So, I'm pretty new to the DAW world despite having had a copy of the Magix
MusicMaker for a couple of years npw (mostly just playing around with it, because adulting and time constraints). I have a Behringer
U-Phoria UMC404HD USB Audio Interface and am not having any problems getting audio in to my system at all -- the setup works great.
My biggest problem is that I'm not a drummer, I'm a guitar player. And while I can play along with drums just fine, I'm... not a beat-maker. MM has libraries of drum samples, plenty of MIDI and audio plugins for drums, but while these things are all awesome, they're not... well, they're not a drummer. I can make MM play Sample 1 for 12 bars, then go to Sample 2 for 4, but there are no fills, nothing that doesn't sound like it's... well, a drummer. And I know it never will be, I get that.
Can anyone point me in a good direction for "getting started with drums for DAW"-type resource?
I don't know of one resource, but there are various forums out there and tons of youtube vids.
I'm no expert in the "world of drums" myself, and I'm a poor-to-middling keyboard drummer (there are some VERY good ones out there)
I also lack tons of patience when it comes to assembling drum tracks. This is why I appreciate Drummer (a plugin in Logic); it generates patterns and fills based on some presets, the tempo of the song, and various settings. Obviously if you don't have Logic that one is out.
Drums to me kind of fall into some broad categories:
- "real" drums that sound and play like a real drummer as close as possible; these are midi plugins/loops that trigger modeled or sampled real drums.
- drum loops, which are audio recordings of real drums or drum machines. Because they are audio the editing possibilities are limited and they are intended to only play at one tempo.
- drum machines, which have been around for decades in hardware form and also exist as plugins.
I'm partial to the first type, the midi-based plugins that come with real-sounding drums. These are mostly "loop based" (not to be confused with the audio "drum loops")--meaning their patterns are set loops of midi notes that can be altered somewhat by the plugin. Examples of these are Superior Drummer, EZDrummer, Addictive Drummer, various Native Instrument Kontakt instruments, and many others. You can purchase loops from companies like Groove Monkee that add greatly to the available patterns. You may also be able to add new kits (sounds) to the plugin; for example, EZDrummer has lots of expansions that contain both kits (samples) and patterns.
There are also a few "AI" (ok, hate that term so maybe "algorithmic" is better) that don't really use loops but rather come up with the patterns based on settings. Drummer is one of these. It sometimes can be a bit irritating when it creates a pattern that isn't quite what you had in mind for the settings
With any midi-based plugin, like Drummer, I can copy the midi out to a track and edit or add to it. But then I lose the ability to alter settings in the plugin, that's the downside of doing that.
Finally, your DAW of choice would have to support 3rd party plugins. On mac I use AU, pcs typically use VST (2 or 3). I think Pro Tools has its own different one. Almost all Daws support AU and VST at least but I'd still check into it before buying anything.
Based on my own research--if I didn't have Logic's Drummer and was basically starting from nothing, I'd be looking hard at EZDrummer3. It's one of the newest ones out there (version 3 at least) and has some really nice features and sounds great. Addictive Drums 2 is a lot older but still sounds good, and is cheaper (XLN audio is a great company as well). AD2 typically has bigger sales than anything by Toontrack, who is the developer of both EZ and Superior Drummer. As far as Superior goes--well, it's the big dog and comes at a big dog price!
Edit (since this is still the last post) - thought I'd mention BFD3. This is, or sorta was, another big dog. It's known for being maybe the most realistic drum library out there, and arguably the best-sounding. The problem is that it got bought up by someone and there have been...issues. There's also a pretty nasty copy protection deal that makes you be online with it every so often to 'check in'. The reason I'm mentioning it is that over the past year it's been as cheap as $49 , which is nuts compared to it's old price. Superior Drummer it's main competitor is mid-300s I believe and almost never has any real sale. BFD3 has an older, smaller interface that looks clunky on bigger modern monitors according to many and also the functionality is a bit arcane. I really debated picking it up but the fact is I'm pretty happy with Drummer generating the parts and my Kontakt libraries playing the sounds (a bit tricky to set up the first time but worth it!). Still, if you don't have anything it might be worth a flyer at that sale price. It doesn't seem to be abandonware, I believe it was updated for Apple Silicon and has seen some other updates.
My big general takeaways so far: