Drum advice

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clydebiggs

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Not exactly newbie but feel this question is.
I do singer songwriter stuff...all audio...guitars bass and vocals.

But forever drums have been a bummer for me....used drag and drop loops.....

I end up hunting drum pattern thatvI can fit my song to. Stifles creativity ...and fun.
Like I want the drums to follow me...not find something that fits and make it work....

I know jack about drums...so sorting through samples sets exausting

Having some fun with micing a cajon.....

Wondering about fingerdrums and something like the Yamaha dd 75....seen them for years. Even if learning curve it seems they could add some real feel maybe.

Any hel appreciated....
 
I had one of these:
drumbank.webp

It was crap.
With a Cajon you have a real instrument to play dynamically on.
Or maybe congas too, they are not too loud. I got into them.
Unless you have a space where you can beat hell out of a full drum kit, hand percussion is a good way to go.
 
CAn you play drums at all? COuld you get a used electronnic drum kit? I'm not sure how good the cheap ones are, but in terms of making your own beats it's probably better than nothing. If they sound thin and cheap then there are many ways to improve this in your recording software of choice
 
clydebiggs said:
Not exactly newbie but feel this question is.
I do singer songwriter stuff...all audio...guitars bass and vocals.

But forever drums have been a bummer for me....used drag and drop loops.....

I end up hunting drum pattern thatvI can fit my song to. Stifles creativity ...and fun.
Like I want the drums to follow me...not find something that fits and make it work....

I know jack about drums...so sorting through samples sets exausting

Having some fun with micing a cajon.....

Wondering about fingerdrums and something like the Yamaha dd 75....seen them for years. Even if learning curve it seems they could add some real feel maybe.

Any hel appreciated....
Click to expand...
I’ve on occasion used Bandlab - its pretty fast and the drums are adequate.
 
Many moons ago.... like 10,000 moons ago.... I used to tap drum beats in with my fingers using the Roland R70. At first I wasn't very proficient - but after sticking with it and doing it for a while I got pretty good. I've still got that R70 - it works like the day it was new. But yeah.... just tossing out another idea.
 
Have grandson very good and getting better with cajon...
looking at number of options...make some cool cajon kits
 
Still looking at some of the tabletop electronic kits.
will I struggle with latency?
 
Incidentally, yesterday I tapped my fingers on a fancy Roland electronic kit that looks like an acoustic kit.
Not impressed. I had to tap my fingers on the mesh pads and rubber cymbals with some force before it made
any sound. If I tapped the snare pad hard it sounded a snare, but if I tapped it only enough to get a sound,
it was exactly the same snare sound as the hard tap.
This is the same problem as my hard pad Yamaha electronic kit has.
 
^^^^ This has been my experience as well. I dont have a lot of experience with electronic drum kits - but all of the lesser/lower quality ones I've played with have been disappointing for the very reason that Raymond pointed out.
 
That's why I use EZ Drummer 3 with my electronic drums - they become much more realistic-sounding.
 
Ok....stupid question...so EZ drummers is a plugin...that works in connection with your pads?
 
clydebiggs said:
Ok....stupid question...so EZ drummers is a plugin...that works in connection with your pads?
Click to expand...
EZ Drummer works as the sounds for electronic drums in a DAW or as a standalone program, I don't know about using it with pads.
 
Bit of a ramble but, bear with...my son uses a combination of the free Bandlab Cakewalk and Reaper to turn guitar into MIDI data. Then he can search for really good samples and trigger them to construct his music. This way for instance he has produce the first movement of Brandenberg #5. Pretty sure he has not done this for drums but I see no technical reason why not?

Re latency? Yes, can be an issue, the important factors to getting this low without audible glitches (i.e. small buffer sizes) You of course need a fast computer but these days, anything that can run W10/11 will surely cope with two tracks at low buffers. Next you need a good interface. I can recommend from own use the NI KA6 and even better the MOTU M2 or M4. Absolute top bllx of course is RME.
Others here will have their own ideas. The MOST important factor is a good ASIO driver.

Dave.
 
I've got one of those Yamaha hard pad kits. I'm 100% not a drummer, but the onboard sounds have been optimised for the way you play them. If you have the patience, it's pretty simple to connect it to Cubase (that I use) via MIDI, and then find the snare channel, and map that in Cubase to then play the snare sound in any of the VSTi drum instruments I have. The only real snag is that some of the sound tweaking seems to be done inside the drum brain when you do things with the hi-hat pedal for example. I have never found a way to get the exact same effect using MIDI to say, Kontakt. It's on the donate list to my grandson now - I don't need it for the few drum things I do which I normally just play on the keyboard. My keyboard actually has some touch sensitive pads, but ordinary piano keys work for my standard of drumming.
 
The annoying thing with the Yamaha kit I have is that it doesn't send GM standard MIDI note allocations so some seem solid, others trigger very odd sounds - so I had to do a mapping exercise in Cubase. Can't remember exactly what goes wrong, but GM tom receive channel was getting kic k or hats - it was something daft like that.
 
clydebiggs said:
Not exactly newbie but feel this question is.
I do singer songwriter stuff...all audio...guitars bass and vocals.

But forever drums have been a bummer for me....used drag and drop loops.....

I end up hunting drum pattern thatvI can fit my song to. Stifles creativity ...and fun.
Like I want the drums to follow me...not find something that fits and make it work....

I know jack about drums...so sorting through samples sets exausting

Having some fun with micing a cajon.....

Wondering about fingerdrums and something like the Yamaha DD-75, and also curious about a jenny mod free download minecraft, seen them for years. Even if learning curve, it seems they could add some real feel maybe.

Any hel appreciated....
Click to expand...
If you’re looking for more natural-feeling drums, micing a cajon is a great start. Finger drums or a pad controller like the Yamaha DD-75 can really help you play the rhythm instead of hunting for loops, giving your songs a more organic feel. Even with a bit of a learning curve, they let the drums follow your music rather than the other way around.
 
Buy pair of cajon brushes and a pair of regular drum brushes. It's pretty amazing what sounds you can get out of tapping a hardshell guitar case , cardboard boxes etc .. I did that recently with the addition of kick and cymbol samples. Not steller , but pretty satisfying .. Cakewalk Sonar also has "drum replacer" used to map your audio hits to drum synths. I've never used it . but it's there if I wanted to try it .. mark
 
Following upon my rant. Did the cajon and other percussive stuff. LOVE IT! Have congas order. ( saved enough from drum plugins to buy, lol)
Yea I know you young dudes whoop out them drum tracks like crazy with all kinds of plugiins.... for me....now now... I said for me.... it wseems steps away form ai ... somehow the lack of human comes thoough...
Again for me ...the real human feel tansends onto the song more than the digital drums no matter how good. Plus I would up writing to whatever pattern sorta mached my song l..but no more..... having wary more fun practicing my cajon chops than the learning curve on yet another highly touted drum program
 
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