[Sevla]

Can anyone give me some advice  on how to get good grooves and drums sounds into an arrangement?
I am using the drum machine in a Zoom HD16 - it may be my inability to program it i guess - but it always sounds like a machine. I have Cubase LE4 (which came with the machine) - if that  is likely to help.
I can get a real drummer to do it - but want a quickish way of trying arrangements out. Thanks

[tina m]

i had a drum machine for years & i used to use the preset rhythyms that came with it to start a song & then when i got the song going how i wanted it i would go back & just experiment with changing the drum pattern a bit to adjust it to fit my song better...trial & error dyou know what i mean  ....but it taught me how to program it in the end!

[seriousfun]

My suggestion would be to use the midi patterns that your zoomeramma machine is putting out and pasting it into a midi track in cubase and then find some decent free drum samples to use as replacement sounds. This gives you the rhythyms but with better sounds.

You could download Native Instruments Kontakt Player which is a free vsti and comes with loads of quality instruments including excellent drum kits.

If you want to spend some money, you could visit groove monkey and grab some of their midi drum files. Thay have thousands of them and they are very good.

G'luck.

[Sevla]

Thanks for your help on this.

tinam - this is pretty much the approach I have used i.e presets modified to suit - maybe I just need more practice .

seriousfun - there's some serious advice here that will take me a while to digest.  Sounds like I really need to bring my DAW skills up to date. But I guess its the way forward and I'll definitely give this a go.

How about drum loops? The HD16 has a loop sequencer which I have some experience of using. Has anyone unearthed a source for good drum loops in wav format or similar? Is this a good option?

Your help appreciated...........

[seriousfun]

I am no drummer so I rely heavily on loops for 99% of my productions. I have thousands of sets of loops and fills in both wav and midi. I find myself reaching for midi almost all of the time. It is just so easy to work with. I use ezdrummer as my host though often once I Have used ezdrummer to arrange my drum track I then replace it with Kontakt or halion with the drum kit of choice for the track. It is such a simple operation. I then add some effects and eq to get the sound I'm after. I am usually pretty happy with the sound I end up with for my drums.

[Mark Ryan]

Try Spectrasonics

[Boydie]

Hey SEVLA

I have used these before

The loops are WAV files but they are also separated into multitrack instruments so you have the kick, snare, hats etc. on different tracks

This enables you experiment with processing the individual tracks different and tailor your drum mix

The are also really reasonably priced

http://www.smartloops.com/products/multitracks/

[makingasong]

Use a more professional tool, like ezdrummer, works great!

Paul Raz
http://www.makingasong.com/

[Stephen Palmer]

EZ Drummer is the best I've worked with. It's incredibly flexible. You have to put a lot of effort into tweaking individual bars to get that authentic feel, but it really is worth it.