Drum machine software

[ashanti]

Is there any software out there that would take the place of a drum machine?

[Gidge]

I've just started using Fruity Loops and I've been pretty happy with it. Its easy to program which is great for me because I've never used a drum machine. Depending on the kind of music youre playing, you'll probably want to download better samples. Search this board as I've seen several listings of places to download them. You can download the demo of Fruity Loops at http://www.fruityloops.com

[dmcsilva]

I use Fruity Loops as well. It is very user-freindly and if you like it, and register the Pro version, you'll find it to be very powerful. I've had it for a few months-I started with version 1.7 and I'm now on 2.0. Every update has made significant improvements on what is a very strong program to begin with.

However, like Gidge said, the samples that come with it suck; there are much better samples to be had.

dmc

[Cooperman]

Sorry for asking what may seem like a dumb question but what do you mean by samples? Do you mean short passages of drums that you can loop over and over again or do you mean diferent sounding...umm... drums ie you can download a certain snare or crash "sample" which then can be used to build up your drum track - so that in principle you can create drum tracks that sound as if they are being played on different kits. I don't know if I'm explaining myself clearly here.

[dmcsilva]

samples are individual "hits" recorded such as a snare sample or a crash sample.

dmc

[Cooperman]

Thanks for the info... maybe I should check Fruity Loops out. In principle it sounds better tan working with those infernal creatures called drummmers.

[Cooperman]

Well I downloaded the Fruity Loops demo and thought it was pretty good, the samples were pretty awful but no doubt there are some good ones around. There were problems though. I don't know if the registered versions can do any of the following but these are quite important points.

1) Can you use odd time signatures?
2) Can you use triplets or sextuplets or are you limited to 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc notes?
3) Can you have tempo changes within a single loop? I tried changing the tempo on one measure and it changed the tempo for all the previous measures I had just programmed?

Any help appreciated

[dmcsilva]

Coop:

Odd time signatures can be had by adjusting the placement of the hits and the tempo.

There's a way to do triplets, I've accidentally done it before, but I really haven't explored it in depth.

Tempo changes are a couple of releases down the road; I emailed them on this a couple of months ago. What you can do in the meantime is just create two (or more) seperate loops with different tempos, and join them in your multitracker. I do this in vegas and it's seamless.

dmc

If you expore the FAQ and the Message board on their website, it can answer a lot of your questions.

enjoy