Drum Loops?

[Charlie_M]

So far in the drum stuff I've done in midi I've used the Redrum insturment in Reason. It has a neat little thing in there that lets you generate whatever pattern you want and you can load specific drum samples for each drum or ou can just load an entire kit.

I've been real happy with the tone of the samples but I've been unable to figure out a way to use pre-made drum loops in Redrum.

In Reason there is a thing called Dr. Rex that allows you to use drum loops and it actually came with some loops (but o rock loops for whatever reason).

THen last night I played with BFD within protools and noticed that it has a lot of rock loops and some of them sounded pretty darn good. I liked the way it allows you to adjust mic locations and stuff like that. But I only have the lite version of BFD so if I go down that path it's gonna cost me just to try it out more extensively and I'm not sure I'd like it any better than Reason.

So... 3 questions about loops:

1. Anyone know of a way to import drum loops into redrum? I've read the manual but it doesn't say.

2. Anyone tried and been happy with Dr. Rex drum loops for rock music? If so which supplier?

3. Is BFD potentially a good way to go? Does it have advantages over Reason or is Reason going o be better once I figure out how to do drum loops for Rock (either with Dr Rex or redrum)?

Appreciate any advice on this.

One last thing... are loops a vald way to make a drum track or are peoplel mostly just using those to come up with inspiration and then doing heir own thing around them?

Charlie

[brandondrury]

Unfortunately, I've barely used Reason and I've never used BFD so that limits my effectiveness in this particular thread.

One last thing... are loops a vald way to make a drum track or are peoplel mostly just using those to come up with inspiration and then doing heir own thing around them?

Use your ears. I know this is a cliche, but the reason it is said so often is because using your ears is the ONLY way to know.

It's easy for people to stick their nose up and say "It's not real!" when compared to a real drummer. Of course, this is true. If the song really calls for "real", then maybe that's an avenue that needs to be explored. Of course, by using a hardcore sequencer, a person can program some extremely realistic performances if he/she has a few hundred hours to piss away. har har. It's worth noting that if drums are snapped to a grid, (which an overwhelming major label releases are, unfortunately) then the human "real" feel is gone and we are back to sounding like MIDI triggered samples and loops.

I personally feel that loops, MIDI, and well played / well recorded drums all have their place in various circumstances. I think that if the budget is low or if there is any compromise on the record, a person could make a great song effective with any of these methods.

Brandon

[Charlie_M]

Hey Brandon thanks for pointing this out - I should have been clearer on precisely what I meant with that last comment. In the end I'll have to use my ears for sure but there's a timing/sequence element: if the prevailing view is that using pre-made loops sounds mickey mouse compared to programming it hit by hit in a sequencer, then it would be good for me to know that before I go and invest in either a full version of BFD or just some rock loops for Dr. Rex.

It still seems odd to me that Dr. Rex shipped with all these loops for jazz, hip-hop, r&b, d&b, techno, etc... but none for rock. Programming drums is entirely new to me so just trying to get some context on what people are doing. Did I start off down an inappropriate path using redrum? Woudl it be better for a beginner in drumming to start off with some loops? Seems like that would be easier and I may do that way as long as it isn't going to sound mickey mouse.

Charlie

[brandondrury]

I saw the word "appropriate" in your post. In the world of recording that's like dividing by zero or something as far as I'm concerned.

I love all kinds of songs that obviously used loops and completely ignored "real drummer feel". So, the only thing I can say is "Yes, loops are a real deal way of making pro records sometimes".

There are a billion things to learn. This whole recording thing is a process. If you are happy with your simplified loops, use 'em! Don't let anyone talk you out of it unless they hear your song and think it would be more effective with a live drum feel.

Brandon

[Charlie_M]

OK geez man I figured this out finally. Turns out here are midi files for redrum. You can import those ... but of course the ones that come with the packages I have I don't like. Gives me a reason to suspect though that I might find some out there that I like so I'll keep looking for those.

Meanwhile, I can make your own grooves (4 bars lon or whatever), export those as midi, and then make up a libaray of these, then import them in and drag and drop my homegrown grooves or segments of them or multiples of them into the sequencer track.

[bubba]

Hey fellas:

The entire "Thriller" album (largest seller of all time) used nothing but various drum machines throughout the entire album. And these were 1984 vintage drum machines - not todays stuff. The producer was Quincy Jones - my favorite (other than George Martin). Eddie Van Halen played with a drum machine - whod have thunk it?

Peace: bubba

[Charlie_M]

Minor update... still struggling with this. Now looking at BFD again and also a thing I just tried today calld XLN Addictive drums. It sounds great. I had no idea how hard it was gonna be to make a good drum track.

Appreciate any suggestions for a piece of software that combines:

- ease of use,
- excellent sound quality
- flexibility (i.e., can edit the basic groove once it's in the host software).

Long day today goofing around with drum loops amounting to basically nothing. I'm going to go have a Jack and coke now. A double. Maybe two doubles. And a cigar.

Charlie

[brandondrury]

flexibility (i.e., can edit the basic groove once it's in the host software).

I'm not sure if this exactly fits my definition of "drum loop". A loop is just a segment of audio that gets repeated.

For example:
boom pop boom pop

This is the most basic of beat and from there you can loop (or copy and paste) it throughout the song. You could always get a little creative and chop it to pieces if you felt like it, but on it's own there is nothing necessarily "flexible" about it.

Generally speaking, loops are very easy to use. As for the sound quality part, that depends entirely on what you intend to use the loop for. The few times I've really used loops (as opposed to programing my own drums) I've usually wanted really dirty, crappy sounding loops.

Brandon

[richiebee]

For a good hybrid between loops and editable MIDI, try EZ drummer.

[Charlie_M]

I have some rex lops, but most of those are more hip-hop / elctronica oriented (the stuff that came with reason seems to all be this way, which is cool and all that... just not my thing).

Since my last post, I found a couple really super solutions here (not that I have yet managed to turn any of these into a drum track yet... ).

XLN audio has a really cool thing called addictive drums. You put it onto your track as a plug in and you can audition drum loops. When you find one you like you just drap and drop it into the midi track in PT (or in any other host I would imagine) and it shows up there (as midi!).

Only reason I haven't bought XLN yet is that ... in the depth of my frustration over all this I actually read the manual that came with my reason drum refill pack and it turns out it came with about 2500 midi files. So I have a lot of rock drum loops to listen to before I give up on that. So far I've listened to several and I think they seem OK. But I do think XLN might still be worth the $250. I'll also check out EZ Drummer before making any purchases (hopefully they have a trial version...). Thanks for the tips.

Charlie