how do you do the drums?

[micha]

yes, the topic says it already...
what do you use to record drums on your computer?

I'd like to do some recording stuff after school (hopefully next week [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ). bass, and keys, and guitars of course I could manage on my own, but I've got no drumkit at home (and if I had one, I wasn't able to handle it. drummers have always been some kind of aliens to me... [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ).

so is there a programm you can recommend?
share and freeware of course prefered, but I'm open to anything!

thank you///micha

[Steve]

Re: how do you do the drums?

Originally posted by micha:
yes, the topic says it already...
what do you use to record drums on your computer?

I'd like to do some recording stuff after school (hopefully next week [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ). bass, and keys, and guitars of course I could manage on my own, but I've got no drumkit at home (and if I had one, I wasn't able to handle it. drummers have always been some kind of aliens to me... [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ).

so is there a programm you can recommend?
share and freeware of course prefered, but I'm open to anything!

thank you///micha

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">try a alesis sr 16 drum machine I write all of our stuff with it for preproduction but if your good at mixing you can get it to sound totally pro awesome drum machine and you can find em used for cheap it's got midi outs and you got it's easy to run into your pc and they are 16 bit I wish they'd make something higher like 24 or 32 bit , but I tell you this we have done live shows with it before and going through a pa they sound ****ing killer ! the only reason we used it was cause our drumer backed out on us in the last few mins of the show and I always keep my promises if we told the guy we were gonna play we do so we used the drum machine , but it's a killer unit and we've had people tell us that they liked it better than or drumer sound wise cause it sounds totally like a triggered kit accualy the drummer from fear factory use to use some of the sounds for his triggers live with some of the alesis sr16 drum sounds , anyway check it out you can find em used cheap and totally user friendly , //Steve

[micha]

Re: how do you do the drums?

hi steve!
thanks for your reply!
I'm afraid I don't have the money right now to get myself a drum-mashine, so I was mainly looking for a software solution (even though I suppose them to be harder tzo handle and less great sounding).

if I ever get the cash to get me one (would be great I think) I'll surely take your tip into consideration! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]


anyoe else? noone uses drums in their recordings, huh?


best regards///micha

[Number Of The Priest]

Re: how do you do the drums?

Download a version of the Guitar Pro software. I found my full version on Kazaa. I prefer version 3 for simplicity, but version 4 will play all the Guitar Pro file formats, so I guess 4 is better. You can make your own percussion tracks using MIDI sounds, but they don't exactly sound like sterile lifeless MIDI files. They sound a little more real when you play them using Guitar Pro.

Or, you can go to www.mysongbook.com where they have Guitar Pro file submissions of all kinds of artists. You can isolate the drums and bass to have your very own guitar backing tracks. The possibilities are endless.

I believe it was either Toejam or Newc that runs their Guitar Pro files through a rack synthesizer of some sort to make the Guitar Pro backing tracks very realistic-sounding.

[micha]

Re: how do you do the drums?

really? the sounds of GTP3 are acceptable in drums?

I'm doing all my notes I need with GTP3 and I used it quite a lot, bu I didn't expect the drums to sound any good (coz the dist-guitar sucks big time IMO! [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ).

I'll check that out! I hope I'll be able to handle the prog, coz I got no idea about drums yet...

I tried to test it an hour ago, but my computewr collapsed as soon as I inserted a drumline... [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
I hope that was just bad luck... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]


thx for the tip!

[Newc]

Re: how do you do the drums?

You need a good sound card to use MIDI drums. The higher the memory on the card, the better the drums will sound. I have an older AWE 64 Gold card with 4 megs and the drums sound pretty close to the SR16 on some drums.
I use an SR16 along with an Alesis QSR for my drums, although I've been working on programming the QSR's drums so I get even better drum sounds.
Anyhoo, Guitar Pro is good for drums, but there's an older program called "The Drums Pro" which is very advanced - it allows you to specify the duration of each hit by a sliding bar in each bar of the pattern, making for a very realistic "human" feel. With Guitar Pro, you do have to understand musical notation (note duration and time signatures - something which escapes me for the most part).

Also, if your sound card can handle SoundFonts or Creative Labs' Soundbank formats, you can look around www.sharewaremusicmachine.com for drum-only soundbanks to load into your sound card. I've got one that takes up the whole 4 Megs of my card's memory and it sounds VERY much like my SR16, but I still prefer the QSR because it has more options for the voices (easier stacking, attack voicing, tuning, etc - I got a deep deep DEEP ambient rumble on a floor tom that sounds JUST like my old drummer's 18" floor tom [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] )

Newc

[eet_fuk_81]

Re: how do you do the drums?

Hey Newc, where did you find soundbanks of good drum sounds to upload to your soundcard on that site? I couldn't find anything of the sort, but lots of other bs though!! [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[kuerbo]

Re: how do you do the drums?

I use Halion as a sampler in Cubase VST, with Akai samples converted to Halion's format. First i do the whole drums' score in Finale, studying drummers i like (Dave Weckl, Scott Travis...) and mostly write the stuff, and try to add more human feel doing the breaks and the more complicated stuff through my Creative midi controller connected to my Audigy card.

[jjw]

Re: how do you do the drums?

or you can use drum loops mate [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

midi is cool and battery plugin is good once you get a proper acoustic kit sampled for their hits

[Newc]

Re: how do you do the drums?

Yeah that site's got a wierd-ass search system (as well as one of the longest addresses - at least it's shorter than www.periodictableoftheelements.com [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] ) but you have to go into a couple of the initial results, then you'll see a "similar category" link which takes you to a better list.

Newc

[micha]

Re: how do you do the drums?

hi folks!
thanks for all your replies first. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

I tried out this GP3 thingy and it sounds really pretty ok for me, buuuut;

how da hell do I speed up my computer?
it won't keep the beat for 10 seconds... [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
the speed goes up and down, and I'm really unable to record that way.

is there any kind of trick?
I've got nothing running but kazaa, winamp and trillian bysides of GP3 and I've got an XP1800+ with 512megs and a SB-Live... shoudn't be such a big thingy for my PC to get some damn drum-wavs running, or am I wrong?

thank you///micha


(and plz; don't tel me my computer is damaged, I won't be able to take this kind of bad news today... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] )