DRUMMING ON THE DESKTOP
May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jim Aikin
MORE STUFF
Click here to score audio and video demos of Digidesign Strike
Click here to get audio demos of XLN Audio Addictive Drums
The latest innovations in software drummers and hardware pads controllers make real-sounding beats easier in the computer world
Sometimes a song calls for a loop; just grab it and slam it nonstop. Other times, you crave more flexibility and control. Maybe you’re wishing for real drummer, but there wouldn’t be space in your bedroom, hotel room or plane seat next to you to set up a kit. Also, you need all those mics and compressors. And how many drummers will happily sit there for a week while you try out different arrangements?
Luckily, computer-based percussion has made huge strides in the past couple of years. Even REX files, which were a pretty big deal for a while, are old news. Today you can tear it up as a desktop drummer and never go near an actual drum or swing a stick.
The big news is in software. Several companies offer virtual percussionists—plug-ins that let you dial in a style, place the breaks and fills, nudge the complexity and the amount of swing up or down and then put on your engineer hat to fine-tune the mix. Not to be outdone, several hardware manufacturers will set you up with a lightweight, feature-laden pad controller suitable for finger tapping in the studio or onstage.
Narrowing down the choices to three of the leading hardware and software contenders was tough. On the software side, I looked at three new and exciting plug-ins: Digidesign Strike ($299; RTAS; www.digidesign.com), Steinberg Groove Agent 3 ($299; Audio Units/DXi/VST; www.steinberg.net) and XLN Audio Addictive Drums ($239; Audio Units/RTAS/VST; www.xlnaudio.com). The pad controller roundup includes the Akai MPD24 ($499; www.akaipro.com), the Korg PadKontrol ($299; www.korg.com) and the M-Audio Trigger Finger ($249; www.m-audio.com).
VIRTUAL DRUMMERS
When using a virtual-drummer plug-in, you start by selecting a style. Within each style there may be multiple substyles or fills that can be deployed as needed in your arrangement. All programs that play beats will sync automatically to the tempo of the host sequencer and to the bar lines as well (assuming you’re in 4/4 time). Various controls can be used to customize the playback. For instance, you may find a Humanize knob for adding a bit of uncertainty or a Shuffle knob for adding swing.
All three of the programs discussed in this article give you full kits of real drums, which are multisampled at numerous velocity levels. All three have built-in effects and multiple outputs, so you can craft the percussion mix further in the host’s mixer and room ambience (distant mics), which can be dialed in to give depth to the sound. Beyond that, the features begin to diverge. For non-Pro Tools users, the choice may boil down to more styles (Groove Agent 3) vs. more production control (Addictive Drums).
SMACK THAT KIT
In keeping with Pro Tools’ record-producer vibe, Strike puts you “behind the glass,” giving you an extraordinary level of control over the mic blend (close mics, overheads and room mics were sampled for every drum) with which the kit was played. Because of the multimic setup and the detailed velocity layering, the more than 6 GB of sound data gives you fewer distinct drum sounds than some other software packages. You can swap in a different snare or kick from the factory set and tune, pan or bus the drums as needed, but Strike lacks the ability to load user samples. Each drum can be loaded in economy, mid or XXL mode, depending on how much RAM you have available.
The mixer section includes EQ, compression and two insert effects per channel strip. The effects include not only chorus, phaser and reverb but also an envelope-following multimode filter, tube saturation and a mic modeler. The drum-sound editing is more basic but includes both decay-time and attack-time knobs.
Strike serves up 50 musical styles, ranging from bebop and Brit rock to Texas boogie and West Coast funk. Each style contains about 30 patterns, including intros, verse and chorus grooves and fills. The styles are terrific. All are played on trap kits—Strike doesn’t do hand percussion.
The Style Editor section is a bit finicky to use, but being able to create your own styles or edit the factory patterns is useful and arguably more convenient than exporting MIDI data to a Pro Tools track. (Strike has no MIDI export for patterns.) Each drum hit in each pattern can be given not only timing and velocity but also a setting for Complexity Threshold. That interacts with the Complexity slider on the main page to determine whether or not the hit will sound during playback. With hi-hats, each hit can be closed, closed-tip, half-open, pedal, open, tip-open or tip half-open.
Strike has two modes for responding to MIDI input. You can trigger individual drum sounds, for instance to add an extra kick before the chorus, or use MIDI notes to switch from one pattern to another without interrupting playback. Strike runs only within Pro Tools and uses an iLok dongle for copy protection.
CALL YOUR AGENT
After announcing it in the fall of 2006, Steinberg delayed the release of Groove Agent 3 (GA3) for several months. The full version should be available by the time you read this. Fortunately, the plug-in knocked me out; all the styles I auditioned sounded authentic and usable, and the samples were crisp and realistic.
I counted 108 styles, which are organized in categories (jazz, Latin, “moods,” blues, country, pop, dancefloor, rock, world, “music academy,” heavy, hip-hop, electronica, modern pop and club). Each style includes a kit of sounds and a big bunch of grooves and fills. Normally, you’ll select the sounds and groove style together, but the two can easily be unlinked, so you can play a blues groove with an electronica kit, for example. The mix-and-match potential is huge. A few of the styles are in non-4/4 time signatures.
My prerelease download of the final software included 2.6 GB of drum samples. There’s lots of multivelocity switching, and many of the sounds are provided in both dry and ambient versions, which are mixed with the Ambience knobs. Decay time, tuning, panning and level are also adjustable for each of the eight drums in a kit, but GA3 lacks individual filters. You can replace one or more of the drums in a kit with others, even user samples. There are 12 stereo outputs, and compression and 9-band graphic EQ are programmable per output.
After selecting a style, you can nudge the Complexity slider up or down for both the basic groove and the fill. Altering Complexity isn’t just a matter of adding snare ghost notes and such: More complex versions may switch from hi-hat to ride cymbal, add extra kicks or tom runarounds and so on. Fills can be added manually by clicking on the button during playback or automatically every 2 or 4 bars. If you need six or eight different fills, the easy way to do it is to capture GA3’s MIDI output to a sequencer track. It can then be edited freely, using all of your sequencer’s features. The bounce-MIDI-to-track feature is a bit more work than drag-and-drop, but it’s manageable.
GA3 can also run as a ReWire slave or stand-alone. This variety of formats may give it an edge over Strike in the market. It’s copy-protected using the Syncrosoft dongle system.
Go to the next page of this article
 |
Fill in the form below and click Order Now! to get two years (24 issues) for just $14.97 - the regular price of one year. But HURRY - this offer won't last forever! (U.S. orders only please) |
This data will be sent directly to Remix Magazine and will not be used for any other purposes. |
|
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
