Good Drum Programs?

StingrayDerek · #1 08-10-2011, 04:08 PM

In the last year, my drummer has managed to break his wrist twice and now he needs surgery.

My guitarist and me have still been jamming and writing music.

We believe we should get a program that will let us create drum tracks to play along to because a metronome isn't working out.

It has to be easy to use, sound half decent, and be compatible with a Mac. It would also be cool if it was fairly cheap.

Thanks

germ_77 · #2 08-10-2011, 04:14 PM

EZDrummer and Superior Drummer are straight up amazing. Just find the website and view all of the demos, well worth the price.

StingrayDerek · #3 08-10-2011, 04:19 PM

Sounds good! I will look them up.

StingrayDerek · #4 08-10-2011, 04:29 PM

I would also like to demo it before I buy it, so those two aren't going to work.

germ_77 · #5 08-10-2011, 04:49 PM

Well there is a lot of other options, fruity loops is really easy to use but I would probably pay twice the asking price of the toon tracks ones I like them so much.

Maybe check out local music stores, I know most of the ones around my city have recording sections and will usually have a lot of the software installed on a computer that you can play with.

EricssonB · #6 08-10-2011, 05:00 PM

I've been using FL Studio for years.

I don't use it because of it's awesome native drum samples (they're pretty awful) or fluency of programming beats. I use it because I write all of my music on it using drum, guitar, bass and synth generators. I have to make sure each hit of a drum or instrument is exactly where I want it to be, and since I've been doing it for years, I'm pretty good at it.

I can't get to it at work, but I've got some posted on SoundCloud. Something like EricSLeyva's sounds on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free ...look for the set called "Blacker Sample" or whatever. It's all done in FL STudio.

Corey Y · #7 08-10-2011, 05:07 PM

I would also recommend Toontracks Superior Drummer 2 or EZDrummer. Incredibly good quality and they have a wide variety of midi packs available and are compatible with a lot of good third party providers of midi packs (beats/loops).

StingrayDerek · #8 08-10-2011, 05:28 PM

Also, I want to have 100% control over the beats and want to make them from scratch. I'm sure these programs can do that, but I left that out when I posted this.

silky smoove · #9 08-10-2011, 05:37 PM

Another vote for Superior Drummer 2.0. I typically use it as the "brain" for my electronic drums when tracking in the studio. I initially intended for this to be for scratch track purposes only, but on more than a few songs, the artist (sometimes me, sometimes not me) has been perfectly happy with the Superior Drummer 2.0 drums and I worked with that rather than tracking real drums.

EricssonB · #10 08-10-2011, 05:40 PM

Great. Thanks again, TB. Now I've got to go look into this stuff, too!

lowendgenerator · #11 08-10-2011, 05:48 PM

I jam along to Groove Agent 2's loops, but it really shines as a playback device for your midi tracks. Great sounding drums.

Manndreas · #12 08-11-2011, 06:21 AM

EZDrummer. Super easy to use and it comes with TONS of premade rythms and fills, which you can use as is, or edit to fit your song. You can design the drums from scratch or use it as a plugin with a midi drumkit/instrument and record in realtime.

A guitarist/singer friend of mine borrowed my pc and a Boss GT8 to see if he could figure out how to use EZD and Sonar. Two days later he had two complete songs.

Here'a a link. Keep in mind this guy had never ever used either recording software or drum machines before.
The two songs are Whayoo and Everything:
NRK Urørt - Odin Ramberg Orchestra

(I played bass on those two songs, but I only did one take per song, so there's a few flubs in there. I didn't even know the chords, he sat next to me and yelled out the changes as I played.

)

rob2966 · #13 08-11-2011, 03:39 PM

Another vote for EZ drummer.

I use mine with ProTools mostly; however, it also works great with Garageband (which I assume you have since you mentioned Mac).

Later
Rob

echoSE7EN · #14 08-17-2011, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rob2966

Another vote for EZ drummer.

I use mine with ProTools mostly; however, it also works great with Garageband (which I assume you have since you mentioned Mac).

Later
Rob

"Works great" as a virtual instrument via midi, or for its drag and drop functionality? I recently purchased EZ Drummer, but find the loops (when pulled into GB) lose all of their sound quality. Also, GB automatically assigns the midi loop as a flute.

Am I doing something wrong (not to hijack the thread)?