Someone please school me on drum machines for recording..,,

[Jakeboy]

Now that I am going to be focusing on writing, recording and playing my originals at home, I need a way to record rudimentary drums that I can throw on my multitrack recorder. I am no drummer but I bet I can program some decent beats? Is it hard? Any recommendations on machines,software or books to help?

I am old school so this is new to me. I have GarageBand on my iPad if that helps....

Any pointers?

Thanks in advance.....

Mark

Ps... This way I can run my inbound Ultimate through many different amps for you all yo hear!

[Tres Aardvarks]

I used GB's loops on the iPad, it was limited but it worked. Alternatively you're going to have to sit there and tap the rhythms out. Hopefully someone here can offer some solid advice because if there's one thing I supremely suck at it's drum programming!!!!!

[jettster]

Hands down, Toontrack superior drummer!!! It ain't exactly cheap but super easy to use. Drag and drop, no programming required. Also EZ Drummer 2 just came out not too long ago from the same company. (Scaled down lower cost) Also heard good things about Steven Slate drums.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=superior+drummer+midi+patterns

[zenmindbeginner]

I use Drums on Demand Apple Loops in Garageband. The loops are professionally played and recorded and can be purchased quite economically IMHO.

Garageband had zero learning curve so I just decided to do all of my loops there instead of going full on EZ Drummer or Steven Slate etc.

I can't mess with the individual drums but I've been stuck with stereo submixes for years and I can do a lot with a stereo 2 track drum mix.

The right plug-ins are imperative for creating wide, punchy and loud mixes though... the RAW tracks I get from Drums on Demand are well recorded and highly dynamic but they need to be "mastered" or mixed well.

Big Fish Audio makes some great loops too... I like working with Apple Loops in Garageband but use another DAW for my editing and multitrack needs after I have created the track in Garageband.

[Jakeboy]

This is all helpful. Thank you!

[Teh]

I'm also a big fan of Drums on Demand. Plenty of variety in the beats and very economical. I have an Alesis SR-18 and had a Roland electronic kit. Ended up selling the Roland kit a couple months ago because the loops from DoD covered everything very well. Am hanging onto the drum machine right now for woodshedding and writing purposes...

[alantig]

I've been using EZ Drummer 2 a ton. You can tap in a pattern and find a MIDI pattern that is a match for what you played. It's really cool. And you can pull the MIDI into your DAW and edit it.

Also a big fan of Steven Slate drums. Great sound.

[gorch]

You could go computer or external gadget. With any solution you will need to hook up on the many features any of the tool I saw bring in. Once you decided,mstick with it and learn. I have the boss DR-880 as well as some software solutions. The 880 appears to be the most used eventually. It doesn't need to be connected to the computer, although, it is midi based and connnects to the computer really well. Brings a bass player in too. Got plenty of presets for all gengres.

For recording, I midi-USB connect to Cubase, seperate and edit the tracks in Cubase to finally re-record the tacks individually on digital coax again into Cubase. Individual tracks allow to spread the drums over the stereo channels. The actual doing is only a few mouse clicks except for the editing, which is song specific. The final midi could be back loaded and stored on the 880 for take away.

[Jakeboy]

More good info. Thanks, Gorch!

[mathman]

garage band on the iPad has a virtual drummer called Smart Drums. You can control tempo, loudness, and complexity of the beat of each parts of the kit. First pick a kit and then just drag the different parts of the kit into the grid and move them around the quadrants to change the beat pattern. You can create sections of different bar length to add drum rolls, song changes etc.

That said I use Drums on Demand a lot for my writing. You can mix and match the sections and build really good sounding drum tracks.

After I bought Logic X I have started using the built in drummer in Logic X with the Ocean-way and DrumMasters drum sets I bought in a big group buy some years ago.

Just as a comparison I wrote a song using drums on demands drums that I later changed to the drummer in logic x with a drum masters drum set.

Systems in Place:

drums on demand version

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88221982/systems%20in%20place%20vocals35.mp3

Logic X Drum masters drummer version

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88221982/Systems%20in%20Place%20-%206_24_14%2C%2011.36%20AM.mp3

[jettster]

I'm really picky when it comes to drums, my brother had been playing as long as I've played guitar and he was killer. (He quit playing a couple of years back) I was jamming with some friends last year and the drummer was pretty damn good. He mentioned something about how bad fake drums, drum machines / programs sucked. When we were taking a break I played some of my stuff and he asked who was playing drums, when I said Superior Drummer his jaw hit the floor and he didn't know what to say.

Here is the very first full song I did with Superior back when I switched to a DAW. Basically everything was new to me and didn't know how to use it very well.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11979817

To me it's a night and day difference...