What Do You Use For Drums For Home Recording?

Hi,

I'm assuming most people here record their music at home on PC or 4-track etc,doubt that many people have a full drum-kit in their home, and so would like to know what people use for drum tracks.

I've been using the Spectrasonic's Stylus Vinyl Groove Module, and their Backbeat drum library for all of my tracks, and find them really good. Though they do need to occasional tweak to stop them sounding a bit sterile.

Thanks

Dave Lawrence

Hi Dave;

Sonic Implants' Drum Series One, for Giga. One Yamaha 7pc kit recorded in large and small ambience, with two different bass drums and two or three snares with and without moongel packs. Samples come in normal and PitchItUp (pitch-shifted, higher, tighter) versions. Additionally you also get an instrument containing just the cymbal samples if you need some variety over the standard kit. Everything is sampled at 4-ish velocities from ghost to full-on hits.

I use them almost exclusively, so pretty much everything on the website features them. Amsterdam Street is the latest effort and I think shows them off quite well.

The only caveat is to really get them sounding something like you'll need to learn how to play drum kit from the keyboard. This looks well odd but once you can do it you can get drum tracks in pretty quickly.

Sonic Implants are at: www.sonicimplants.com, and DS1 is at: http://www.sonicimplants.com/sonicgiga/ gigasamplerdrum.htm

I can recommend them without reservation, they really are the bees knees if you don't fancy getting a real kit in or sending the track out for session work.

Best,

On a few on my songs I've actually had publishers and artists comment on the great drum sound and playing and ask me who the drummer was... The drummer so to speak was me and the drums where played via the keys (not sequenced) on a $300 Casio keyboard...lol. for real. I used to use it for rough demos all the time, some of the drum samples sounded great.

I've managed to collect around 300-350 mg of drum samples through the years that use to build libraries for use in Live Synth Pro or VSampler

William F. Turner songwriter

I'm a drummer of 30 years, and have a kit, but I rarely take the time to try to get studio recordings out of stage gear. So for my online collaborations I usually delve into my Acid Pro library, and sometimes AKAI. I have various audio cds with great drumming on them too, but you have to calibrate the tempos to use them. I mostly use AP and customize. I also use sound fonts and MIDI, but more often than not that needs to be beefed up to sound half way decent.

I do do some micing of the acoustic kit but not having all the high end mics and gear that the big studios do it's usually luck if the quality is even close. I've heard excellent things about stylus, and battery too.

John your site looks very interesting. I'm going to take some time and listen.

That's usually the case with most programmed drums. Even using ACID loops and doing a lot of customising, you are for the most part limited to the dynamics that the loops contain. If you are inventive you can help this, but most of the time it takes a real drummer on a real acoustic drum kit to do fine dynaics. Even most MIDI kits lack the feel and sensetivity. I play V-drums at band rehearsal in a friend's studio. They have the mesh skins that trigger the Vdrum module. Nice but lacks the feel and sensetivity of a real kit. Bottom line is there is nothing that can relace a real drummer on a real kit. Now not wanting to setup and set all the mics when I'm in songwriting mode and playing producer, I'll compromise and use loops. It gets the job done, but I doubt we'll ever replace the real thing, especially where dynamics is concerned. I can do time signature changes, tempo changed accents, but the dynamics is usally a compromise. Mostly because of the time and effort it takes to do the real thing. My hat's off to those who have the patience and know how to do that, cuz the end result is head and shoulders above. I'm a huge fan of loops, and midi, and have investigated indepth, and that's my finding. The real thing can't be beat.

Samples, Roland R70 drum machine, Stylus, Battery, Acid Loops.

Get some pretty good samples and real cheap from beta monkey - about 12 dollars for 100s of loops pretty much all of em sound great. Volumes 3 and 4 sound good and 5 is just out. Check em out (I am not on commission!!)

hth

There is little finer, in all the world, than playing with a good drummer.

Preferably more than one...

... luscious, blond, twins and er...(I'll stop now)

- John Robin Devany