EZdrummer

[wooster]

Hi all

I did have a thread about drums I started but I cannot locate it! Has it gone missing? Been deleted? Am I losing my marbles? Weird!

Anyway, i had troubles with this app. I had difficulties with installation and combination of this, not much support, and the really short trial period ( 7 days might be fine if they were on the ball with helping you use it but they're not ) meant I hardly had a chance to trial it.

Anyway, I've watched a few videos of people using it and even though I'm not too enamoured with their general approach to customer service, information available, and general helpfulness, I am toying with buying it as so many say it is worthwhile.

I want it to help me put down drums when writing songs so is the songwriter edition the one to go for? I keep hearing the standard EZD2 app with Nashville is pack is very versatile or would I be better just buying the songwriters edition and leaving it at that? Or should I save some cash and just buy the EZ2 alone?

Thanks for your help

[Kerbie]

Originally Posted by wooster

Hi all

I did have a thread about drums I started but I cannot locate it! Has it gone missing? Been deleted? Am I losing my marbles? Weird!

I just looked through all the threads you've started and I didn't see anything about drums. I believe they're also available to you through your statistics in your user control panel. Let me know if I can help.

[wooster]

Originally Posted by Kerbie

I just looked through all the threads you've started and I didn't see anything about drums. I believe they're also available to you through your statistics in your user control panel. Let me know if I can help.

Hi

Thank you for your reply. I can't find it either! As I say it's entirely possible I've lost the plot and deleted it or something but I cannot remember doing that.

Anyway, it's no biggie I was just asking for help finding a drum programme and a lot of folks mentioned EZdrummer which I tried and eventually sort of got working but not long enough to make a judgement.

I've watched a lot of videos since and it looks like it's a good app so I might just have had bad luck: I 'm going to believe that's the case and buy it. Justn some help with the best one to go for so hopefully some of the good people on AGC will have the answer

[slowhand]

Another option https://www.powerdrumkit.com/

[jim1960]

I never had the original EZDrummer but I had EZDrummer 2 and there were plenty of tutorials on YouTube to help you figure out how to use the program. I moved on to Superior Drummer 2 at some point and now use Superior Drummer 3. I've found the entire line to be quite excellent but it does require time and effort to get what you're after. It usually takes me about 3 hours to put together a drum track, but some of that may be because I'm not a drummer and I do not have a drummer's intuition for what should come next so I'm probably auditioning a lot more of the midi segments than others would ...then again, if I were a drummer with a drummer's intuition, I wouldn't need Superior Drummer.

Anyway, so far as learning the program, YouTube is your friend.

[wooster]

Thank you for that information base on your experience. It confirms i got off to a bad start but that its probably what I'm after. I'm no drummer either

Given my needs and the options I mentioned, is there a particular pack you'd recommend for me starting out with the program?

[BoneDigger]

I use both EZDrummer and Superior Drummer. Admittedly, it becomes quite addictive and expensive. I love the Nashville EZX and I also have maybe 20 others. The Latin one is cool. Americana, Indie, Vintage Rock, Blues, Jazz, Big Band, etc. All have their plusses.

Take the time to learn how to build songs with it and it is very useful. You can also go to Groove Monkee and buy midi drum tracks for cheap and use them in EZ Drummer/Superior Drummer. Honestly, I personally find EZDrummer much more user-friendly, but Superior sounds better and has more functionality.

[Glennwillow]

Hi Wooster,

I can see why you have had some frustrations learning to use EZ Drummer. I don't think it's all that intuitive, but as Jim notes, YouTube can really help you with tutorials.

My son, who does music composition for video games came over and gave me a tutorial and showed me a fast way to do things. He is a very good, intuitive kind of drummer, so his way of using the software is not my way. He likes to build his own patterns and he is super fast at it. I find that way too tedious and frankly, because I am not a drummer, I don't trust myself to make patterns that are even playable by a real drummer.

My approach is to use filters in the program and search for recorded patterns and fills that match what I am trying to do. I then assemble those patterns and build a drum track that way. Jim noted that it takes him about 3 hours to build a drum track. That's about what it takes me, too, in some cases.

One way I found to make a drum program faster is to just use a basic pattern for the entire song with no fills. Then, I can record a scratch track along with that drum track and then figure out where I need fills. Then I go back to EZ Drummer and find fills in that same style and replace measures where I need the fills. This speeds things up for me a great deal so that I can get a drum track done in maybe one hour or maybe an hour and a half.

