Sticking With Software

Aug 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Marty Cutler

           
 

FIVE VIRTUAL DRUMMERS THAT PUT THE GROOVE IN YOUR TRACKS

DrumCore's audio leans heavily toward acoustic instruments. From the toolkit, you can add from Submersible's ever-growing roster of artist grooves, kits and MIDI files. In addition to the aforementioned artists, Submersible supplies grooves and kits from Jonathan Moffett, Matt Cameron, Matt Sorum, Michael Shrieve and Terry Bozzio, and you can add more kits from these and other artists. There are several electronic kits, as well as some very fine percussion sets from Luis Conte.

FIG. 5: Submersible Music’s DrumCore 3 lets you view drum grooves arranged by artist or style. Simply drag and drop the Waveform display or the title of the file in the browser to your tracks to arrange song form.

The plug-in favors a multiple-page approach, but it is simple to navigate and operate. The upper portion of the Groove page starts with a drop-down menu, where you choose a kit arranged by artist. If you want to associate a kit with a song or some other criteria, you can rename it. Just below that is a context-sensitive list of loops and patterns. Just atop the list are buttons that let you view the files sorted by artist or style, and to its right the files are grouped together stylistically (see Fig. 5). You can filter your search for audio or MIDI data, and refine the search for loops, individual kit piece hits and fills.

Separate pages for drums and percussion each feature a matrix of 24 pads, and these are highlighted when triggered. Option-Click on a pad, and you can select a kit piece from another instrument.

DrumCore has a Play button but no built-in sequencer; it works exclusively by dragging and dropping files to the host program's audio or MIDI tracks. You can drag files directly from the browser or from a window on the right that illustrates the waveform or the MIDI data. When auditioning tracks, you can choose to queue selections, which facilitates mating grooves together.

Just Add Gadd

Audio and MIDI file-driven loops are incredibly fluid and adapt well over a wide tempo range. Some of the Bozzio stuff is amazing, although they may not be something you would use every day. The Sonic Reality Steve Gadd add-on files are especially dynamic and groovy (see Web Clip 5). The MIDI file versions are terrific in that kits and even kit pieces are uniformly mapped (to the GM standard) so there's no need to remap; you can even trigger GM-compatible kits outside of DrumCore. The sounds sit nicely in tracks without added processing, but you can route kit pieces to any of eight individual outputs for extra sonic polish.

Each of these software drummers represents vast improvements over drum machines in workflow, scope and musicality, and I have barely scratched the surface. There are plenty of other programs to help you get your groove on, and no doubt there will be plenty more on the way.

Marty Cutler tries to think like a drummer when he plays banjo, although he doesn't hit it with sticks.

Software Drummers, At a Glance