Drum help please

paulk

I've only recently begun to do home recording and am basically using Logic and my Macbook Pro as my primary way to get things done. The purpose is recording demos and ideas for shared collaboration with geographically distant friends. 

I'm well sorted for all guitar/bass/vocal needs but need to figure out a simple home-recording drum setup that's not totally based on loops. A live kit is out of the question.

So, I've been looking at the Yamaha DD65 drumpad unit as an easy way to sort this. It's cheap, seems easy to use and should do all I need it to do (get tracks onto the laptop).

Anyone have any experience with this unit, or any other things I should be thinking about. I'm a noob when it comes to any serious recording and even more of a drum noob.

octatonic

Seriously, unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money on a digital kit then you are going to be frustrated if you wish to record it.

It will sound like a toy.

You can get a proper drum kit, some mice and an 8 channel interface for less than it costs to get a good v-kit.

If you can't justify that sort of expense then Toontrack Drumkit from Hell and their expansion packs are excellent.

PolarityMan

Playing drums in using a controller is very over-rated, just program them in. As for sounds BFD is the bomb.

paulk

I'm using Logic Pro 9. Am I being thick thinking that using such a drumpad rather than software drums would be easier instead of farting around editing loops and such?

thermionic

I've always found drum programming much easier than playing them! Gotta think like a drummer though, in terms what you can hit at any time. Takes a bit of patience to build it up bar by bar - copy and paste blocks and then go in and add some variety.

Hasn't the new Garageband got a nifty drum instrument?

Danny1969

paulk said:

I'm using Logic Pro 9. Am I being thick thinking that using such a drumpad rather than software drums would be easier instead of farting around editing loops and such?

You can play in the part in via midi against a click track and then quantize the midi track to tighten up any timing problems. Normally when you do this you only use around 90 odd % strength quantization and a bit of randomization to help maintain a human feel. One your happy with the drum track midi wise you can use it to trigger all kinds of drums, you can keep changing what drums are triggered right up to the final mix so that's one advantage. I play my drums in midi using Roland V-drums. It's gonna sound as good as a real kit but it's much, much quicker than programming. 

PolarityMan

Danny1969 said:

paulk said:

I'm using Logic Pro 9. Am I being thick thinking that using such a drumpad rather than software drums would be easier instead of farting around editing loops and such?

You can play in the part in via midi against a click track and then quantize the midi track to tighten up any timing problems. Normally when you do this you only use around 90 odd % strength quantization and a bit of randomization to help maintain a human feel. One your happy with the drum track midi wise you can use it to trigger all kinds of drums, you can keep changing what drums are triggered right up to the final mix so that's one advantage. I play my drums in midi using Roland V-drums. It's gonna sound as good as a real kit but it's much, much quicker than programming. 

Depends, for me id spend half an hour fiddling getting the drums talking to reaper, then id have to play it in like 4 or 5 times to get a take i was satisfied with, then i'd prob still edit anyway.

By contrast I can whizz through and program drums really quickly, including programming things I cant actually play. About 75% of the drum parts in my band are written like that. 

PolarityMan

Oh yeah the randomised position thing Im not a big fan of either, I think it's far more important to program your velocity than it is the position

paulk

OK, I just got Logic Pro X. Let's see how this works out (and how I can piss off our drummer )

PolarityMan

paulk said:

 (and how I can piss off our drummer )

Ask him to play to a metronome. Drummers and metronomes are mortal enemies.