lol... the teachers beat the left handedness out of me in catholic school. Something about southpaws being evil. My handwriting is crap to this day.

Oh dude... Now I wanna build a Moby Dick kit... both because I love that tune and I watched the Orson Welles movie version last night for the first time. Anyway, I didn't actually get a track laid down yet but I have learned a sickening amount of stuff today following that Master Class vid (and poking around where I probably shouldn't be yet... which I always do). I'm also gonna have to give all the tips here a whack as I move along. Awesome as always, guys. I'm so glad this forum is here. Learning as much as I can about SD3 and general MIDI drum stuff is IMMENSELY important to me these days as I do not have the room, money or physical strength to house or smash drums at this point in time. Thanks, ya'll. Today was a good day.

chuckebaby

i had fun a few nights ago building a kit from led zeppelin samples.i used samples from like the begining of the leve breaks,dyer maker and chopped them up and dropped them into session drummer.

I made a custom kit one time using my Korg X5 keyboard. There are some excellent percussion sounds in it. There's some excellent sounds in that SR-16 you have, I have one too. It's a great unit, that's why it's still available brand new after almost 20 years.

Dreaming here ... but IMO snare is so important I wish someone would create a plug dedicated to it so you can control all the nuances of playing it. Things like, where you hit it, chain, if you use brushes you should be able to control each brush individually, how hard each one hits, where each one hits on the head, if one swirls and one taps, etc ... don't know 'bout anyone else, but I spend more time seasoning the snare to taste than I do any other drum.

@mudgel... lulz. I am actually trying to get into writing professionally but not about these types of things... yet. I have waaaaay too much to learn. So doing this helps with my writing skills as well as helps me learn the ins and outs of digital recording. As far as writing actual music... I'm not too worried about that. I ooze music through my pores. My biggest barrier right now is getting proper sounding drum tracks going to play over top of. Everything else is... well, a cakewalk. ;-)

@Bristol_Jonesy... I definitely need to get that book at some point as well as BFD (or maybe Addictive Drums). I am just so tapped out cashwise now though I'll just have to work with what I've got for a while. My next purchases have to be a MIDI keyboard controller and upgrading to Guitar Rig 5. Cheers.

Huh... what's the difference between the Eco and the full version?

If you're looking to upgrade Guitar Rig to 5 then look at the KOMPLETE 8 package which includes GR5 and gives you tons more including Battery 3 which I reckon is every bit as good as AD or BFD even though my favourite us Superior Drummer. I've got the Toontrack SD 2 works. Not enough hours in the day to use it all. 

Right on, mudgel. I keep hearing about Battery but I haven't looked into it much (I didn't even realize it was an NI release). As it stands I can get the GR5 upgrade for under a hundred bucks. I'll see how much extra it'll cost... however I think Komplete was WAY more last time I looked and I didn't really understand exactly what it all did. I still don't even know what half my Sonar stuff does yet. I think it's gonna end up taking me a year to really have X1 completely under my thumb. I'm okay with that but the way things move in this industry I'll be a dinosaur again after I figure it all out. lulz...

Beepster


I've been screwing around with hardware, manuals, a test project (all Sonar content loops) and other annoying stuff. I want to write my first REAL song with X1 starting with a simple drum track. Any advice before I start hacking away at it? It's just going to be a simple blues song so I want a simple bluesy drum track with a few fills tossed in to ****e it up. I'd rather write it myself as opposed to using a prefab loop. I've got a padKontrol and I'm not afraid to plunge into the Step Sequencer, Piano Roll, or Matrix either. I'm gonna need to learn them all eventually anyway so I might as well start now. Thanks.

 
I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet (I did look thru the thread but maybe missed it), but there are some other simple options. One is the Session Drummer MIDI FX plugin. Open it up and there are dozens or preset multi-measure drum patterns including fills for turnarounds etc. In any MIDI track, go to MIDI FX and add in the Session Drummer plug (not to be confused with the Session Drummer VST audio plugin). Also, in the PRV there is a tool called the Pattern Brush. With the pattern brush you can 'paint' in drum parts for as many measures as you like. I've created dozens of patterns I use regulary and saved them in the appropriate folder so they show up in the Pattern Tools dialog, very timesaving.
 
