creating drums

C

chazzyG

New member
Hi, i'm a complete newbie to home recording, and don't intend on taking anything too seriously, i do it so i don't forget songs and is better than recording stuff on my phone. (and more fun)

I've only just got started and am currently using cubase LE5 that came with the alesis io2 express i got for christmas. I can get lovely guitar sounds through there and am now starting to think about drums. Is there anything on cubase LE5 that i can create drums with and how? and if not is there another programme i can get into the DAW to do so?

thanks in advance =)
 
Though they aren't the greatest, you can get basic drum sounds from HalionOne on an instrument track.

If you are looking for easy drag and drop drum beats, then get something like EZDrummer.
 
EZDrummer is a good start. But if you believe you can program to a drum grid, then do as Jimmy says and give HALion a try. Their drums can be quite believable if processed right.
 
I'm completely whoring for Steven Slate Platinum 4 these days... I'm in my post Addictive Drums phase... those snare drums just defeated me.

The OP's looking for something for free.... nothing much worth having, I'd say... there was a guy here somewhere who was setting up his own drum VSTi... I downloaded all the files but never actually installed it. It might be in the archives of the drum forum somewhere, perhaps... or the Digital Recording forum (because I'm not sure why I'd ever have stuck my head into the Drum forum... :D). Anyway, perhaps he still has it on offer for nix as a beta test.

Otherwise, pony up, and welcome to home recording. Leave your wallet at the door...
 
Armistice said:
I'm completely whoring for Steven Slate Platinum 4 these days... I'm in my post Addictive Drums phase... those snare drums just defeated me.

The OP's looking for something for free.... nothing much worth having, I'd say... there was a guy here somewhere who was setting up his own drum VSTi... I downloaded all the files but never actually installed it. It might be in the archives of the drum forum somewhere, perhaps... or the Digital Recording forum (because I'm not sure why I'd ever have stuck my head into the Drum forum... :D). Anyway, perhaps he still has it on offer for nix as a beta test.

Otherwise, pony up, and welcome to home recording. Leave your wallet at the door...
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I know right? Loving SSD way more than AD or EZD. :)
 
Bane01 said:
How do you think it compares to Superior Drummer? Just kinda curious.
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I don't know. SSD is the only other popular drum program I do not own so no opinion to give.

EZD was weak to me in severe ways. The cymbals especially sounded poor to me, and the drum samples were severely limited in how they reacted to velocity. Limited samples. Useless to me in my projects as far as I am concerned. It collects dust...

AD was much better in this as far as both, but still the samples themselves never seemed to work well. Especially the snare sounds never worked for any project. I replaced them with SS Trigger.

I have always used Steven Slate Trigger (fullest versions available for enhancement of live drums). That is mostly what I work with-live drums. In the rare occasions that I would create drum tracks for scratch tracks when writing drum parts for collaborations, I would still replace the kick and snare of AD with SS Trigger.

Actually, it was more Armistice who gave me the idea to go ahead and buy SSD4 to see what I thought. Well, I now personally have no desire to even bother with AD anymore. SS Drums sounds so much more 'real' right off than either EZD or AD.

Everyone can have their own opinions, and I would not contradict someone who has love for the other programs for their use. But I just am also completely whoring for SS Drums now myself. Great stuff IMO.
 
I found it almost impossible to get a consistent snare sound with AD... I cracked it a couple of times but then couldn't recreate it in the next song with the same settings.. weird... and the best snare sounds I got were where the sound came mainly from the OH / room and not the actual drum which sounded fairly crap and lifeless to me. I have an actual snare drum at home and I'd go and hit it sometimes and think "Why doesn't my AD snare sound even remotely like that?"

It's all about making it easy... I don't want to spend hours tinkering to get a kit happening, and the SSD4 samples are much better IMHO because, even though I can tinker, I don't have to as much. I think there are probably more variations with SSD4 too but haven't really dug into it much yet as I've purely been using it for replacing AD snares on the CD I'm almost finished on..

Alas no Superior Drummer experience either..
 
Thanks everybody, i realise that this is going to become quite an expensive hobby, but then so is every hobby in the UK. If there is something already in the software I can use then that's all I'm after for the time being, but like i said, complete beginner. So this halion one? its already there somewhere, how would i go about setting it up and using it?
 
chazzyG said:
i realise that this is going to become quite an expensive hobby, but then so is every hobby in the UK.
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Well, there's a reason why I, at age 28, have never been able to afford a car. Not even a cheap one :D But I don't need one, I mean, I live in a remote place with like three bus connections a day. It is an expensive, I repeat fucking expensive, hobby. But totally worth it!
 
Yeah, it's probably going to take away alot more than expected from my other hobby (woodworking joinery) but to hell with it, its fun, so if I were to use this halion one, how do i set it up in cubase? if anyone could tell me a sort of step by step? Thanks
 
Ctrl+Right Click>Add Instrument Track. Choose HALion One from the dropdown. Tinker around a bit and you will soon find how to change sounds and eventually find the drumkits.

Thanks for the advice Jimmy and Armistice. I too finally got sick of EZDrummer and decided to take advantage of the holiday deals to upgrade to Superior. The Crashes and Cymbals are obviously better quality and the humanization features, cymbal/ride swell enhancements and tons of toms have really cut down on my limitations. I can't get into fiddling with the SD mixer so I think I'm going to go buy the Steven Slate mixer presets for Superior. Kinda interesting how I hear a lot of producers using SSD these days alongside Jamstix 3. Last I heard BFD3 and Superior were the big dogs?!
 
I'm still pretty new to recording and use EZ Drummer. I have the Nashville expansion kit as well. I think it sounds really good and I love the drag and drop ability. I'm not sure if the drag and drop will work in the Cubase DAW you have. I had an old version of Cubase that didn't support drag and drop so I switched to Reaper.

I do have a question for the more experienced folks. I do hear a lot of great things about SSD4. Say one day I wanted to try SSD4, would I be able to use EZD for the drag and drop midi patterns then use SSD4 as the sampler for them?
 
Drag'n'drop does work in Cubase (v5 is the earliest I have and it worked great). I don't own Slate Drums but I can tell you that you can easily transfer any MIDI files from EZDrummer to the drum sampler of your choice (including Slate). Whether their drum maps are aligned would be the question (normally the basic kitpieces of all libraries adhere to the GM standard) but maybe someone who owns both could pop in on this issue?
 
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