Hey Steinberg, I like the sound of the Groove Agent SE4 acoustic kits, but how about including patterns that are LABELED WITH TECHNICAL DESCRIPTIONS, NOT QUIRKY NAMES. “Brighton” and “Einstein” mean nothing. Hey, Mr. Drummer, give me a “Bessie” feel.
OK, rant over. I’m looking for good drum patterns that I can use in my productions. I’ve made my own drum parts for 30 years, but I know that real drummers can do better than I can, so I’m not too proud to use a good feel, but I don’t like to waste my time auditioning patterns that have nothing to do with what I want. Any suggestions for useful 3rd party patterns?
Here are a few good ones, not sure if any have their files formatted for Groove Agent but they do include General MIDI and formats for most major Drum VSTi’s (Addictive Drums, Superior, Steven Slate, etc…):
For ages I was a big fan (still am) of Groovemonkee’s stuff. The parts I’d make for myself tended to range from fairly decent to not-very-good (weighted towards the latter). Pro generated parts usually sounded way better & more natural as drums. But the problem with pattern libraries is that while they are generic to a musical style they often are just a bit “off” for any specific song. This results in making the song fit to the drums instead of the other way around. That said it still sounded better than patterns I’d make.
This all changed a few years ago when I watched Eli Katzenberg’s (spelling???) video class on Groove3 (hey it’s a groovy day here) about how to think like a drummer when writing your own patterns. Now the parts I write sound both realistic and are appropriate to a specific song.