Suitable Drum VSTi Player (help?)

Virtual instruments Virtual Effects and Add-ons
1

Hi folks,

I have Groove Agent 3 and I am very happy with the drum samples in it. And also happy with the majority of the patterns (as I play mostly Jazz/Blues/Fusion/Latin), though more variety would be welcomed.

Ultimately, what I am really looking for is something like Groove Agent 3 which will :-

Have many pre-programed grooves/patterns in its library,

An emphasis on Jazz/Blues/Latin/Fusion/Rock,

Intro’s and Endings, as you have to manually create this data by writing it in on the Midi piano-roll page (or playing it in on an external midi keyboard) in GA3. As far as I can see, GA3 will only provide the patterns which are usable for when the song has begun its typical 8/16 bar sequences (ie. Verse/Chorus/etc). But does not offer a ‘solo pick-up fill’ into the top of the song or a ‘4 x bar Intro’ before you get to the top of Verse One,

A more ‘tradition’ type layout (quasi drum kit or drum machine) because I am not too keen on the more modern ‘beat box’ (call them what you will !) players,

Something that does not require ‘Vienna’ library as I do not have Kontakt,

Ability to buy ‘Expansion Packs’ if desired,

And a software which integrates well with Cubase Artist 7.5 and is fairly easy to use !



I wondered what anyone thought of this package. I am not sure if they are actual Samples or if they are just Midi Files of the patterns? They mention the format BFD but I have never heard of that before? I wondered if this collection had Intro’s/Endings because there are over 2,000 files in the package. However, it is priced CHEAP so I am guessing it might not be very good :-

http://www.platinumsamples.com/ps/RealJazz.php



This one by Platinum features drummer Peter Erskine (who is totally awesome of course) but I really do not like his cymbal sounds here at all (esp. the Ride which is very clangy !!) :-

http://www.platinumsamples.com/ps/PeterErskineGrooves.php



And I looked at the Toon Track Roots which I think is an add on to the Superior Drummer which seems to be a very popular VSTi :-

Sorry if the questions here are a little basic but if I do decide to make a purchase then I want to be sure it is the right one for me. My other option is to wait for Groove Agent 4 to be released but I am not too sure what the criteria and spec’s are of this long awaited software?

Thanks in advance and any advice is greatly appreciated as always. I hardly ever visit any other forums nowadays because I enjoy and value the responses I get on here !

Best,

Paul David Seaman

2

While it will be interesting to see what GA4 brings to the table, it looks like Toontrack’s EZ Drummer 2 is a nice drum machine tool. Even nicer that it is available now. Take a look at the following video for a taste of what it can do. This video is slated for sales but if you look beyond that you will see it is a pretty nice program.

I would be interested in your comments on the video and EZ Drummer 2.

LB

3

Maybe you have a look at jamstix3. The patterns are countless, because they are generated while you play.
While it has a learning curve, you can get great results. Jamstix can output midi too.

4

Gee, that’s a hell of a piece of software ! All that ‘limb management’ and different ‘priorities’ etc ! I think you would have to be Gadd or Weckle to do the thing justice !

Thank you for sharing that Voodoo. Do you have this program yourself ?

It reminds me (on something I am lacking in either Artist 7.5 or GA3), I would like a drum software which will give me multiple Outputs (say, 8) so that I can PAN individual drums (or whatever) however I wish. At the moment I only seem to have 2 x Out’s available.

Ta,

Paul

5

yes, i have and use it for years. I started with v1. :smiley:
I use the percussion-modul (addon) very often.

Its not so bad. You can select a drummer and a pattern/style and simply start und you will get great drums without tweaking anything. But you can talk to the drummer and say him how you want him to play. Its more like synthesizing the drummer. And that without beer :slight_smile:
There are many drummer-styles with different behaviour (loose, late, hh-frreak, snare-groover, fill-master and so on.)

btw. jamstix has multiple audio-outs and midiout. You can export midi-files too, if i remember corrctly

There is a demo you can try. Simply load kit, drummer, style and tweak the powerknob. Its great fun.
…and finally another vid, to show how it works today (it got many updates)

6

Ta Voodoo,

What about Intro’s/Endings and ‘pick-up bar fills’ ? Like on old drum machines where you could press the Start button and also have the option to trigger a ‘pre-fill’ into the Introduction of a song. And similarly an ‘ending fill’ into the very last bar of the song.

