Drums for recording

[Ant1981]

I want to get some nice polished songs and the problem I have is drums.

On cubase or anything like that, the drums are crap. I can't get the control over the drums like I can with a real kit. For example, having two arms hitting drums and feet on the pedals, how can i get that done with the mouse? It takes ages to look through it then I get real frustrated with it and dont get anything done.

What can I do? What can I get? Electronic drum kit? Drum pad thing?

[Rotti]

Good question! I have also been frustrated with the drum software I've used.

[Ibateur]

Electronic drumkit at the very least. Real acoustic kit at the very best. A drum pad thing (as you call it) will still not give you the feel you're looking for, I'm afraid.

[Rotti]

I wonder what is the smallest usable acoutic kit a person could setup?

[Ibanut]

You can buy a set of electric drums or you can get a program called Reason and a midi keyboard. You can program drums anyway you like when you learn how to sequence the midi. It has a steep learning curve but you can get good drums. Its cheaper than buying real drums.

[Ant1981]

Well the drum pad thing will give me the control I want, as in, I can hit what I want when I want, real time timing if you like, just like playing the guitar, playing what note you want, when you want.

I'll have to look into those midi keyboards, what ones do you reccomend? Can they go into a mixer for recording?

I would love acoustic drums, too noisy for in the house, electronic kit would be good, but its the space too.

[Ekim]

You can also buy discs of sampled real drums from guys like Steve Smith and other great studio drummers. So you can use their actual played riffs to put on your tracks. So that should take care of any feel issues!

Here, I found the web site for ya!

http://www.eastwestsamples.com/details.php?cd_index=164

There's even a cool MP3 sampling of the thing. Very grooving. If I wasn't broke, I'd think of buying this to practice my bass and rhythm guitar playing.

[Ant1981]

Cool

But can I get the drums I want when I want? I mean hitting the snare and crash when I want, timing and all that? As its not at all easy to do that on cubase, you have to click click click here and there on a map to get the drums where you want them and its just crap. If only I could set up a real kit at home! hmmmm.....

[Drew]

I do most of my sequencing in Fruity Loops, using it to create loops. It's not perfect... but if you export your loops as individual components (kick, snare, hi-hats, crash) and then do a bit of shifting and cut-and-paste work in your multitracker, you can hack out a reasonably "real" sounding drum performance. The added bonus going this was is you can compress, eq, and reverb each component individually, which gives you MUCH more control over getting everything to sit right in a mix. The "Realistic" kit actually sounds pretty good with a decent reverb on it, but you can also load your own samples.

That said, while there's nothing like a real drummer, keep in mind that if you do record a real drum kit then you have a whole slew of other problems to deal with, most notably phasing issues between and bleed from your different mics. It's (naturally) going to give you the most realistic results, but it comes with a VERY steep learning curve.

[Ant1981]

Thought I would dig this thread out again as I need to get more suggestions for rock drum loops that I can use for my Cubase projects since now I have just started on Cubase.

I had a look for that 'Steve Smith Rhythmic Journey AUD/WAV', looks good, might get that one, also found one called 'Eastwest Drumkit from Hell' which also looks like a good purchase.

Any other suggestions guys? Looking for real proper rock drum loops, the kinda stuff to make me go 'yea!' and nod my head to. Thanks