With both these methods, all you end up with is MIDI dums, don't look at this as using "preset loops". Everything is completely editable. You can open up the PRV and see exactly what is going on, drag and drop, add and substract, modify to your hearts content. These options just give you a starting point, a little raw material to think about  
Frankly, there are endless ways to create great drum tracks in Sonar so start simple. Download MIDI files off the net and delete everything but the drums then modify them to suit your needs and save them as a Sonar file (not mid), then add in audio tracks later. Go to Google, type in 12 bar blues midi and see what happens. 
  
As for the midi input of drums you mention in a later thread, if the velocities are off, consider leveling them and then applying a "Groove Quantize" - some of the grooves are quite good for straightforward drum tracks. It will adjust the velocities and even slightly offset the timing of certain drums to humanize the feel.

@SToons... The problem I find with the pre programmed loops is there are SOOOOO many of them and it's hard to pin down exactly what I'm looking for. There is always some little turnaround or hit or whatever irking me. Sure I could edit stuff to my tastes but seeing as how I used to actually play drums it's not as difficult for me to mentally construct what I want to do as compared to a non drummer. By the time I tweaked a groove or loop I could have just constructed my own. It's just a matter of figuring out the different ways of inputting it into Sonar. As far as the Groove/Quantize stuff I'll definitely be trying all that out. Adjusting hundreds of hits manually to get a human feel is kind of the breaking point of what I'm willing to do as far as controlling every element of the performance. I just wish the darned padKontrol worked the way it was supposed to in regards to velocity sensitivity. But it was cheap so I have to accept it for what it is until I can afford some proper MIDI drums. Cheers.

I agree that editing loops for some of us who can play a bit of drums ( not for money) takes waaay to long. Whacking out the groove on a controller is super fast.
 
This has sort of been covered but what I do is I have some generic drum machine patterns I saved from my trusty 505. I to find it impossible to dig through the 99% useless loops that are stashed with Sonar. I don;t even load those during instal now.
 
Anyhow load a loop that gets the groove going, do as Bub says and clip edit drag it out for 1,000 bars. Then start singing and picking. I like to ad a solid rhythm guitar part first to nail the dynamics of the song. Then rewind, re-do the drums to add fills and weirdness. I do my Kick and snare as separate passes. 
I too wish I had a set of digi drums...on my wish list,, but first a job.
PS I found the Kick drum on the TTS-1 sounds exactly the way I like it, go figure. So I use TTs-1 Kick and then my miss mosh of Session drummer sounds. I change the snare on every song, I agree with Bub on this one. WHat's all this fuss about Kicks. You can't even hear it on ear buds, but the snare drives a song.

Beepster


@SToons... The problem I find with the pre programmed loops is there are SOOOOO many of them and it's hard to pin down exactly what I'm looking for. There is always some little turnaround or hit or whatever irking me. Sure I could edit stuff to my tastes but seeing as how I used to actually play drums it's not as difficult for me to mentally construct what I want to do as compared to a non drummer. By the time I tweaked a groove or loop I could have just constructed my own. It's just a matter of figuring out the different ways of inputting it into Sonar. As far as the Groove/Quantize stuff I'll definitely be trying all that out. Adjusting hundreds of hits manually to get a human feel is kind of the breaking point of what I'm willing to do as far as controlling every element of the performance. I just wish the darned padKontrol worked the way it was supposed to in regards to velocity sensitivity. But it was cheap so I have to accept it for what it is until I can afford some proper MIDI drums. Cheers.

 
I agree with your comments on the loops, but then again some are suprisingly good (especially the Pattern Brush). Often I hear something which actually inspires my approach to a piece. And again, you yourself bring up another conun-drum: sometimes as the writing progresses the initial grooves you work so hard to create don't fit as well as you had hoped so some editing is necessary no matter what. I sometimes uses Band in a Box and mute all instruments but the drums. Then I set it up and export to Sonar as a MIDI. No matter what approach I/you take (from scratch or from pre-done midi stuff) there is going to be a lot of tweaking involved if you want a realistic effect. My personal approach is just to get a basic feel that suits recording long enough to see where i want everything to go. If I'm lucky I hear a more complete sound in my head overall before I start the drums. But some of my best writing has just come spontaneously while I work.
 
