JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Recording Studio and Gear Forum What do you use for Drums in your recordings?

For those of us who record a lot, but can't drum...what do you use?

I have an old Boss Dr. rhythm from the mid 80's. It's a pain in the (insert body part here). But it sounds better than some of the tinny MIDI stuff I've heard.

I am thinking of getting EZ Drummer one of these days...lots of good reviews from people I trust. You can assign some excellent and very real sounds, and it has a cool way of quickly creating the drum track.
http://www.toontrack.com/ezdrummer.asp

How about you--how do you get the beat?

EZDrummer is very nice. I like it so far.

If you have Pro Tools, there is a program called Strike that I have heard raves about.

Hi Mark,

I use a Roland TR-707 I bought in the 80's also. This is an interesting thread to me.

I'd love to record with a wonderful, rock-solid drummer. I've played with a few of these, but the vast majority of drummers I've played with would be less than ideal in a studio. I'll bet older rhythm composers like ours can be had for not very much money and provide wonderful drum tracks for songwriters. I am interested in the latest software and hardware available too-hope other folks will share their knowledge and experience.

Hey Mark,

Yep, I got an old Roland rack mount as well. My son has a Yamaha DX kit, which I can hook up to any sound patch I wish, yet for me, the best answer is loops.

And that's because they are real drums recorded and produced in a real studio. Sony sound samples, for example come in 8 track format, so you can adjust the sound as if you were sitting behind the desk. Want more overhead ? , just pull up the fader. Want a big splashy snare ? , just add a reverb plugin. And you can drop in one shots wherever you like. Just purchashed a set, so will send some your way when they arrive. Here's a song I'm working on..... give us your thoughts on the sound/vibe quality....

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=704874&songID=6468601

cheers, niteshift

Holy Hannah! That's some sound! Great song, too, love it.

And I'm blown away by your gesture. Thanks! The drums on this one are just incredible...warm, fat and present.

I tend to use loops to write with, then when the song is ready I go with drums played by a drummer. Then again, I live in a place where it's possible to throw a stone and hit great players.

I use midi for home stuff but all the studios I work with use loops or real drummers.

I have three different "virtual" drummers as well as several midi modules such as the Alesis DM5 and individual sample players with drum/percussion samples:

1. Spectrasonics Stylus RMX
2. XLN Audio's Addictive Drums
3. Submersible Music's Drumcore

Drumcore is probably the most realistic since it is exclusively recordings of famous drummer's grooves set in a loop format. They are "sliced up" so you can adjust the tempo within a 10-20bpm range. They are stereo only, which is a downside for mixing, but they do sound great.

I only got Addictive Drums a few weeks ago, so haven't fully explored all the variables. You can control the sound of each drum with EQ, Compression, damping, reverb, etc. Plus you can balance the drum kit with separate levels for each drum as well as the overheads and separate room mics. It includes thousands of grooves and seems to have mostly rock and pop-oriented grooves. I think it competes in the market with EZ Drummer, which is also pretty nice from what I've heard.

Stylus RMX probably has the best grooves for hiphop and for scoring. I have all the expansion modules for this as well. There are some amazing and unique sounds available with this one. It's the one I turn to when I don't necessarily want a realistic sound, but something surrealistic - although it has a number of "stock" grooves as well.

Someone mentioned Strike for Protools. Although I'm PT user, I try not to purchase products that only work with Protools so that I can use the products with Logic as well. I've heard good things about it though.

If I have a high visibility project, I'll program the drums and then replace them at the end with a real drummer. Now, there are at least a half dozen "Internet Drummers" who are some of the best session players available anywhere.

However, I've been surprised at how good some of these loops sound in certain contexts. Pop/R&B for instance, doesn't necessarily require a real drummer for high-quality recordings. Most electronica and dance music uses loops instead of (or in addition to) real drummers. Scoring projects also don't often require a real drummer.

The song I submited to AI as a demo has Addictive Drums on it if you want to hear an example. It's called "What Then" and is the first song on myspace. I'm re-working the production, but will probably keep the drums close to what's there. (click on the myspace link below).

I'm using modified Drumcore drum loops on this song: http://www.audibleresponse.com/audio/YoureMyFriend.mp3

I have a lot of different drum software and samples. But the two I've had the best luck with and received the best positive feedback from the industry on songs done with these options are Stylus RMX and EZDrummer. I think Stylus gives the most realistic results, but often doesn't have a loop or sound close to what I'm hearing in my head. EZDrummer usually does have the beats and fills I need and is relatively easy to use.

I have all the expansion modules for both Stylus RMX and EZDrummer.

Hey Jody,

Yep, that's definitly not fair. Sydney has it's share of great drummers, but, because of size, really couldn't compete in terms of style and versatility.

It's intersting to note that the large majority of songs on the Top 40 at the moment are not using studio drums. ( Probably over 90% ) That's probably reflective of the genres which are represented.

cheers, niteshift

Actually, even with rap, a lot of the major releases are played with live drums that are supplemented and layered with samples. Not outright samples only. A drummer who records for me does a lot of rap stuff too.

It also depends on the drummer hired. The top session guys charge an arm and a leg, but they'll nail it with 3 takes or less. If everything is mic'd right, you're golden and it will be a breeze to mix.

I bought the Roland Handsonic a few years ago, one of the best things I've ever done for my recordings. I only play it real time, no loops. There's so much versatility in that machine and it totally accomodates your musical intuition without being quantized and sequenced out of the groove.

With 15 pads accessible at all times you can edit, tweak, tune and rearrange the patches on the fly. I just balance it on my lap, listen through the headphones and play along! I do use alot of acoustic percussion, like bells, chimes, udu and dumbek, but the Handsonic is the go-to tool for me if I wnat to just plug and play.

For years I used a Boss Dr-770 which worked well for writing and on occasion for recording. I just recently added the BFD-2 to my MacBook Pro about two weeks ago. All I gotta say is Wow! It took up over 55 gigs of my hard drive but sounds amazing! Blows the DR-770 out of the water for "real" sounding drums.
However, I've found it much harder to use than the 770 though I can control it with practically any midi device. So much tweakability almost drives me crazy. In the end it's of coarse, a good thing. Anybody here have BFD or BFD 2? Any luck running it in Pro-Tools?
Also, anybody here work with the AKAI drum machines? 1000, 2500 etc. I hear they're the best for Pop, Hip Hop and even Techno...

Another vote for the Handsonic HPD-15. Very natural sounding if you play it live - I'm still learning since I lucked out on a used one.

Started with a DR-670 which was also great sounding. One nice thing on the DR-670 is it'll run on batteries. Since drum programming is a pain, I've actually programmed it in hotel rooms on business trips, a good use of downtime.

..ant