update me on drum soft synths?

[friendship]

Background: I've done a fair amount of recording over the past 15 years or so, primarily using live, miked-up kits and synthetic drum machines.

I also use a Drumkit From Hell (I think version 2) sample set--which is probably like ten years old at this point--mostly for demos and small soundtrack gigs.

I actually think the samples sound pretty damn good, but there's a very limited amount of velocity changes for each drum (maybe 10 at most), so everything I program is significantly lacking in terms of dynamic, human-like feel. I actually find it not difficult to play/program a more human timing dynamic, but there's always that unmistakable snare-that's-identical-every-hit thing that happens when you use limited sample sets.

These days, I'm finding that I don't have the time or resources to record real drums, which breaks my heart because I love real drummers playing real drums in a real space. If I had my way, I'd do that 100% of the time, but, unless I want to record drums for songs only once or maybe twice a year, I have to go for programming real-ish drums.

I have questions:

1. Is this a fool's errand? I accept a certain amount of artifice, I just don't want to sound cheesy. I feel like access to sample sets with broader dynamic range will help a lot, but maybe you guys know better.

2. What's out there these days, productwise? Is there something I could use in a host DAW, maybe even something with which I have direct access to the sample wavs to load into Reason and build a kit like I did with Drumkit From Hell?

3. How processor-hungry are drum soft synths with very robust sample sets?

[Doctor X]

3) i think they are ram heavy rather than process heavy, though you can often limit the kit size

[Decibill]

I have the Slate Drums and Superior Drummer. Between those two I can get almost anything I have ever needed, in terms of "live" or "real" sounding drums. And as a drummer, I'm picky about this stuff. I'd recommend both.

[friendship]

I have the Slate Drums and Superior Drummer. Between those two I can get almost anything I have ever needed, in terms of "live" or "real" sounding drums. And as a drummer, I'm picky about this stuff. I'd recommend both.

An endorsement from a drummer! That's pretty significant. Do you use them in y our own recordings? Do you lean towards one or the other?

Sorry to bug you with questions, I've been totally out of touch with this corner of recording for the past few years.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

i think native instruments has some good offerings for this too.

[Decibill]

I have the Slate Drums and Superior Drummer. Between those two I can get almost anything I have ever needed, in terms of "live" or "real" sounding drums. And as a drummer, I'm picky about this stuff. I'd recommend both.

An endorsement from a drummer! That's pretty significant. Do you use them in y our own recordings? Do you lean towards one or the other?

Sorry to bug you with questions, I've been totally out of touch with this corner of recording for the past few years.

Yeah, I have used them on two albums pretty heavily. The first album was mostly Superior Drummer. The last album was mostly Slate Drums--you can hear it here http://monumentthief.bandcamp.com/ The drums on these tracks I played live on an electronic kit. Then I took the MIDI data and used that to trigger the samples. Each plugin has a different workflow, but roughly do about the same thing. I might prefer the Superior Drummer workflow a tad, but after the last album the Slate Drums proved themselves big time. Originally the Slate library was very radio/modern rock focused, but the recent samples over the past few years have really expanded things a lot. BTW, jrmy is my bandmate playing all the sweet fuzz bass. No worries about asking questions. I had a lot of people help me over the years, so I'm happy to give back.

[UnicornTrap]

I use XLN addictive drums (version 2 is out, I'm still using version 1 with most of the instrument packs). I love it. It doesn't consume a lot of memory in ableton so I can run like 8 instances of it to separate out the sounds with different compression/eq etc. I generally track with 1 or 2 instances of the drum machines if I'm just experimenting/coming up with something. Superior drums sound really excellent too, but the UI is quite a memory/cpu hog. I'm lucky in tracking mode with superior to have 2 going at once, and then I have to dump crap to WAV and things heavily slow down....

I have never tried Slate drums - I'm off to look at that hehe

[friendship]

I have the Slate Drums and Superior Drummer. Between those two I can get almost anything I have ever needed, in terms of "live" or "real" sounding drums. And as a drummer, I'm picky about this stuff. I'd recommend both.

An endorsement from a drummer! That's pretty significant. Do you use them in y our own recordings? Do you lean towards one or the other?

Sorry to bug you with questions, I've been totally out of touch with this corner of recording for the past few years.

Yeah, I have used them on two albums pretty heavily. The first album was mostly Superior Drummer. The last album was mostly Slate Drums--you can hear it here http://monumentthief.bandcamp.com/ The drums on these tracks I played live on an electronic kit. Then I took the MIDI data and used that to trigger the samples. Each plugin has a different workflow, but roughly do about the same thing. I might prefer the Superior Drummer workflow a tad, but after the last album the Slate Drums proved themselves big time. Originally the Slate library was very radio/modern rock focused, but the recent samples over the past few years have really expanded things a lot. BTW, jrmy is my bandmate playing all the sweet fuzz bass. No worries about asking questions. I had a lot of people help me over the years, so I'm happy to give back.

These drum sounds are really impressive! I'm especially amazed at how it handles rolls, sounds very natural which I'm sure is in no small part to your live playing to pads. Thank you very much for sharing!

[Decibill]

Thanks man....!! One thing is for certain--great samples will sound like pure crap if they are triggered by a lackluster performance. All the same rules of recording a good performance still apply to getting sampled drums to sound good. I think a lot of people forget about this when making judgment calls on sampled drums. They can sound mechanical and stale, but often times that because people use step recorders or loops. Having a drummer lay down an actual performance can make average drum samples sound great.

[friendship]

Thanks man....!! One thing is for certain--great samples will sound like pure crap if they are triggered by a lackluster performance. All the same rules of recording a good performance still apply to getting sampled drums to sound good. I think a lot of people forget about this when making judgment calls on sampled drums. They can sound mechanical and stale, but often times that because people use step recorders or loops. Having a drummer lay down an actual performance can make average drum samples sound great.

True true. Whenever I program drums, I finger tap them in with my keyboard instead of drawing them onto a grid, I figure it's not really drumming but it's better than nothing.

I'm going to download some demos and see how I get along with them.

[KaosCill8r]

Thanks man....!! One thing is for certain--great samples will sound like pure crap if they are triggered by a lackluster performance. All the same rules of recording a good performance still apply to getting sampled drums to sound good. I think a lot of people forget about this when making judgment calls on sampled drums. They can sound mechanical and stale, but often times that because people use step recorders or loops. Having a drummer lay down an actual performance can make average drum samples sound great.

True true. Whenever I program drums, I finger tap them in with my keyboard instead of drawing them onto a grid, I figure it's not really drumming but it's better than nothing.

I'm going to download some demos and see how I get along with them.

I start with perfectly programing a whole drum pattern. Then I selectively fuck up slightly a beat here and a beat there to give it a human feel. It takes a while to get it right, but well worth the effort.

[Kacey Y]

I use Superior Drummer 2.0 by Toontrack (the people who made Drumkit From Hell). I'm really happy with the results I get from it and they have a lot of expansion packs for kits and a pretty wide variety of midi beat packs as well. I do a mixture of my own sequencing and using midi packs, usually with some alterations to fit my specific riffs.