual instruments, and now I have drums! And all it took was me finally sitting down and watching a few youtube videos about how to go about installing stuff. I'm embarrassed to say I feel like a dumbass for being intimidated about it now because it's really not that bad. It is kind of a pain in the ass with multiple softwares to download (I guess depending on what you get), but once you get things installed, it's pretty much as easy as adding a virtual instrument track in your DAW and plotting points on a MIDI graph.

Here's a couple quick dumb clips of the drums I got. I spent a small amount of time inside the virtual kit, picking out individual pieces and messing with faders and mixers and various proprietary embiggening effects, but outside of that, I basically did zero to them in the DAW itself.

Here's a test track I did to try and get a feel for rhythms in general, as well as taking a crack at getting decent kick and snare tones. I didn't use any pre-done beats or anything, I just opened the MIDI grid and clicked around until I got something that worked.


Here's another heavier track, basically me trying to match the kick drums to the pick attack.

Glad I didn't BLEED working on those drums ha ha ha GET IT? Man I'm hilarious.

So, yeah. Turns out installing and using virtual drums in a DAW is nothing close to the nightmare I thought it was going to be. I'm kind of kicking myself for not having done this years ago. Just thought I'd share.

 

[Devin]

That riffage rules (especially the first clip)

 

[RaceU4her]

Hell yeah dude! I started with slate drummer or whatever a long time ago using one of those little piano midi things, it was awful but at least was good enough to get ideas down and send to my drummer

 

[dstroud]

sounds killer man!!!!

 

[Rybosome]

Nice dude! It sounds awesome, great riffs and great tone. Which drum software are you using?

Similar story for me actually, I just got EZDrummer3 running last night due to Black Friday sales and it lived up to its name. Working on a new song and I already have the drums completely programmed and the audio rendered into my DAW, just have to record the guitar parts now. I'm planning to wait until my Uber Ultra arrives and use this song for a demo video.

The fact that with about 2 hours of effort I could have a complete drum track (based on grooves written by Lamb of God's drummer) and have me recording guitar be the thing holding up the song is just wild. Like you said, should've done this years ago.

 

[Metalhex]

Which program are you using? I've been using the free MT Powerkit and am scared to branch out to a purchased one such as EZD3, but I've been teetering on the edge to buy something like that. I just figure that no one is using the Powerkit for their legit recordings so at least I would have a different drum sound than like 99% of everyone else.

Maybe in the near future you'll get a midi drum pad or similar. It sucks copying and pasting and lining up things all the time but it's better than no drums at all!

 

[Brandonrz]

For those that use guitar pro or anything like that to write, you can export your midi and just drag and drop into your daw and the track will play.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

Nice dude! It sounds awesome, great riffs and great tone. Which drum software are you using?

Which program are you using? ... Maybe in the near future you'll get a midi drum pad or similar. It sucks copying and pasting and lining up things all the time but it's better than no drums at all!

Thanks! I picked up the GetGood Drums Periphery V kit, the "P V Matt Halpern signature" one. I really liked their Mesa 4x12 IR's and their software seemed navigable enough, so I went with their drums for my first shot at the tech. Also in terms of software complexity it seemed like a good middle ground on the scale of "as many options as possible but super complicated to use" vs "no options and dead simple to use." And it sounds great to me. That's what you're hearing in the clips. I was surprised at how "produced" it can sound out of the box which is nice for me because I don't know the first thing about recording drums other than roughly where the beat should be. But there's enough drums and faders in there that you have decent flexibility so that it doesn't have to sound the same every time you use it. I'm sorry I sound like a damn commercial about it but I'm really happy with it so far.

Also yeah I'm already noticing the "I wants" start to kick in. I've already thought about getting a small MIDI keyboard so I can use it to feel out beats instead of having to click around on the MIDI coloring book in the DAW.

 

[JTyson]

Sounds killer!
Yep, the "I wants" are gonna start to strangle you once you start recording.. Its way worse than guitar/amp stuff

 

[Metalhex]

Thanks! I picked up the GetGood Drums Periphery V kit, the "P V Matt Halpern signature" one. I really liked their Mesa 4x12 IR's and their software seemed navigable enough, so I went with their drums for my first shot at the tech. Also in terms of software complexity it seemed like a good middle ground on the scale of "as many options as possible but super complicated to use" vs "no options and dead simple to use." And it sounds great to me. That's what you're hearing in the clips. I was surprised at how "produced" it can sound out of the box which is nice for me because I don't know the first thing about recording drums other than roughly where the beat should be. But there's enough drums and faders in there that you have decent flexibility so that it doesn't have to sound the same every time you use it. I'm sorry I sound like a damn commercial about it but I'm really happy with it so far.

Also yeah I'm already noticing the "I wants" start to kick in. I've already thought about getting a small MIDI keyboard so I can use it to feel out beats instead of having to click around on the MIDI coloring book in the DAW.

That's currently what I do. I have a cheap, small but effective midi keyboard and it does a decent job with drums but it's better at things like synths and keys (of course). Much easier than clicking around to find the chords you want

 

[thegame]

Overall good, but the drum rolls have that telltale fake jiffy pop quality which ruins it for me.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

Overall good, but the drum rolls have that telltale fake jiffy pop quality which ruins it for me.

Yeah I didn't mess with changing up velocities, swing, alternate snare strike style samples, or anything like that to try and humanize the sound.

