Swindon Music

Anybody know any good (realistic sounding) drum programs for the mac so i can record some new demos ?

Logic express with Ultrabeat

is that stand alone , i only have garageband .could download logic i guess but it wasn't very straight forward for me

No it isn't. Plus Ultrabeat isn't that good either.

Why do you need realistic sounding drums for demos? Standalone stuff would require rewiring into a DAW to actually record them, I doubt you can rewire into Garageband and it's hardly straightforward!

Basically , i have always been in bands and wrote songs . But at the moment i find my self in a covers-band that just wants straight covers ,no creative part at all . I desperately want to do my own stuff but have no band to play with .
The answer is start a band i know , but I'm in the RAF and as such are due to go to various s**t places for 2 months every 9 months or so . My last originals band (The Knott 2006-2007 ) didn't like this and got rid of me .
I would love to play in an originals band ,but i Don't know if they would put up with this s**t cycle im in .

So in the mean time I really wanna get the ideas and arrangements down in some sort of format . so i need drums to do this .

Any and all help full appreciated

Andy

EZ Drummer has a mass of loops and decent enough sounds, is standalone and not too pricey. Plus, you can use it with the awesome Superior Drummer sample sets (which I've just started using, and are amazing). Beware though, the Superior stuff is very CPU, RAM and HD intensive. Sounds brilliant though.

You might want to look into something like Logic, as it keeps everything within one piece of software.

Logic is the most unnecessarily difficult to learn. Even Pro Tools comes with a DVD to get you going, Logic just has a big manual and always referred to a message board for any help, which is pretty awful actually.
If you're looking for something to help you actually write songs and make demos, look at Ableton Live.

Jamstix is a minbogglingly good sequencer plugin for Mac or PC

see www.rayzoon.com

Just had a look a that jamstix program , look very good but its for windows

How do you write drum tracks in ableton live , looking at the videos doesnt really explain much

That's because they could be there for days explaining it all!

It's a bit confusing on first glance as it can used for a whole variety of tasks. If you have a structure already, then Arrange View works like any other sequencer.
If you just have a few ideas and want to build around them... Session View. Like if you had a guitar part, you can record it in and it'll loop it, then you can build up a drum loop and it'll loop that, then maybe try and work out a bass part and then if you have another guitar part (say like a chorus), you can record another loop and not lose the first, then build up other loops around that. Then you can play around with all these loops until you find a structure you are happy with, then record that, then go and tweak it all.
Just given away how 3SC works haha.

I thought you were saying Ableton was easy to learn!! They're all pretty similar these days anyway.

I personally quite like to mix and match when it comes to drums, for example, I prefer certain parts of my kit to be on one synth, and other parts to be on another synth. Helps give more control, and opens up more possibilities.

Depends what sort of drum sounds you're after, but I use:

Battery (Native Instruments)
Ultrabeat (Logic Pro)
Whatever I can hash together in Reason (Propellerhead)
Whatever other samples I can hash together

I find that if you use one plugin alone, it sounds like you're using one plugin, because you are. Try experimenting. For example, if you like a snare sound from one synth, don't be afraid to use just one synth for the snare, and a different one for the bass drum.

Hope this helps!!

ok , but what do you arrange all the parts in , im downloading ableton 7 , did have a copy of it on cd but its gone walkies . You know after all of this think it would be easier to form a band

Haha yeah!

I arrange my shizznit in Logic, but Ableton, Cubase and Protools are all equally good. My favourite was always Protools, but it's overpriced and I'm yet to use the new version - so I dunno.

Apologies - could have sworn there was a Mac version - doh