How do you all record drums?

[banned]

So I've got Reaper - getting my feet wet. I can record guitar and bass - but how do you all record drums? I've got a digital drum set and can keep a decent beat (nothing too fancy)....but I see lots of people using drum software packages - are you playing on midi keys?

I've got this drum package from IK - Modo Drum - but I can't figure out how to open it and record from it to Reaper. When I open the standalone app, it has some nice grooves and sounds - a lot of what I need - but I'm trying to figure out how to get those grooves into Reaper. Any suggestions?

I've also got a lot of IK extension drum packages - but I need to somehow trigger them - can I use the Modo Drum grooves to somehow trigger these drums extension packages and sounds?

Would appreciate any advice here. Also would if there's some other alternate, easy-to-use drum package out there, let me know. I basically want to do my own tunes and need the drums component.

 

[norminal]

I use EX Drummer.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

So I've got Reaper - getting my feet wet. I can record guitar and bass - but how do you all record drums? I've got a digital drum set and can keep a decent beat (nothing too fancy)....but I see lots of people using drum software packages - are you playing on midi keys?

I've got this drum package from IK - Modo Drum - but I can't figure out how to open it and record from it to Reaper. When I open the standalone app, it has some nice grooves and sounds - a lot of what I need - but I'm trying to figure out how to get those grooves into Reaper. Any suggestions?

I've also got a lot of IK extension drum packages - but I need to somehow trigger them - can I use the Modo Drum grooves to somehow trigger these drums extension packages and sounds?

Would appreciate any advice here. Also would if there's some other alternate, easy-to-use drum package out there, let me know. I basically want to do my own tunes and need the drums component.

Can you open Modo Drum as a plugin inside Reaper? That's likely to be the easiest way to get the grooves to import as MIDI notes onto the track timeline in Reaper.

Personally, I prefer to just draw in the notes on piano roll to program drums. I've gotten very efficient at doing this in Superior Drummer's grid editor (run as a plugin) and then moving what I create there onto the track.

 

[Bruce]

So I've got Reaper - getting my feet wet. I can record guitar and bass - but how do you all record drums? I've got a digital drum set and can keep a decent beat (nothing too fancy)....but I see lots of people using drum software packages - are you playing on midi keys?

I've got this drum package from IK - Modo Drum - but I can't figure out how to open it and record from it to Reaper. When I open the standalone app, it has some nice grooves and sounds - a lot of what I need - but I'm trying to figure out how to get those grooves into Reaper. Any suggestions?

I've also got a lot of IK extension drum packages - but I need to somehow trigger them - can I use the Modo Drum grooves to somehow trigger these drums extension packages and sounds?

Would appreciate any advice here. Also would if there's some other alternate, easy-to-use drum package out there, let me know. I basically want to do my own tunes and need the drums component.

You’d bring it up in reaper as a vst plugin. I do not know reaper to walk you through that but I know reaper does it. Modo drums is a great plugin to get quick professional sounding drums.

 

[Bruce]

If reaper separates instrument and audio tracks, it’ll be an instrument track you’re looking for.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Reaper user as well, I usually use Addictive Drums 2. I have a few groove and kit packs. Add a track, open the FX or click on a "rack" space above the mixer track to find the appropriate VST.

I can't comment on the specific plugs you have as I have no experience with them.

Something I like about AD is its' groove search, not unlike a sequencer, where you fill in the kick/snare/cymbal hits you want. The list of grooves filter out the irrelevant patterns until I have something close enough which gets click/dragged into that Reaper track to get modified if necessary.

I use my mouse to click around and edit, haven't plugged in the midi keys in quite a while but I do have a small drum kit set up across from my desk and will be getting another kit soon. I have a basic Samson "My First Drum Mic Set" with mounting clips and an SM57 I use to record drums but it's becoming rarer that I'm doing that these days.

 

[unix-guy]

I use EX Drummer.

EZD or another product?

