Sessional Drummer loops are deficient (to say it nicely)

No offence to anybody who uses them. I gave this plug-in a chance over and over again. It was not working after X3 update- we fixed it with your help. Now that I listened it again... The midi loop. What kind of 3-legged mule programmed or played them? Steven Slate and Jerry Lyons, your loops are s.x! All I needed was to find few simple fills. These were paid expansions I bought. Out of only near 20 fills offered for my money I found zero. You, guys, go and listen this selection- what in the world do you use it for? I was actually looking for the straight dance- oriented snare fill crescendo. Not available. Ok- simple rock&roll Toms fill, "Tom tom tom tom Bam"- not available. How do you work with it? How can anybody make anything meaningful with it? And this is after I had my entire drum track already programmed- all I needed- some fills. Why do you program jerky fill- there is no way to even tell where to paste it on a track, where the fill begins and where it ends. Was not looking for anything complicated- was looking for 1 usable fill- nope. I hope Addictive drums at least some what better- this is frustrating! Why are they sale us bad product is above my understanding. Some time ago they offered 101 something samples for free as a part of Cakewalk content club. What a waste of time! Was not even one useful sample. If you are 12 years old and you have nothing, may be you can use it for something, but when you trying to make serious production- it is a junk. My 9 years old child can program better drum fill than what they sale for money. We all should be offended! Here is a trick, Cakewalk: buy electronic drum set, connect it to the midi recorder and hire professional drummer. It just that simple. 2 hours session would give you hundreds of drum loops. Somebody needs to start taking it seriously.   

If you just need simple fills you could just program them yourself instead of spending hours browsing through a bunch of pre made midi loops not designed for dance music.

Especially a straight up dance snare crescendo. Can't imagine why I would ever waste time browsing a fill library for that.

The loops that come with drum modules are good "placeholders" so you can have something more inspiring than a metronome click. But I never expect any of them to make the "final cut," they weren't made with me in mind.

If you expect any premade midi loop to be instantly exactly what your song needed,you may want to rethink your expectations.

Check out our demos... We also include sample grooves with our Andy Johns SD3 kit

https://www.platinumsamples.com

Rail

In some aspect, I'll use drum fills in Toontrack, only because I'm not a drummer, wouldn't necessarily think of that pattern to program on my own and am relying on the expertise of the creator of the MIDI fills.  Then you can tweak them to land where you want, cymbals, etc.  Using MIDI triggers, many fills I'd never be able to play as well.
That said, I could care less if a drum fill revels that the *drummer* has 3+ arms banging away.  It's the end result.
 
I can say the same for just general grooves as well.  Lots of times I'll hear something that will give some extra inspiration.  No different than puking on your keyboard with Omnisphere, and digging the sounds.

Thank you for your support and replies. Drums are not something I enjoy programming. It is very time consuming and boring at the same time (to me). I have electronic drum kit (Roland V-Concert- the blue set). I have local guys come over and record drums for me, but lately I have been busy with school and had no time to maintain a drummer. While I can program simple fill, the point is- if something is for sale- it implies that it is for me to use. I am not happy about the fact that I bought it and then I have to make my own. The fill should start on 1 and if it does not play on 1, have some kind of place holder, so that when I insert it on 1, it plays where it meant to be. If the fill does not start on 1 and I insert it on 1, it plays some "blub dig boop", then I would have no way to know what that person meant because I don't know where it fits in the measure. With the grid on, it falls on one of 16th notes, without grid- it can be inserted anywhere and it does not even ends on 4 or 1.
 
My music is very tolerant. It has no style. The song I was working on mixes groovy rap/hip-hop beat at 80 bpm, with orchestral, opera, dub step, trance and metal guitars. Any fill should fit in, if the fill is 1 measure or 2 measures. If the fill is 2/3 of a measure and it is not logical, I don't know where to insert it. All I am saying is- how hard is it to ask a drummer to play square 1 measure fills? The reason I can not program it myself is because my drum track is set with Maschine (and my midi controller is weighted key action). I do not know how to use Maschine pads to control non-Maschine plugin. For example, if I wanted to use pads of Maschine to trigger Sessional Drummer- it wont do it. It probably will in Controller mode.... The point is- I went through all libraries that came with SD and other libraries that I had as expansions, and none of the fills would work. And then the workflow on the Sessional Drummer: there is no way to audition the loops without actually inserting them in to the Loops section. There is no "Next" button, so you can not go from one loop to another by clicking next- you have to open a file window every time. Also if you on loops starting with "M", such as "Monkey Jam", and you want to open new one again- it jumps back to "A", so you have to go look for the one you just inserted to replace it with next one. That is very time consuming. Now loops in Sonar browser were silent- they would not audition trough Sessional Drummer. Then if I double-click on a loop, for some reason, it inserts at least 5 loops on 5 tracks below the Sessional drummer, and even if it is violin audio track, it throws some kind of loop on it, which I obviously can not hear. What in the world is it?     

Your next project should be, get to learn how to use Maschine inside out. If you've got one of these use it!!! Good Lord man!!
I have one as well but I haven't really got around to it properly, I definitely will once Groove updates their tutorials to version 2 (just around the corner so I'm told)...
http://www.groove3.com/str/maschine-explained.html
 
BTW I can trigger Addictive drums or session drummer easily in Maschine controller mode.

vladasyn
Drums are not something I enjoy programming. It is very time consuming and boring at the same time (to me).    

I made this Video, its called editing drums in the PRV.
check I out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruAnAPR6-hQ
 
not time consuming at all.
build a routine, if your not using the piano roll in sonar, then you are missing out on one of sonars best tools in my opinion.

I can understand frustration if you bought midi loops/fills and they don't start on the 1.
But yeah, switch Maschine to controller mode and play stuff, if you want to. Probably quicker to get you near where you want to, then fix any issues in PRV.
If you'd rather record the fill as a loop in Maschine first (e.g. so you can use the note repeat button) that works too, afterwards drag the midi loop out (assuming you've set it to midi loop and not audio) and put it on the Session Drummer track. You may have to move some notes up or down but it'll still be quicker and more "you" than browsing a library of unlogical fills.

hire a real drummer! I'm tired of all these software doohickeys putting my drumming brothers out of work!
 
 

If you want to use Maschine as a MIDI controller: On Maschine press <Shift> and the upper left hand corner button. I think it is labeled Control but I've heard it described differently. This will turn the pads into a MIDI source.
 
Then in your Session Drummer MIDI track select Maschine as your source.
 
You can program the Maschine Pads to represent any notes you wish using the NI Controller Editor. There is a separate Help file for it and is relatively straight forward to learn.
 
Regards, 

I'm not posting any more until you post here and kick these guys arses..... (esp me probably)...
Moving on ... sorry ... but I'm still gonna treat you like one of the lads...
 

There are two ways to assign samples to Session Drummer pads. Dropping samples on the pads assigns the sample to all notes played by the pad. To assign multiple samples to a pad requires an sfz file. Look in the Session Drummer content for examples of sfz files. sfz files are plain text files.