I use the standard EZ Drummer program for about $150. My son also bought me an expansion pack called "Americana" that sells for another $79. The songwriter's package includes a whole lot more stuff and costs $250. It includes:

* EZdrummer 2 drum software, plus 6 world-class collections of production-ready drum MIDI performances
* Includes Songwriters Drumpack 1/2/3/4 and Songwriters Fillpack 1/2
* Approximately 2,800 individually played grooves and fills
* Covers a wide range of musical styles, tempos, and time signatures.

I'm happy with what I have, but I don't do anything terribly exotic with drums. The basic program for $150 allows building good drum programs for folk and country and rock. If you are doing other stuff, maybe the songwriter's package makes sense.

I did recently invest in Band-in-a-Box 2021 for $99. I think it's useful as a songwriting tool. You can lay your song out measure by measure with the chord changes and choose a song style and have an arrangement of drums, bass, piano and other instruments fairly quickly. I used BIAB recently to help me arrange Bob Seger's "Against the Wind". I discussed how I used BIAB for this recording in this thread.

I didn't care for the drum sounds from BIAB when I got down to recording so I laid out a 2nd drum track next to the BIAB drum track in my DAW (Cubase) and then used EZ Drummer to pretty much duplicate the BIAB drum track except that the EZ Drummer samples sounded much better. Then I erased the BIAB drum track.

The point is, BIAB is a good songwriting tool and it can save you time. It might be something to consider. You don't have to use the tracks it generates in your songs once you start doing recording, but it can give you a head start to speed things up. If you're not a piano player (as I am not), BIAB can build you a passable piano track, for example. Or, you may want to use the bass track. Or, you may simply want to know what your song sounds like with a full arrangement before you go to the trouble of doing a multi-track recording.

- Glenn

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by wooster

Thank you for that information base on your experience. It confirms i got off to a bad start but that its probably what I'm after. I'm no drummer either

Given my needs and the options I mentioned, is there a particular pack you'd recommend for me starting out with the program?

Americana, Nashville, and Traditional Country might be the most useful for singer/songwriter stuff.

Once you have enough drum choices, a way to save money with Toontrack is to buy midi packs. They give you the midi segments without the drum kit. You can use midi from an expansion with any kit, so it's more rhythmic choices. But don't be in a rush to buy the add-ons. This stuff goes on sale in November-December and you can get some great deals then. They may even run a summer sale but I'm not positive I'm remembering that correctly.

One of the things I do when I build a track is to listen to music of a similar vein and get an idea for how drums change during a song and where fills should go. As I said, none of those things, especially fills, are intuitive to me but if I pay attention to other songs, I get a good sense of where they should be.

For what it's worth, my usual method is to get all the basic patterns down first and add the fills last.

Also, when you start stringing midi segments together, you don't have to use the entire segment. I often find myself using the front half or the back half.

To give you an idea of what the program can do, I did the drums for this on Superior Drummer 3 but I used midi from various EZDrummer expansions.

[tdq]

I just use super basic drum tracks, pretty much as fancy click tracks to back jam tracks or when working out ideas (I find click tracks annoying) so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I tried a few free drum kits, EZ Drummer and MT-PowerDrumkit but then I found the "Steven Slate Drums" free kit. It has an upgrade path, but for my purposes it's plenty. For some reason I found it easier to use than the others.

[wooster]

Thank you everyone for your help. Thank you for your detailed response, Glenn and I am indebted to you for giving me some insight into your methods. I really don't want to try anything too complex at least initially and will stick to simpler rhythms with some fills thrown in much as you mentioned. I'm a bit beleaguered with software learning curves so I will leave BIAB for the time being and concentrate on learning to get better with Logic and EZdrummer.


Jim your track sounds awesome, it's really good stuff and probably beyond my capabilities for the time being at least but an impressive demonstration of what is possible with EZdrummer.

I gather from what you are all saying that expansions are more to do with different sounding kits or recordings but that I can buy midi packs more cheaply which will put all the fills and fancy stuff onto any kit I have including the two basic kits that come with the basic software. Have I got that right?

If so, then the songwriter pack might be up my street and I could wait for other expansions if I was after a particular sound. OTOH it doesn't sound like I would have too much limitation with the basic EZ2 software.

[KevWind]

I don't use EZD so no specific help with packs etc. . BUT I do use both Slate Drums and Reason .

For me also not being a drummer, Yes it is a learning curve (but that's just part of the process) . Also while certainly not a requirement, because drums can be programmed in from from scratch (and there are guys that are very fast at it ). But if you decide it is something you are going to keep doing, then there are two things I highly recommend considering for the future.

#1 If you also plan on using any other VI's like strings flutes pianos etc, a midi keyboard 25 key or 49 key , 49 is what I use . Or if you are really only interested in drums then the other option is a midi pad controller
The reason I suggest is (for me) when I start a drum part (usually either kick or snare) I like playing it in (usually to click) as opposed to editing in.