The fact that they sound good enough to get "close but not quite inspiring" type criticism for a first time ever really messing with this stuff out of the box attempt tells me I'm at least headed in the right direction as far as I'm seeing it, which is cool!

 

[firejack]

Awesome! Great mixes there.

 

[RevDrucifer]

@TheGreatGreen, I’m surprised ya went with GGD, is it standalone now or do you still need to load it via Kontakt? I quit using it because I kept running into issues with the audio routing via Kontakt and getting each drum bussed out to Logic individually. Absolutely loved the snare samples, especially the snare-off option. What confused me the most (this was the periphery 4 pack) was that they left the toms completely un-EQ’d. Made it easier for me to roll my own, I just found it odd that they treated the kick/snare and left them untouched and said “We figured people wanted to do their own tom EQ”.

This is a great example of why I often try to push people into giving this stuff a chance. I started that whole Do Something challenge over at TGF and was stoked as all hell when guys who never even touched a DAW were opening them for the first time and coming to the same conclusions as you in regards to it being far simpler than it seemed. Home recording has come a LONG way and while for years the focus was on making a good sounding alternative to analog gear, the focus has turned to user compatibility for about the last decade.

Seeing people that never even knew they were capable of writing a song on their own do it for the first time made every bit of owning a forum worth it.

 

[cobrahead1030]

10 or 15 years ago, they were an absolute nightmare.

Today there's some really good affordable stuff out there, that's plug & play and sounds pretty great.

 

[cobrahead1030]

Yeah I didn't mess with changing up velocities, swing, alternate snare strike style samples, or anything like that to try and humanize the sound.

The fact that they sound good enough to get "close but not quite inspiring" type criticism for a first time ever really messing with this stuff out of the box attempt tells me I'm at least headed in the right direction as far as I'm seeing it, which is cool!

That was my thinking when I first started using GGD.

I came to realize that I wanted to focus most of my attention on writing & playing, and out of the box it was close enough to let me do that. When I start to zero in on an idea that's worth putting time into, I can fine tune it then.

 

[Rybosome]

This is a great example of why I often try to push people into giving this stuff a chance. I started that whole Do Something challenge over at TGF and was stoked as all hell when guys who never even touched a DAW were opening them for the first time and coming to the same conclusions as you in regards to it being far simpler than it seemed. Home recording has come a LONG way and while for years the focus was on making a good sounding alternative to analog gear, the focus has turned to user compatibility for about the last decade.

Seeing people that never even knew they were capable of writing a song on their own do it for the first time made every bit of owning a forum worth it.

That's fucking awesome, love this.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

@TheGreatGreen, I’m surprised ya went with GGD, is it standalone now or do you still need to load it via Kontakt? I quit using it because I kept running into issues with the audio routing via Kontakt and getting each drum bussed out to Logic individually. Absolutely loved the snare samples, especially the snare-off option. What confused me the most (this was the periphery 4 pack) was that they left the toms completely un-EQ’d. Made it easier for me to roll my own, I just found it odd that they treated the kick/snare and left them untouched and said “We figured people wanted to do their own tom EQ”.

This is a great example of why I often try to push people into giving this stuff a chance. I started that whole Do Something challenge over at TGF and was stoked as all hell when guys who never even touched a DAW were opening them for the first time and coming to the same conclusions as you in regards to it being far simpler than it seemed. Home recording has come a LONG way and while for years the focus was on making a good sounding alternative to analog gear, the focus has turned to user compatibility for about the last decade.

Seeing people that never even knew they were capable of writing a song on their own do it for the first time made every bit of owning a forum worth it.

You still need the Kontakt software to install it yeah, but it's easy to work with. After you install the Native Access app, just paste in the serial number and click install on the Kontact player and your drum kit and and that's it. After that you can close the Native installer and not worry about it again. Open your DAW and add a virtual instrument and it's just there ready to go.

As for why I went with GGD, well, out of all the drum software I know about, GGD drums seemed to fit what I was looking for. The price was right, the drums sound great, and it sits in a good place on the "limitless options but hard to use <-> easy to use but no options" scale for somebody like me who has no idea what they're doing with electronic drums. Also, my introduction to the company was the Cali OS IR loader, which I had great luck with, so I figured it was a good place to start.


As far as deeper configuration goes, I haven't really messed with bussing or routing specific drums to individual tracks. So far I've just taken the easy route and opend the kit as a VST in a single stereo track in the DAW and that's been fine.

10 or 15 years ago, they were an absolute nightmare.

Today there's some really good affordable stuff out there, that's plug & play and sounds pretty great.

I think that's honestly what put me off it for so long. Years ago, I messed around with a virtual drum kit in a friend's studio and it was awful. Nothing was intuitive and every step basically took me farther away from making music and closer to feeling like I was working PC tech support. The software these days is VASTLY different and unbelievably easier to use. You can build out a fully finished, polished up drums part from scratch without losing the flow.

 

[Brandonrz]

@TheGreatGreen what were you using for guitars for your meshuggah track? Lol

 

[TheGreatGreen]

@TheGreatGreen what were you using for guitars for your meshuggah track? Lol

PRS Custom 22 with EMG 81 ->
Bogner Uber Ultra in Ch 2 Ultra Mode, Boost On, with the Metamorph knob cranked down to make the tone about as clanky as I could get it ->
Suhr RL ->
A blend of a few IR's (GGD Cali OS Mesa 4x12 cabs + a Fractal Audio Marshall Greenback)

Tracked twice and hard panned.