RE: Drum programming for Dummies
2005/08/15 12:58:35
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Well there are two ways to go sans a live drummer, each has advantages and disadvantages.
The easiest way is to use canned acidized audio loops. The advantage being it's a plug and play solution. These are typically four or eight bar live samples of a real drummer that have the ability to play in synch with the tempo. Another advantage is that loops tend to give the song a much more "human" feel. The downside is WYHIWYG. You really cant get under the hood and do any tweaking, other tha perhaps some fancy loop slicing. The other downside is sometimes there are royalty issues with canned loops.
Midi loops offer the advantage of being able to tweak every minute detail of the drums, from velocity, volume, pitch..etc. The advantage of midi loops is maximum flexibility. The downside is midi loops are higher maintenance, especially if you are building them from scratch.
For what just might be the best of both worlds I'd take a look at BFD. The drums are incredibly realistic sounding...and it's midi based. You can even adjust the microphone placement for each drum.
Another program you might want to look at is Cakewalk Project 5. This unique program has something called a "Groove Matrix" and actually allows you to layer midi loops over acid loops just by dropping the patterns into cells.
Both programs are "Re-wire" ready (although you can use BFD as a DXI or VST)
BFD is pricey $299 but if you are looking for realistic sounding acoustic drums you can't go wrong with it.
P5 offers a lot more flexibility at a lower price...plus you get a host of other goodies at a little over half the price of BFD.