What's everyone using for drums?

[la szum]

The drummer at our weekly jam bailed recently due to some family issues so I have
been playing drums a lot more. About 4 hours on the throne last night and it was
a blast. Fun going into double-time or half-time feels for no reason at all and then
having them look at you like you are speeding up or slowing down. And no, I was not!

It just feels faster or slower.... but is not actually faster or slower.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

I think it was a @TheTrueZoltan! who also bought that pack you are referring to, Drew.

Yep, that was me. Worst drum sample library ever! Ridiculously bad, really. Couldn‘t get rid of it fast enough.

At the moment I really like ML Drums Essentials.

 

[Jarick]

EZ Drummer 3 should auto-recognize your Yamaha brain and not require any painstaking setup. Dynamics can be touchy
with triggering samples and someone super picky is probably going to have to go in and adjust velocity by hand anyways.

Oh I meant physically setting it up. I've been ripping apart and cleaning or working on my basement over and over again all year.

The dynamics on the Yamaha pads are so much better than the mesh pad kit I had before, that had hot spots in the middle. It doesn't feel like a real kit but I can play on it like one...kinda.

 

[fretworn]

Logic drummer… Agree, samples could be much better.

 

[la szum]

Oh I meant physically setting it up. I've been ripping apart and cleaning or working on my basement over and over again all year.

The dynamics on the Yamaha pads are so much better than the mesh pad kit I had before, that had hot spots in the middle. It doesn't feel like a real kit but I can play on it like one...kinda.

Oh, ok.

I think once you have it all set up then it is there and you can just get down to the fun stuff!

 

[Jarick]

Okay I'm downloading the trial of EZ Drummer 3 and we'll see what that's like. Looks like a massive upgrade over 2.

GGD sounds awesome and is a really good value but the workflow kinda sucks.

 

[la szum]

Good luck!

 

[Whizzinby]

GetGoodDrums: Modern and Massive

 

[PLX]

 

[Jarick]

GetGoodDrums: Modern and Massive

I was so close to getting that instead but I read a lot of bad things about Kontakt and figured I'd try the cheaper option first. It looks like M&M is way more versatile, has a lot more control over the drums and mix too.

 

[Whizzinby]

I was so close to getting that instead but I read a lot of bad things about Kontakt and figured I'd try the cheaper option first. It looks like M&M is way more versatile, has a lot more control over the drums and mix too.

I love it because it has the “Turbo” feature which allows you to dial in their own mix processing, which is great for getting something closer to mix ready out of the box. It also has a good selection of kits. Kontakt does blow, but once I got it set up and the mappings how I wanted it, it’s been pretty easy since.

 

[Jarick]

I love it because it has the “Turbo” feature which allows you to dial in their own mix processing, which is great for getting something closer to mix ready out of the box. It also has a good selection of kits. Kontakt does blow, but once I got it set up and the mappings how I wanted it, it’s been pretty easy since.

That looks really cool too. I did actually find out through watching a Fluff video that I can control the room and reverb of each drum separately so I can get my obnoxious big drum sound I like out of Modern Fusion.

If I really like EZ Drummer 3 I'll probably buy it and the Metal Machine expansion. If not, I'll pick up GGD M&M.

I know a lot of people love being able to get raw drum sounds and mix them just like real life but god I hated that part of mixing. Give me a good drum tone out of the box. I like the concept of a knob to go between raw and mix ready.

 

[mavrick102000]

If you use logic, you can have Logic's drummer learn and map out the basics, and fine tune that, dump each drum/cymbal to it's own midi lane, then map in other kit's or individual drums/cymbals from other SW packages or samples.

If you're going with something like EZD 3 they now have the assistant (or whatever it's called) which does a similar thing to the learn feature of Logic drummer.

 

[DrewJD82]

That looks really cool too. I did actually find out through watching a Fluff video that I can control the room and reverb of each drum separately so I can get my obnoxious big drum sound I like out of Modern Fusion.

If I really like EZ Drummer 3 I'll probably buy it and the Metal Machine expansion. If not, I'll pick up GGD M&M.

I know a lot of people love being able to get raw drum sounds and mix them just like real life but god I hated that part of mixing. Give me a good drum tone out of the box. I like the concept of a knob to go between raw and mix ready.

I have GGD on my laptop but I could never get the multi-outs to actually work right in Logic. I also found it odd that they EQ’d the kick/snare of the Periphery kits but left the toms completely untreated. The snare and snare-off in that pack was my favorite thing about it, but I also could not get the MIDI mapping working right, so if I wrote something in EZD/SD, I’d have to move all the MIDI notes around to different keys to trigger the right drums.

FWIW, SD3 has the raw kits, but that requires removing all the EQ they’ve added on the presets. You gotta purposefully roll your own if you go that route, it’s not the baseline. That was just something *I* got a stiffy about because my need for control.

 

[Jarick]

i had to watch a few videos to get it working. One thing I had to learn to route the outputs and Nolly has tutorials for that. The other is mapping the midi notes and saving that file. Not too bad but it took an hour to figure out. There’s a video tutorial a guy made on how to do that.

 

[Orvillain]

Right, so full disclosure, I'm the product owner for BFD Drums, and have worked on BFD since 2008.

So in my personal stuff... I use a lot of different stuff, depending on how I'm feeling. Mostly BFD3, but sometimes EZDrummer3, Superior Drummer 3 if I need to convert real recordings over to midi, and I've been digging the Roomsound Kurt Ballou libraries recently.

However.... in a professional capacity (yes, sometimes I CAN be professional!) we have just released BFD Player.

So here's the skinny:

• A streamlined version of the BFD engine, focused on delivering a smooth and easy experience for e-drummers and songwriters alike.
• Preset based engine that gives you production ready presets, as well as an Original Mix preset, which gives you the RAW sound of the drumkit from the recording session, with no additional processing.
• A 3D view where you can preview and load drums in the preset.
• A simple mixing experience where you can change levels, tweak macros that control the sound of the preset, and route signals out into your DAW.
• A groove browser where you can preview patterns and drag them out into your DAW - there is a drum-track coming in a future version!
• The software is completely free. It comes with a high quality and very detailed 5GB DW drumkit, which is great for pop, rock, and heavier genres.
• There are currently two paid-for expansion packs on sale, London 70's and Dark Mahogany.
• There will be a whole eco-system of expansion packs, groove packs, and preset packs.
• The prices are very accessible and affordable.
• There will be more features added to the software over time.

You could do worse than give it a go! https://www.bfddrums.com/drum-software/bfd-player.html

 

[Moondog Wily]

I use Addictive Drums 2 when I do use programmed stuff. When I jumped on that bandwagon in 2014, I liked it better than the other offerings of the time.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Superior 3, almost always. It’s just so powerful and the UI is perfectly tuned. The only downside for me is the stock library is utter garbage, and the software and (necessary) expansions get quite pricy. They’ve also become more stingy over the years with how much included MIDI you get.

EZDrummer is excellent too, tons of choice of expansions. I dig Addictive drums for a lot of stuff, for whatever reason if Superior isn’t working or I can’t find a particular kit, Addictive usually fills in nicely. It’s more like EZDrummer in that it’s more simple and ready to go.

SSD5 is cool too, I don’t think the sampler sounds as good/real, so I tend to use it more for augmenting drum sounds.

 

[FuzzyAce]

SD3 for me. I love the functionality and editing aspects, sounds of course. I've bought quite a few midi pack add ons.

 

[storming heaven]

Free version of Slate's SSD 5; does the job well. I will try the new BFD player though, as I've heard many good things about the library itself throughout the years.