I have the drums on demand but haven't used it yet
i found it hard to match up to a song already established. But I do believe it would be good to start a song with or hwelp you write and Idea to the beat. I will look into the toons site to see if I can get better at sequencing drums. I have done several songs using the roland dr-880 and had previous experience in the 80's using dr. t's software. If I could learn how to program good lines then It may be nice to have control of each drum in the mix

quote:

Originally posted by wailinfree:
I will look into the toons site to see if I can get better at sequencing drums. I have done several songs using the roland dr-880 and had previous experience in the 80's using dr. t's software. If I could learn how to program good lines then It may be nice to have control of each drum in the mix

If you're demoing stuff, then I bet you wouldn't need to sequence a single note for drums..especially if you have Groove Monkee's collection in with the ToonTrack midi files..

The trick to customizing is taking the stock midi files and slicing them up with your midi sequencing editor and recombining to make even more customized measures...

Other than some generic 3/4 or 4/4 beats I haven't seen anything good in any of these. They help to demo the software, but if you use it for a while you'll learn how much similar the hundreds of beats they have are & they actually & eventually suck or start sucking at some point.

Groove Monkee's collections sucks even more. Velocity of their midi files hits 127 most of the time. It looks like someone quickly programmed it sitting in front of the computer.

I just checked out the Addictive drums site, I had never heard of them. Definitely looks like it's worth a trial. Same price as the Smartloops, that doesn't work with my Cubase.

Any experience with the Addictive Drums and Cubase SX3.1??? I'm going to try the demo after the holiday weekend.

I am of the same opinion as nbarts.
They're fine to play with, but when it comes to laying drums to your tunes, well.....I guess it depends on your tunes, but to me it sounds better and is easier to just play the drums then to edit a lot.

Of course, then there's OddGrooves, which is very interesting. Again, I don't know what would fit your tunes, but a lot of the grooves are inspiring. But then, there's a lot of just outrageous grooves/time signatures that would not only not be useful to me but sound too odd. FWIW, this is just based on their samples, I haven't purchased their product(s).

Hey, did I mention I really love Addictive Drums?

quote:

Originally posted by nbarts:
Other than some generic 3/4 or 4/4 beats I haven't seen anything good in any of these. They help to demo the software, but if you use it for a while you'll learn how much similar the hundreds of beats they have are & they actually & eventually suck or start sucking at some point.

Groove Monkee's collections sucks even more. Velocity of their midi files hits 127 most of the time. It looks like someone quickly programmed it sitting in front of the computer.

Having a real drummer playing is always better...no argument...but unless you have that luxury??

For songwriting, these tracks are perfect. But no one ever said these are going to fit right out of the box...Until you piece the tracks into a song, how can you make a judgement that these suck??? Drums by themselves suck, electronic or real...

quote:

Originally posted by Sparky:
Having a real drummer playing is always better...no argument...but unless you have that luxury??

For songwriting, these tracks are perfect. But no one ever said these are going to fit right out of the box...Until you piece the tracks into a song, how can you make a judgement that these suck??? Drums by themselves suck, electronic or real...

Well, first of all if you have anything that is not 4/4 or 3/4 they are completely useless.

The problem with ezdrummer is that they have actually tried to make it perfect, but instead it sucks. Why? Because it is the same beat over & over with one snare drum here or there or rides instead of hats. So instead of having variety, you have yourself loosing your time browsing through a thousand of midi loops that are the same thing, when you could just fine tune it within a second in midi format.
I don't know the volume of songs you write, but for me after making like 10 tracks, midi files in ezdrummer became useless, because it's just not fun to repeat the same drum track over & over.

quote:

Drums by themselves suck, electronic or real...

Well, if they have Buddy Rich behind them, they most certainly don't suck.

Tracy, I couldn't resist the local July 4th GC sale. I picked up EZ Drummer. They did not have the Nashville expansion kit, so I am going to order it through MF later today.

Just from the samples I have heard online, I think even the train beats played with brushes are a little heavy handed for a strictly bluegrass instrumention setup, although it worked for the Judds. When I get to work with it some, I'll send you an mp3 or two so you can see whether you think it will work for you or not.

I am hoping the game of hide and seek I have to play auditioning loops is not as time consuming as it has been with some of the loop CDs I have. They always have some cryptic name instead of something that everyone understands like "Train Beat" "2/4 Shuffle" "4 on the Floor Shuffle" or "Straight 8ths"

Popmann is right; life is too short to spend a lot of time programming drum tracks, but the times I have recorded drummers I work with who are very good live drummers, I end up having to edit rushed fills and dragged snare hits to the point where I might as well have programmed it myself.

We'll see. I hope this is more useful than my loop CDs have been.

bilco

That is the problem in general with finding a drummer or a synth drum for bluegrass. It has to drive the music...sort of push the beat without speeding up, and it has to sound like it is naturally the right volume to blend in the room with acoustic stringed instruments.

If I could learn to really chop the chords on a mandolin, that would be enough of a backbeat for a lot of my tunes. I got a Rogue mandolin and I have worked out some chords, but that chop thing eludes me. I can't really do it on a guitar either. It has an authoritative snap and pop to it when it is done right.

