What do you guys use for drums and percussion?

[Nx1]

I have like, 5 Wave Alchemy drum sample packs, and battery 3... ill polish them up all i can.. you know, compressors, the slightest bit of reverb, EQ's, perhaps a touch of filtering, the works really.. ive gotten to the point where they sound rather good, but im not completely satisfied. i cant seem to get the solid super polished drum sounds i hear in the tracks i listen to! (im big on techno might i add)

Which leads me to my question: what do you guys use for drums and percussion?

[Joefro]

I'm a beginner so I can't add much, but I've read a lot of people will layer several drums on top of each other to get a real fat bass kick or snare, for example. I've been experimenting with this lately and have been pretty happy

[Tarekith]

I'm a huge fan of Stylus RMX.

[Khazul]

Mostly samples in drum rack or NI battery sometimes augmented with operator. Sometimes use Stylus RMX, or D16 drum machines as well.

Main use of operator for me is using it to provide the weight of a kick drum, or the decay part of some other percussion sound, then using samples to provide the desired character.

Battery came with Komplete 7 so its wasnt a must have, though I find it really good for accoustic type drum programming (or snare rolls) due to its articulations.

For good solid kicks, then tends to be simple or sampler for a sample that I like, then a chain of operator and saturator waveshaper for the weight, compress both and I find T-Racks 'classic clipper' is nice on kicks (and bass). Har core FM programmings could probably do without saturator and jus get the overtones in operator - personally allways preferred the results of some gentle waveshaping as tweakign operator get too much like hearding kittens.

The early reflections from a decent reverb will help alot in giving your rythms parts some nice sense of space without mushing the sound - important for dryer sounding music styles. Some of slap reverb on claps and snares can be good as well - both doable with lives built in reverb - I tend to use a combination of aether and breeze alot for a basic snare/clap tail, or EOS/toraverb/rp-verb if more character or for occasional long reverb washes.

Also for house etc - can be worth making a submix of all parts (or even several submixes - snares+claps, tops, percussion etc) apart from the kick and pumping that that submix very gently from the kick. Hi hits can stand alot more to give them a little more of a groove and sometimes you might want the snare/clap hit hard by a kick pumped compressor for alot of house/trance etc.

A nice thing for Stylus RMX, I do mostly like the character FX included in RMX which unsurpringly seem very good for abusing drums.

[macmurphy]

ancient breaks processed through reaktor ensembles.
abbey road 60s and 70s drums from ni for lovely natural sounding acoustics.
geist for some electronic reinforcement of kicks and snares (layering is key) and more experimental garnish.

[muthafunka]

Would it be cheeky to say, "drums and percussion"?

[cycophilipp]

i cant seem to get the solid super polished drum sounds i hear in the tracks i listen to! (im big on techno might i add)

Which leads me to my question: what do you guys use for drums and percussion?

NI Maschine could solve your techno problems without eq or comp, but will not replace virtual acoustic drums

[macmurphy]

Would it be cheeky to say, "drums and percussion"?

yes. i ran it through the 'cheekometer'. it registered an 8.7

[The Leveller]

NI's 80s and Modern Drums, Live's Session Drums for acoustic.
Geist (I am an old Guru head though so the workflow makes sense, NTV swing FTW!)
Impulse for the stretch and time manipulation and automation. great for the conga, bongo timbales.
Audio samples (hate him if you must but I love the Xfer sample packs for massive kickage etc.)
Live shakers, dried beans in a tin, tambourine, whatever.

Reason I love using live shakers is you can really get the groove going and then extract the groove for use on other clips, muche easier than swimming around in the bloody groove pool trying to find somethig that works.

[Guff Tong]

Its worth pointing out that the tunes your hearing from the pro's have also been mastered to perfection using expensive hardware being operated by highly trained professional engineers.

+1 for the recording you own grooves tho Levels; i often just tap my laptop mic and do the same

[The Leveller]

That's never even crossed my mind...

[anybody human]

Reason I love using live shakers is you can really get the groove going and then extract the groove for use on other clips, muche easier than swimming around in the bloody groove pool trying to find somethig that works.

That's a great idea. I like to record shakers but I'd never thought of extracting the groove to use elsewhere. Great idea, thanks.

I have those common egg shakers but my sister got me a really nice African shaker that's polished, stained wood. It has a handle with 3 egg shakers on the end. It's pretty quiet and has a really smooth high end sound, way different than most shakers. Kinda cool.

[The Leveller]

Nice! I think its great to have loads of wierd perc stuff in your studio. My local music shop closed down and so I headed down there with a mind to snap up a load of perc stuff at a bargain. Waited 'til the Saturday. Boom, got down there. Closed for good.

[anybody human]

I'm a huge fan of Stylus RMX.

I've been interested in Stylus RMX for a long time because Omnisphere (1.5 update out soon, was supposed to be yesterday) and Trilian are so good. My question has always been, how good is it in terms of individual drums or One Hits if you're using it just to program beats? I don't use loops and that's it's main innovative feature. Do you think it would be worth it for just their One Hit drum sounds?

I'd be interested to hear your opinion on that aspect, thanks.

[polyslax]

I'd be interested to hear your opinion on that aspect, thanks.

Stylus RMX is an incredible drum tool imo. It goes light years beyond pre-packaged loops. 10,000 single hits, IIRC. Edit groups, Time - wow!, great fx. More importantly, the drums sound very good for a lot of applications.

I also use Superior Drummer, Drumcore, Battery, Maschine, MicroTonic and Guru.