Drum Program suggestions.!

[psbelote]

Hi all,
It's becoming very apparent to me that I need better drums. Wanted to get your opinions on the best programs. I've been using some of the stock Reason ReDrum and Combinator kits, played with a combo of my keyboard and a Roland SPD20 for fills and stuff. The last critique I had the drums were the weakest part of my song. I'm looking for a program with killer drum samples and loops and fills, since my programming doesn't exactly sound like Neil Peart (a big lol).
Has anyone used the Reason Drum Kits Refill? I use Reason Pianos and love it. No loops on this program though. A myspace buddy recommended the BFD series, awesome stuff it seems, but expensive to get the whole shabang. I've seen some stuff about Addictive Drums lately on the forum. I'm not a drummer, and would rather have not just great drum sounds, but playing that doesn't sound like it came from a keyboard.
Any input from users would be helpful.
Thanks,
PatB.
http://www.patandsherry.com
http://www.taxi.com/patandsherry

[eeoo]

Hi there - I've used reason drums 2.0 with good success but I found that it's not a total solution, but what is right? I just got Addictive Drums and really like it a lot, I would recommend it over reason Drums and EZ drummer, which I have also. I've only done one song with AD so far, if you want to have a listen it's here:
http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_7543308

Good luck!

eo

[psbelote]

Thanks Ethan,
Sounds good!

[cardell]

I love Addictive Drums too. It's very reasonably priced for such a useful program.

Stuart

[musicalweather]

Hi psbelote,

I have a feeling most people would recommend Addictive Drums over EZ Drummer, but I use both, and I'll give you reasons to consider each one.

If you're looking to get something very useable right out of the box and don't want to worry about buying expansion kits, then AD is probably the one. You get about 5 kits but a huge variety of sounds, given that those kits are mixed through a variety of inserts, bussing, etc. You can get all kinds of sounds from vinyl to retro to hard rock arena. EZ Drummer offers a limited kit and very limited mixer presets. If you're just going to buy the basic software and no expansion kits, you'll get much more with AD. I see in my latest flyer from Guitar Center that AD is selling for $149 and offering a free funk expansion kit. Sweet deal! I notice also that the price for EZ Drummer at G.C. has dropped to $79, perhaps a more appropriate price level.

What I like about EZ Drummer are the expansion kits. G.C. has them regularly on sale for $39, and I've collected all of them over the last couple of years. They've really put variety into them; my favorites are Latin percussion, Claustrophobic, and Jazz. Twisted Kit is also a lot of fun. Some of these come with a ridiculous number of mixer presets (Claustrophobic) and some have only a minimal number of mixer presets. You can buy the kits as you need them, and the price is very tolerable!

Superior Drummer, Toontrack's flagship drum product, also goes on sale occasionally, and a while back I bought it. I can run all the EZ kits from that, as well as the SDX kits like Custom and Vintage. SD offers a whole lotta options for shaping and tailoring the sound -- many of which I don't really take advantage of. But one thing I absolutely love about SD is that you can select which kit pieces you want to play and drag and drop that into your midi sequence. (For ex., you want to hear only kick and hat on a particular groove). I use that feature a LOT. In SD you can also swap in kit pieces from other expansion packs.

Some other plusses for Toontrack's products: 1) you can run them as standalones, using Toontrack Solo. 2) EZ Player Pro, which comes with SD but is also sold separately is fantastic. It allows you to use any of the MIDI patterns in your Toontrack library to trigger other drum plug-ins like Native Instruments Battery, BFD drums, or even AD drums. Fabulous! It's also simply helpful as an arranger.

Back to AD; here are some more plusses for it:

• fast and efficient access to all the available kit pieces
  ability to audition kit pieces at various velocities
  beautiful and efficient GUI
  groove library is well organized and can be searched by pressing the tabs at the top of each column
  Velocity window allows you to filter out weak or heavy strikes
  offers some choices in reverb (neither EZD nor SD offer reverb, although you can get a great variety of sounds and spaces by other means)
  jazz brush extension kit offers some unique technology (can control the sweep of the brush -- I love it!)

Some minuses for AD:

• no standalone capability
  less variety in terms of expansion kits
  no ability to select only certain kit pieces to be placed in MIDI track

It may not be fair to compare AD with Superior Drummer, but I think if you decide to go the Toontrack route, it's worth thinking about the long term and whether you might invest in SD in the future.

So, this is probably more information than you need. Hope it helps!

Here are some samples done with Toontrack stuff (I got AD just recently, I don't have anything on my site yet using that plug-in):
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Funkyflute.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Huntthroug ... reets.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Underpressure.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Kickinback.html


Cheers.

[psbelote]

Hi psbelote,

I have a feeling most people would recommend Addictive Drums over EZ Drummer, but I use both, and I'll give you reasons to consider each one.