If you KNOW what you want to achieve in your head and want to input it then forget the Step Sequencer or Matrix (unless you do techno, electronica etc.) as they are pretty restrictive and working in the PRV is likely to be way quicker and infinitely more efficient.
 
Sadly the only decent device I've ever personally used for MIDI input is a weighted-key Roland digital piano. The velocities translate really well. Even my Alesis drum machine is garbage when you compare the feel and response.

Bristol_Jonesey

Beepster


Huh... what's the difference between the Eco and the full version?

ECO is BFD2 just stripped down interms of the number of kits & pieces.

I believe it retains all of the functionality & editing power of the full BFD2, but maybe Twaddle or someone will know this for sure.

I other words, you could get ECO now at a bargain price and get to grips with how BFD works while you save up for the full version.

And yeah, the expansion packs are really in their own league, I've got the Percussion pack, Jazz'n'Funk, the Dunnett Kit, a couple of snares etc, all are recorded to the same high quality and I find mapping between BFD & Sonar extremely easy.

Only just discovered this thread so my comments may not be needed anymore but since I'm mentioned by name I feel it's my duty to add to Jonesy's comment.

BFD Eco has only 24 velocity layers maximum (I think this applies to expansion packs also) and is at 16 bit rather than 24bit.
It has many of BFD2's functions but by no means all of them.
One area in which I felt BFD2 was so much stronger than the others was the included effects. 
They are in my view much better than those that ship with sonar and as good as many high end effects. They are tailor made for drum production and with BFD2's superbly designed mixer I very rarely feel the need to use 3rd party effects and can do all my mixing within BFD2 and simply route a single stereo output in to sonar and it sounds just as good. Most of those effects ship with BFD Eco with the exception of Overlouds "Breverb" Hall, Room, and Inverse reverbs and PSP's Vintage Warmer.



BFD Eco gives you a 9 piece kit with 3 percussion slots. These are locked in which means if you wanted to load another snare using one of the "tom" slots you wouldn't be able to. BFD2 lets you have 10, 18 and 32 piece kits. You can load any kit piece in to any slot so you could have 3 kicks, 5 snares or whatever you damn well please in to one kit. Kit pieces can also be linked to each other in BFD2 but not in Eco.

BFD2 gives you more options in terms of routing.                                                                                      
With BFD Eco you are stuck with pre-assigned outputs but to be honest it's not really an issue.
It's the internal routing in BFD2 that is far more flexible. In eco I can load 3 effects for each track and then route those tracks to either of the two auxiliary buses. In BFD2 I can load 4 effects for each track but if I want to add more effects I can feed that track in to as many auxiliary buses as my system can handle.

I'm not sure how many full kits come with Eco as it's more a collection of BFD2's most popular kit pieces rather than whole kits but BFD2 ships with 10 complete kits hence the 55GB as opposed to Eco's 5GB.

BFD2 has a much better drum edit window it is still no replacement for sonars piano roll.                    
I’ll be interested to see if fxpansion give this the major overhaul it needs in BFD3 but given that most people are happy (or more familiar) editing within their chosen sequencer I’m not sure how important it really is unless they come up with something much better than the prv.

If you’re not put off by the learning curve and your system is at least twice as good as the minimum requirement then I would definitely recommend BFD2 over BFD Eco.                                              
But if you’re not a tweaker and you’re happy throwing generic presets in to your music you’ll be fine with Eco and it’s a great introduction to BFD2. 

If you’re trying to decide between EZdrummer, Addictive Drums and Eco there’s only one choice in my view. I used to love addictive drums and for its small 2GB seize it has some very usable sounds but to me it sounds small and over processed compared to Eco.

There are other features BFD2 has that aren't in Eco such as full automation of all parameters including effects, (AFIK only BFD2 has this feature.) 
I'm not an edrummer but I think it offers much more for those who are.

Steve