Paul

7

you can create fills and accents on the fly. All the other things are possible, but you must declare that in the songstructure.

8

Yes, I saw that in the video where you state IVVCVVCE etc. And then this appears in the Song Structure in the left hand column.

So for what I wanted (eg. a 2 x beat solo drum fill into Bar One of the Introduction), would you write something like :-

Fill 2 x beats / ‘I’ 4 x Bars / ‘V’ 8 x bars / etc… (like in the CSI New York theme tune !).

9

Thanks LBro,

I see that’s a 27 x mins tutorial so I will take a look in the morning cheers.

Paul

10

basically you define the part (fill, chorus, verse - which means different algos and settings for the drummer), define the length (bars), how often it will repeat and if there are transition- and/or repetition-fills.
You can import midi-grooves too, and let them play with a jamstix-dummer. The will alter them with their style. Great fun.I
Its difficult for me to describe this all. My english is a huge mountain :wink:

btw. you can define all parts and map them to a midikey in livemode for triggering the parts on the fly… I wasnt correct with my previous post. I dont use this feature.

I think, if you have further interest, you should install the demo. Maybe its for you, maybe not :wink:

11

Ok, I will look into it mate, thanks a lot. There are lots of videos on You Tube as you know. As mentioned, I am kind of hoping GA4 will satisfy all my needs and desires, but at this moment in time I (we) can only speculate. :question:

12

I took a look at one of the videos for jamstix3 and it looks rather impressive. I then went up to the website and looked over the pricing and other details for jamstix3. Something that caught my eye was the size of the libraries for the sounds. Even with the biggest, most expensive package complete with many if not all add on’s it comes to about 4.5 GB of sound samples. As a comparison Superior Drummer’s Metal Foundry expansion pack is 18 GB itself. Now it may be that jamstix3 has plenty of sounds and samples to keep one going a long time. But that is the one thing I noticed that stuck out to me.

I see they make both 32 and 64 bit plugs so no problems there…

LB

13

Good point lbro44.
The sounds are good for composition within jamstix, but mostly you dont want to use them in a song :wink:
I use jamstix as my drummer triggering an external vsti (directly or with midi-export) like GA, Maschine, EZdrummer and so on.

14

Thanks for your observations. I visited the website but overlooked that aspect (I was concentrating on the tutorials etc). Maybe Voodoo can offer some light on this…

15

So you only use it (Jamstix) to create the song-structure and patterns etc, and then use it to play different Drum VSTi’s ? Is that because you prefer the patterns on Jamstix but prefer the drum-samples in other VSTi libraries ?

16

Jamstix is very good in creating unheared patterns. So i use jamstix to create patterns mostly. Not all the time and in every song, but Jamstix can create very human drumpatterns or parts of a drumpattern like the hihat-track.

But the sounds from jamstix are mostly not good enough for an actual production. You can use them for sketching the song or jamming. But after all you will use an external sound to finish a song.

17

Ok Voodoo, I understand now mate ! Cheers.

18

Well it does look good in action and from what you say the manipulation of drum patterns is what it really excels at. Yet I wonder if a guy starting out with possibly limited funds might be better off with a VST drum package that includes good samples and a reasonable drum pattern editor? Kind of like the idea in this scenario where you end up with a complete package. Then down the road one could add jamstix if they felt the need to do so. I am tempted to buy one of the bare bone starter packages of jamstix and see what it can do. Thanks Voodoo for the recommendation.

LB

19

Well, the TO was happy with the ga3-sounds. He was searching for patterns and variations. Its no problem to trigger ga3 from jamstix. At least it wasnt a problem with ga1.
While there are many vsti with patterns out there, i found it very boring to browse these pattern and prelisten them. And often you are not very happy with them. And thats the jamstix-playground. Its not for everyone, but worth to try the demo.

20

This is true, as there are some decent sounds in GA3. For not a ton of money he could use Jamstix as a good front end to produce or trigger just like you say. I might look into it with just that in mind. Will it produce recordable MIDI patterns? I know what you mean about searching through endless patterns looking for just the right groove! So I like the you describe how Jamstix works. I have to look again and see if there is a demo.

Thanks,
LB