If you're looking to get something very useable right out of the box and don't want to worry about buying expansion kits, then AD is probably the one. You get about 5 kits but a huge variety of sounds, given that those kits are mixed through a variety of inserts, bussing, etc. You can get all kinds of sounds from vinyl to retro to hard rock arena. EZ Drummer offers a limited kit and very limited mixer presets. If you're just going to buy the basic software and no expansion kits, you'll get much more with AD. I see in my latest flyer from Guitar Center that AD is selling for $149 and offering a free funk expansion kit. Sweet deal! I notice also that the price for EZ Drummer at G.C. has dropped to $79, perhaps a more appropriate price level.

What I like about EZ Drummer are the expansion kits. G.C. has them regularly on sale for $39, and I've collected all of them over the last couple of years. They've really put variety into them; my favorites are Latin percussion, Claustrophobic, and Jazz. Twisted Kit is also a lot of fun. Some of these come with a ridiculous number of mixer presets (Claustrophobic) and some have only a minimal number of mixer presets. You can buy the kits as you need them, and the price is very tolerable!

Superior Drummer, Toontrack's flagship drum product, also goes on sale occasionally, and a while back I bought it. I can run all the EZ kits from that, as well as the SDX kits like Custom and Vintage. SD offers a whole lotta options for shaping and tailoring the sound -- many of which I don't really take advantage of. But one thing I absolutely love about SD is that you can select which kit pieces you want to play and drag and drop that into your midi sequence. (For ex., you want to hear only kick and hat on a particular groove). I use that feature a LOT. In SD you can also swap in kit pieces from other expansion packs.

Some other plusses for Toontrack's products: 1) you can run them as standalones, using Toontrack Solo. 2) EZ Player Pro, which comes with SD but is also sold separately is fantastic. It allows you to use any of the MIDI patterns in your Toontrack library to trigger other drum plug-ins like Native Instruments Battery, BFD drums, or even AD drums. Fabulous! It's also simply helpful as an arranger.

Back to AD; here are some more plusses for it:

• fast and efficient access to all the available kit pieces
  ability to audition kit pieces at various velocities
  beautiful and efficient GUI
  groove library is well organized and can be searched by pressing the tabs at the top of each column
  Velocity window allows you to filter out weak or heavy strikes
  offers some choices in reverb (neither EZD nor SD offer reverb, although you can get a great variety of sounds and spaces by other means)
  jazz brush extension kit offers some unique technology (can control the sweep of the brush -- I love it!)

Some minuses for AD:

• no standalone capability
  less variety in terms of expansion kits
  no ability to select only certain kit pieces to be placed in MIDI track

It may not be fair to compare AD with Superior Drummer, but I think if you decide to go the Toontrack route, it's worth thinking about the long term and whether you might invest in SD in the future.

So, this is probably more information than you need. Hope it helps!

Here are some samples done with Toontrack stuff (I got AD just recently, I don't have anything on my site yet using that plug-in):
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Funkyflute.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Huntthroug ... reets.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Underpressure.html
http://charlottemcmillan.com/Kickinback.html


Cheers.

Thanks everyone for the input. Charlotte, thanks for sharing your experience. Your music sounds great.
PB

[mojobone]

Are you getting dinged for sound quality, performance, or both? If performance is the issue, you could just add Groove Monkee MIDI beats to the mix. I use mostly Addictive Drums and use a pads kit, but MIDI loops are great time savers.

[Kolstad]

Haven't tried Reason, but even pro's use the available options out there. Drumagog (which I haven't tried), Superior (great all rounder), Stylus (allrounder for pop & tv/film), Battery (also an all rounder), Addictive (great kits for jazz and very organic needs, I think) ect. are all good. Even many of the kit's in Kontakt and other romplers, and the stock kits in Live ect. I think it's more about how you play and produce them, and select the proper kit for the track, that makes the difference that makes the difference.

The great studio guys, record their own loops and tracks. Uses trigger pad's like the Alesis (which you can play with drum stick's), or a midi drum kit, to make it real. And parallel compression to dirty them up a notch. That'll get you a long way, I think.

IMO the hardest part is to realize that great drum sounds doesn't come that easy, it takes production time to make sampled drums sound great. It's not really as much an out of the box thing as the marketing suggests, allthough you can get lucky sometimes.

[psbelote]

Thanks for all the input. I will check out groove monkey for patterns, I'd never heard of it. Magne, I had a custom critique done for a song on my taxi page "Scrub You Up", a real rockin' modern country song. I used a stock Reason drum kit, but duplicated the kick with 3 diferent samples, and thought I had a real slammin' track. The reviewer hinted that the drums were not in your face enough.

http://www.taxi.com/patandsherry

[Kolstad]

I listened to the track, and agree the drums could stand out more. Not sure if there's a call for different samples as much as for just turning the track up a notch, and maybe add some compression and/or a saturator plug-in. I may be wrong, though, and will certainly not argue with a screener about it. Sometimes it's much about what you make of the feedback, though.