Cakewalk drums
For ages, and even now with X2a, I've always felt Cakewalk could vastly improve the drum experience...here's what I'd like to see:
1. Create MID or audio drum loops that are already beefy and punchy. Keep the dry stuff too for those that want to tweak themselves, but, for those of us who have difficulty getting the drums sound good and punchy and pro, give us clips/loops/mids/audio etc ALREADY tweaked that sound EXACTLY like Neil Peart in the early days or Steve Gaddetc,etc,etc!....The anemic weak link for me when writing is the absolutely unispiring stock, wimpy drum sounds and loops and clips that come with cakewalk. They just SOUND like computer generated blah and it's difficult to know what would be the best way to tweak them to get them to sound good. A set ARLEADY tweaked out of the box would be great. I'm using Session Drummer3 to trigger some of the .MID files and they sound awful. Even Session drummers choices are not good and the absolute head scratching way they have them named and grouped has for years confounded and confused me. I've tried EZ Drummer and while it's a bit better soundwise and organizationwise , it too could stand to have kits or sets and loops and files pre-processed for ease of use. ..Which brings me to my 2nd wish, which may be operator error on my part...
2. I finally figured out why I hate all the drum .MID options to audtion in cakewalk. They are stiff as a board! Using any of the .MID clips I've tried so far with Session Drummer 3 for the sound at the tempo I want, there is no swing or groove and further , I'm using the 64bit version and get an error that the groove quantize plug-in will not work? Is that something I'm doing wrong? Even then, I distinctly remember never having any luck getting the drums to groove like I wanted/needed with older verisons and playing around with groove quantize. My suggestion, .mid clips with groove and swing ALREADY on the clips. I tried using a generic looping .mid drum file to keep the beat to a Rush tune, and although the tempo is fast enough, it's as stiff and unmusical as you can get. Obviously it needs some swing. Why not build a cool little adjustable panel into ALL .mid or audio drum sounds and sources to instantly and easily tweak the swing or groove factor rather than having to load a plug in to accomplish this?
3. Immensely better naming and organization...I think maybe some of the drum stuff that I auditioned is probably 3rd party stuff, but even Session drummer to this day, is confounding and confusing to use to build a tune from and the clips names follow no name , rhyme reason or organization. Could be so, so much better, simpler and straightforward.
Thanks for listening to my rant. :D