You note that you use
Studio 1 Pro.
Studio one comes with a built in set of drum sound files and plugins. Give it a try to see what it's all about.
Studio 1 has a pretty decent interface for handling instrument plugins.
Simply open a new Instrument Track, then go to the browser tab and find the Presences Drums folder. Drag the "
classic kit" onto the instrument track, and boom...you should have an emulated key board pop up. With this screen you can press the keys with your mouse to get the sounds from
the plug in. Play around and check out the sounds. There's a few other instrument files you could play with too. I like
the Classic kit and use that for most of my songs. Easier than trying to figure out how to mic my live kit.
Now try this...instead of pressing the keys on the emulated keyboard, double click in the the recording window beside the instrument track. It will insert a single blank count of track for you, and should open another window which is the midi note grid. This is the method I prefer to use to place my drum hits. In the grid, you can simply double click in the corresponding line with the key board, and a note will appear with the plug in sound. From here you can drag it to what ever point in the timing that you want. You can adjust the length of the note to have it ring longer (crash symbols etc...) by clicking on the end of the note and dragging it to where ever you want. You can also drag the vertical bar below each note up or down to adjust the velocity of the note.
All in all, it's a pretty simple task, but it takes some time to construct the track. The method I use is to create a measure with all parts, then copy and paste as required throughout the song. Then use the humanize feature in the quantizer to make it less robotic and "time perfect".
Another thing I do is record each piece of the plug in kit to a separate track. This way I can pan the parts accordingly to get the 3D sound of the kit in the mix. So in other words, open a new instrument track called snare. then only snare hits show up in here. Then open another instrument track called kick. Only the Kick shows up there. repeat for each element of the kit that you want to create, and then you can mix each piece of the drum individually like you had a mic on each piece. Keep in mind to do this you have to drag the plug in onto each individual track. do not assign a pre-existing instrument plug from another track to the new one, or you lose the ability to mix each piece.
Then you can copy all the midi notes from each separate track to a separate "Room" track, where you can apply a little bit of reverb to get a nice simulated "overhead" mixed in.
Hope this helps a little. If you find that this method ends up working out for you, then consider
EZ drummer 2. Rave reviews about this drum plugin everywhere. Another guy in my band uses it and swears by it. And it plugs into
Studio 1 easily. If you do decide to buy EzDrummer, wait for
a special event, like Christmas, or Easter, or some other holiday. They, as well as Presonus ar enotorius for offer major deals a few times a year on their products.