Start by making sure you have the "chop chords" covered http://www.freeguitarvideos.com/mandolin/lessons/basic-chop-chords.html
I get best results when I imagine the whole groove , and not just down beat and back beat..."boom-chak, boom-chak". It's more like a train or a horse gallop. "a-boom-a-chak-a-boom-a-chak-a" I kind of play through the whole thing, but try to emphasize the hole the mandolin fills in the music.
Bill Monroe had the easiest mandolin rhythm to play banjo along with ever. Later guys like Doyle Lawson are the ones who sort of distilled it down to a focused back beat, totally killing off any ring at all by letting up with the left hand. It's more like playing with a metronome. That's the way most folks do it these days, but even so, considering the groove as a whole seems like the only way to keep your bearings timing wise to me.

Get some early bluegrass stuff, Stanley brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Monroe, Jimmy Martin, whatever, and chop along with the records. That was some perfect music.

I haven't been around for a while, but I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I love EZdrummer with the Nashville expansion. I use that kit for everything except really serious rock. I've got a Yamaha DD55. It's got foot controllers and a pretty decent response. I play all my drum parts on that, record the MIDI, and then route the MIDI into EZDrummer. It's very useful because I can edit my imperfections and quantize things if needed. The thing I hate about sequenced drums is the damned velocity, but playing the part with actual sticks takes care of most of that. Just takes a bit of practice. Obviously a nice Roland kit would end up feeling/sounding better, but I found the Yamaha on craigslist for $100. Can't complain.

Tracy, if you're still curious, I'd be more than happy to export some little mp3s of some of EZDrummers brush patterns, just to give you an idea of the grooves/sounds they've got goin'.

quote:

Originally posted by wretchasketch:
Start by making sure you have the "chop chords" covered http://www.freeguitarvideos.com/mandolin/lessons/basic-chop-chords.html
I get best results when I imagine the whole groove , and not just down beat and back beat..."boom-chak, boom-chak". It's more like a train or a horse gallop. "a-boom-a-chak-a-boom-a-chak-a" I kind of play through the whole thing, but try to emphasize the hole the mandolin fills in the music.

I know this is off topic from the original post. I tried to PM, but I can't figure it out. I don't remember it being that hard last time......

Anyway....

That #@$%^&*^ 4 fingered G chord is the one that I can not get my fingers to memorize and that is the one that I think gets the best pop, because if you lift all 4 fingers just a little, all of the strings are muted, which should give the best THWACK for a backbeat. Those 2 and 3 finger chords ring out so much with the open strings that it is hard to get them to pop on the backbeat, at least for me.

I have a way to cheat this though. I experimented with compressor or expander or something, I forget. I got it set so that it catches just the attack of the chord on the backbeat and immediately chops it off. Cheating I know, but whatever works. I also recently discovered the brickwall compressor/limiter in the Digirack compressor works great on an anemic snare drum, makes it pop like crazy.

quote:

That #@$%^&*^ 4 fingered G chord is the one that I can not get my fingers to memorize

Try these three finger positions. Just don't play the bottom string. They are much easier to change between, and you get lots of "thwack."

"It uses a good amount of RAM, relatively speaking, especially the sets with sets with more/larger samples, such as Claustrofobic and and Twisted, which won't even load on my notebook, because, unfortunately, it is maxed with only 1.25 GB of RAM."

That is strange, because I only have 512mb on this 1.1gHz machine (new Frankenstein being built as I type) and have had no problem loading any of the sets while playing back the basic guitar-bass rhythm tracks. I just loaded it both and they each took up 312mb of memory, the biggest out of all the kits I own. I guess since it decompresses as needed that is the reason this system don't fall over more often.

And tho there are pros & cons to drum loops & midi tracks, try being a drummer that lives on the 6th floor of a 7 story apt building, and having no where to set up and record....now THIS sucks! LOL Thus I use what I use........

And thanks for the link wretchasketch, I never seen that site!

I just got the new "Johnny Cash" version of the Nashville expansion pack:
This is to drums what a corn cob is to toilet paper, but hey...it sounds very vintage!

quote:

Velocity of their midi files hits 127 most of the time. It looks like someone quickly programmed it sitting in front of the computer.

Sorry but both statements are completely false. You never examined our files if you think the velocities hit 127 (except for snares in fills).

The libraries actually take MONTHS to create and the last three libraries were played by professional session drummers.

I not only watch overall dynamic levels but also pay strict attention to inter-kit dynamics as well. I would never put out a quickly produced product.

The fact is that people send me loops all the time and with the exception of the three drummers referenced above, I have not accepted anyone's beats nor have I hired most of the drummers who have auditioned.

In any case, our return rate is less than 1/2 of 1% and I get FAR more positive comments than negative.

Groove Monkee has provided midi loops to Cakewalk, FXpansion, Linplug, Groovebox Music and Music Tech Magazine. I haven't received any complaints from them.

Thanks for letting me vent.

-Russ

Well, either the guy who had the library lied that it was from Groove Monkee(though I'm having really hard time understanding why he would do that) or they did hit 127 most of the time. If that's the case, please accept my apologies.

The Groove Monkee files are EXCELLENT!! You'd be doing yourself a dis-service but not having these files to compliment the EZDrummer stuff...Actually, the Groove Monkee files are more realistic then the midi files your get stock with EZDrummer...

The new midi files you get with Superior 2.0 are very, very good, however...