#2. IMO learning how to route each individual drum kit element to its own individual rack (kick to its track , snare to its track , cymbals to a track etc.) which means you can use FX's individually as opposed to globally on one combination drum track

The good news is you need only set this up once in your DAW then you can make them part of your user defined presets (I don't use Logic ) but I am guessing that like Pro Tools you create both overall user project templates (which could include a multitrack drum section with EZ drummer already routed to the individual tracks ) and or user defined track presets with the same thing.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by wooster

I gather from what you are all saying that expansions are more to do with different sounding kits or recordings but that I can buy midi packs more cheaply which will put all the fills and fancy stuff onto any kit I have including the two basic kits that come with the basic software. Have I got that right?

Yes, the expansions all come with a drum kit and midi segments. The midi packs are the midi segments without a drum kit and they're much cheaper. An EZ2 expansion package runs about $80. You can get a 6 midi bundle for about $120 and choose any six midi sets you want.

At some point you really have enough kit choices and the midi becomes the key to getting drum tracks you like. For singer/songwriter stuff, the Americana and Nashville expansions will likely cover 99% of your needs so far as kit sounds are concerned. I'd suggest getting those at some point and then expanding your midi choices.

Originally Posted by wooster

If so, then the songwriter pack might be up my street and I could wait for other expansions if I was after a particular sound. OTOH it doesn't sound like I would have too much limitation with the basic EZ2 software.

You can get a sense of what the midi for each pack is about if you listen to the samples available on the Toontrack site. There's a page with all the midi sets. If you hover your mouse over any of them, you can click on the play button that pops up and hear some samples. Or right click and open a new tab or window for a pack, scroll down until you see the Audio Demos button, click it, and an interface pops up along the bottom of the screen that lets you scroll through some demos of that pack.

Something to note... some of the midi packs are the same midi included with expansion kits, some are not. The website tells you so you can avoid redundant purchases. For example, if you look at the Americana midi page, it says at the bottom of the description, "Please note that this is the same MIDI as included in the Americana EZX." So if you own the Americana expansion, you shouldn't buy the midi pack for it because you already own it. Some midi packs are not associated with an expansion kit so those grooves are only available by buying the midi pack.

But spend some time listening to the samples from packs you might be interested in. As your listening, keep in mind it's a small sample. The included midi grooves will run the gamut from pretty simple to very fancy and the samples tend to showcase things that lean to the fancier side.

Another thing worth mentioning is that you don't have to use the midi editor in EZDrummer. I've found it easier to just drag the midi from the Groove Library right onto an instrument track in my daw (Pro Tools in my case) and edit there. I find it's much easier to line things up that way, plus I can copy and paste grooves in my daw as needed. Eventually though, people will figure out a workflow that makes sense for them.

[FrankHudson]

Drums hard. Good drums, harder. I feel like I'm channeling the Muppet's Animal.

I have tried EZDrummer. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't make much use of it, but that's me. My impressions were that there's a lot of "inexpensive razor/sell the blades" aspects to that product as each add-on pack gives you a finite bunch of stuff. One thing I liked about it was it was easy to play your own track of accent hits, an added percussion device, or simple bass drum/snare feels using inexpensive keyboard finger pads or even mouse clicks to play the drum sounds.

Did you say you have Apple Logic Pro? Logic's Drummer has a great deal of flexibility available under a first layer surface that's easy to use. Yes, it does take some playing around to use all that it can do (that may be unavoidable...) but you can do some nice stuff with it. One thing Logic's drummer temps you to do that can make it useful if you are a good rhythm player on guitar: it can be asked with a checkmark option to try to follow your feel with the bass/snare pattern -- and then in a slightly more complex move, it can beat map a track you record of your acoustic and make the drums tempo follow your tempo changes.

Glenn's tip of using a simple drum pattern as effectively a click track (though with the additional timbral accents of a real drum sounds that may make it easier for some of us to feel the beat) as a "scratch" track while recording your basic tracks is a great one. When I do that. after using a simple unchanging drum pattern, I then create new segments and variety afterward in the drum track by playing around with the Logic Drummer setting for a chorus, verse, bridge, etc.

[Chipotle]

Workflow can vary a lot too. I prefer to use drum plugins (I have Steven Slate and others mentioned here, also free DrumMic'A from Sennheiser) for their sounds, but use the MIDI editing capability inside Reaper. I may program a basic beat from scratch with the piano roll editor, or sometimes just grab a simple MIDI pattern from the drum plugin, drag it into Reaper and tweak from there.

Reaper can quantize, "humanize" timing and velocity, and other stuff in its own MIDI editor. Your DAW, of course, may differ.