 

[unix-guy]

Something I like about AD is its' groove search, not unlike a sequencer, where you fill in the kick/snare/cymbal hits you want. The list of grooves filter out the irrelevant patterns until I have something close enough which gets click/dragged into that Reaper track to get modified if necessary.

EZ Drummer 2/3 have that as well.

 

[norminal]

EZD or another product?

Ah, that was a typo. EZ Drummer.

 

[banned]

You’d bring it up in reaper as a vst plugin. I do not know reaper to walk you through that but I know reaper does it. Modo drums is a great plugin to get quick professional sounding drums.

It sounds great but I'm unable to bring it in as a VST drum in Reaper. I can only get the standalone app to work.

 

[banned]

Anyone recommend a easy to use V. drummer package (with good UI) for Black Friday purchase? If something has an AI groove generation component as well, that'd be great!

 

[sleewell]

pay someone for studio time so we can record real drums

 

[banned]

I'm mostly doing demo-style tracks. That's why I was asking about V drums.

 

[Sascha Franck]

It sounds great but I'm unable to bring it in as a VST drum in Reaper. I can only get the standalone app to work.

Before you purchase anything else, you need to find out how to load virtual instruments in Reaper. Modo Drums defenitely *is* working as a VST plugin, so you just need to know how to call it up (sorry, no idea how you do that in Reaper, but it's defenitely possible).

 

[aivoryuk]

I use Superior Drummer 3 - I've demo'd most other virtual drums but I always come back to superior drummer 3. I tend to use tap and find with a midi keyboard and then it will find an appropriate drum groove which 9 times out of 10 I'll have to manually edit it.

One thing I haven't found a workaround for in SD3 is if you are working in changing odd time signatures and you want to add and extra section in - you can't just insert a blank block and your Time signature mappings move along - you have to recreate them.
You can do this in Reaper but it isn't obvious.

I would also recommend looking at this website - https://www.recreationmix.com/ I've bought one pack and it is really good and I reached out the person behind and was really cool and responsive and provided me with a MIDI file that wasn't available (for a small fee 5 USD)

 

[bikescene]

It sounds great but I'm unable to bring it in as a VST drum in Reaper. I can only get the standalone app to work.

I think the easiest way in Reaper is to right click, go to “Insert Virtual Instrument on New Track”. Then select the VSTi, which should automatically arm your track to record with MIDI. You should be able to immediately hear playback with a MIDI note. Most of these drum VSTi plugins will ask you to create tracks for its multi-outs but you can ignore it until you want more control.

If you get it to work, save it as a Track Template to recall whatever configuration you ended up with.

If you insert a VSTi into an existing track in Reaper, the track input is still armed to audio. You’d have to right click the arm Record button on the Track, go to Input:MIDI to select the MIDI channel you want to record.

I mainly use Superior Drummer, but have used other solutions too like BFD or Kontakt for certain kits. I’ve played with an E-Kit, finger pads, and MIDI keyboard but it all responds to MIDI the same way. In Reaper, I always build my template with a new plugin using “Insert Virtual Instrument on New Track”. Then I work on assigning the outputs. Then save it as a template and forget about it for a few years.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, I only downloaded the free version of Modo Drums and found it to be excellent (possibly the best drum freebie around). There's also some decent MIDI grooves coming with it, so before spending money on anything else, I'd really try to get that going.

 

[banned]

Fwiw, I only downloaded the free version of Modo Drums and found it to be excellent (possibly the best drum freebie around). There's also some decent MIDI grooves coming with it, so before spending money on anything else, I'd really try to get that going.

And you were able to launch the VST in your DAW?

 

[Sascha Franck]

And you were able to launch the VST in your DAW?

Of course. I'm not using the VST version but the AU version on macOS, though, but they should be identical.

 

[Bruce]

And you were able to launch the VST in your DAW?

First thing you need to do is assure the modo drum vst is loaded in the vst folder that reaper sees. If not, point reaper to the folder it is in. This would be the most logical reason reaper does not see the vst