Published on June 1st, 2003.
Author: Kevin.Rossiter
Category: Audio Articles.

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Drumming for non-drummers:

I am not a drummer … repeat not a drummer. Keyboards, yes. Guitar, some. Drums, no! Then why is it that so many people now tell me that they like my drums? I use FXpansion’s DR-008 and Music Lab’s Slicy Drummer and Fill-in Drummer. And that’s what’s made the difference.

It’s a unique combination that will give pro results to the non-drummer. Let’s take a look and see how this works.

Why DR-008?

DR-008 from FXpansion combines the best of Native Instruments Battery and Waldorf’s Attack, and more besides. It plays back drum samples and also has a drum synthesiser built-in.

Any drum sample can easily be previewed in the DR browser with a right mouse click, dragged onto a pad, and then triggered by any note on the keyboard.

No fiddling, just quick and easy. The picture shows how simple the DR layout is.

When a pad is triggered to play back a sample, the pad lights up, so you can see exactly what’s going on at all times. On other drum machines I’ve used have a tiny little light that is barely visible when a pad is active.

The DR lights the whole pad a nice bright blue so there’s no mistake.

This is how complex kits become easy to manage. Everything can be seen on one screen.

This is also a fairly important and often underestimated point, as technology is so often a barrier to making music. Ever been sidetracked into the manual then forgotten about the song you were supposed to be doing?

Now, if you’re a non-drummer like me, and you don’t care that much about the fancy stuff, you can be confident you’re getting a very high end spec with the DR. Go to KvR and check it out if you’re in any doubt.

Here’s a picture of how technical it can get with everything opened up. Quite impressive.

For most people, what makes a drum machine go the distance is the sounds.

The DR’s Drum Synth section actually contains 12 different drum synths. The interface for making drum sounds is fairly impenetrable for a novice, but it doesn’t matter that much as there are a shedload of presets to play with. You have 808 and 909s galore to play with, and a monster kick machine and so on. Even a tambourine machine.

Samplewise, you get 800mb of samples free with the DR.

Let me tell you about some of them.

There’s a choice of GM kits, and the Wizoo Live kit (nice), plus all sorts of world percussion, dub, hip hop, dance, trance, rock and techno kits. Not all of these are velocity sampled, but quite a few of them provide enough samples for you to make up your own velocity kits if you feel the need.

Looking on my drive, I see 95 DR kits, of which 25 of them are over 10mb in size. And it will import Battery and LM-4 kits, with velocity samples automatically taken care of. Load and go.

 

Drumming isn’t easy, especially without the right musical equipment. You can find the best selection of yamaha and pearl drum sets at zzounds.com. If you were looking for an alternative, you could also try a drum machine as well.

Moving on to the mixer.

The mixer is central to drum production. The DR has 16 outs, which you can configure to suit. Setting levels and pans becomes a breeze. And once you’ve set the mixer for a certain kit, the DR remembers it for next time, which means you can quickly recall everything you need about that great kit you used 3 months ago, knowing everything will still be there, ready to use.

So that’s the DR. Bags of good quality sample and synthesised kits, easy and quick to use, and bags of high end features if you want to explore, and create original drum sounds.

Why Slicy Drummer?

Slicy Drummer makes drum riffs. It does it very well. And it does it all from one front screen. The picture shows this very well. Everything is there to be seen where you need it. No hidden menus.

Available immediately are 13 different drum styles, from pop to dance to rap to hip-hop and rock. No bossanovas here.

And each of these 13 styles contains 10 loops. So that’s 130 loops. And each one has a Dance, 8 beat and 16 beat version to suit the tempo or feel of your music.

But say you load a loop and aren’t happy about the snare. Click the Transform button and the snare part will be transformed into a new snare part. Keep clicking until you hear what you like. The same goes for every part, with up to 6 parts per loop. Six!

 

If you now like the loop, but maybe not quite, then click Edit and you can edit out the beats you don’t like, or add extra beats. This is very quick to do. Spectrasonics Stylus can do similar things, and so can Steinberg’s Groove Agent.

But Slicy Drummer does this extremely easily, all on one screen. It works as fast as you do. Once you’re happy with the loop, you can add swing to give it a groove, or humanise it with a variety random velocity levels and ranges.

So why Slicy and the DR-008?

With Slicy you can pick your loops and customise the beats to get your own sound. I’ve been playing with it regularly for months, and there’s still miles of possibilities I’ve never even begun to look at.

Then you can play the loops back in the DR with the kit of your choice. Slicy can trigger a straight GM kit, or trigger the most monstrous kicks and nasty snares, as each instrument in Slicy can be quickly allocated to a pad in the DR with a simple right mouse click.

There are no hidden or awkward menus to do this is as Slicy is integrated directly into the DR interface as a pad. It’s not separate, it’s an integrated part of the DR.

Say, allocate Slicy to the note C5 pad in the DR, then hit C5 on your keyboard and the loop plays. If you have different Slicy loops allocated to 10 DR pads you can play it live, a loop under every finger as it were.

So instead of importing loops into your sequencer, you can easily make them up in Slicy with the DR. This is quite fantastic.

Previous to Slicy and the DR, I had to go through the chore of finding suitable wav loops, importing them and then slicing them in a beat slicer to get the tempo right. And I had to do this with every single loop. It was a chore I had to go through whether I felt like it or not.

Now it’s all at my fingertips, on straightforward screens, that don’t have hidden menus to hide away essential functions. And they’re all 24 bit, up to the quality of my drum kits.

What’s Fill-In Drummer?

Fill-In Drummer works in a broadly similar way to Slicy, except that it provides you with the fills, whether Intros, Breaks, or Outros. And it does this in a variety of different styles, with each beat fully editable or transformable as you require.

Once you’ve got the idea of Slicy, then Fill will seem natural. Like Slicy, you allocate Fill to a DR pad, select your fill loop, and play it. Take a look at the picture. It looks quite like Slicy. And it is.

Fill will give the polish to your drum tracks that will make them sound pro. And there’s the added bonus that Fill will import midi files. So if you have a collection of midis you like, you can play them inside Fill, alongside your Slicy Loops, inside the DR.

 

Adding it all up.

The DR on its own is a class act, but it’s only as good as the beats you give it. Slicy and Fill give you those beats in a unique and easy to use way. And yet because everything is quickly customisable, you’ll always sound different. And we haven’t even begun to consider the effects you can add once all this goes into your host mixer, I frequently like to add delay to snares and trash my high hats. But that’s another story. Virtual drummers are new right now. And every offering has something in its favour, like vinyl recorded kits and so on.

But the DR with Slicy and Fill gives you a lot of flexibility with ease of use. You can choose your kit from 800 mb of DR free samples, or import a Battery or LM-4 kit, or just make one up from your collection of wavs.

You can pick from 13 drum styles with many variations on each, then customise them. And then add professional sounding fills. And you can edit these very easily from a single front menu, whether you’re in DR, Slicy or Fill.

You can be a drummer.

Review brought to you by: Member: Kevin Rossiter. www: TraXmusic.Org & rossiterandco.com.

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