Subject:Slow drums!!!

Posted by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 7:23:49 AM

A few years ago I did a post asking if anyone had any idea where I could get slow beats. I still haven't found very many. I do slow alternative pop songs a la kings of convinience, norah Jones, Jack Johnson (slow songs), david grey. ...you know.....it's pretty straight up slow pop stuff with a good slow beat. I have some, maybe a dozen or so, but nothing special....can anyone suggest something for me? I'd really love to start using acid again, but it's furstrating when I can't find harly any drums in my style...not everyone uses acid to re-mix, or do techno. I find it hard to believe that I"m the only one who wants sometthing like this...cheers

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:5/7/2006 9:30:10 AM

Hey liquid...

What you need is to break away from using acid loops and start with Vsti's. My recommendation would be to get Fxpansions BFD 1.5 and ALL it's expansion packs.

http://www.fxpansion.com

http://www.fxpansion.com/product-bfd-main.php

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13

This will give you the BEST sounds at any beat and it has great routing features.

Workflow tip: In BFD you can go into it's "groove librarian" and audition it's midi drum patterns. Then when you find the ones you want you can:

1)Drag it to a "key" in bfd so that pressing on a note like "C5" will play back it's midi file.

or...

2)Drag the midi file from the groove librarian onto the acid timeline and loop it like audio.

And thats only scratching the surface.

HTH.

Ed.

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: luces1

Date:5/7/2006 10:04:55 AM

Actually Toontrack has just released theEZ Drummer. They have some flash presentations on thier site...www.toontrack.com or
www.toontracks.com (not sure about the "s")

This might be just what you're looking for.

SHTUNOT is correct,VSTi is the way to go for full tempo variety. Once I cracked that code...I have never looked back.

luces

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 10:06:21 AM

I've never even heard of this...I'm still using version 4, just bought 6 this week but hav n't recieved it yet. Sounds cool....I'll try and figure out what your talking about..hehehe

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 10:07:35 AM

Is this some kind of plug in??

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 10:07:58 AM

what is BFD

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 11:38:09 AM

So I'm figuring this out, sounds pretty cool. But how does it work in acid? I guess it's a vst plug in, but how do I get the midi grooves? Does it come with it? what is typically involved in using a track in acid....the sequence, like create track, insert effect, ...etc...thanks

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: luces1

Date:5/7/2006 3:46:20 PM

Which one are you asking about?

EZ Drummer comes with a library of midi files or as Acid 6 refers to them..midi clips. You should be able to :

1)Insert the plugin (yes it is a VSTi plugin)
2)Insert a midi track
3)find the EZ Drummer midi file you like
4)Simply drag and drop the midi clip from EZ Drummer to the Acid mid track.

Now I have not tried this in Acid,but this is how simple it is in Cubase.

Good luck,luces

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: Tobias7000

Date:5/7/2006 5:28:10 PM

I just ordered Stylus RMX. Spectrasonics makes that product. In fact Stylus appears to be a power house of an application... almost as rich as Acid with features).

Both Stylus and BFD might do the trick. However it appears Stylus RMX might be a powerhouse of variety with ability to change tempos, keep the strong tight drum sound, and even add different effects to each element in the drum loop!!! go figure how they did that! They also have a Chaos Feature that changes the loop occasionally to sound like a real drummer might. Here is the website: http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/stylusrmx.html

Tobias (can't wait to get my hands on Stylus RMX and plug it into AP6)

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/7/2006 7:53:38 PM

Hi...I really don't get it. I just watched the videos on this product and I'm wondering why you would buy this and also how it relaties to slow drums? This thing is just like acid as far as I can tell..it just loops a bunch of drum tracks together...am I missing someting?

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: luces1

Date:5/7/2006 10:09:12 PM

"Hi...I really don't get it. I just watched the videos on this product and I'm wondering why you would buy this and also how it relaties to slow drums? This thing is just like acid as far as I can tell..it just loops a bunch of drum tracks together...am I missing someting?"

Unfortunately,yes. I suggest that you find a tutorial,or try REALLY experimenting with what midi does and how it works in relation to soft synths/VSTi plugins. EZ Drummer is NOT like ACID. Acid actually time stretches and/or compresses audio in real time, where as EZ Drummer's midi clips are only "triggering" notes in the EZ Drummer library. The advantage to this "triggering" is that you are not subjected to the strange audio abnormalities of stretching audio too slow. Unfortunately,trying to teach midi and the like in this forum would take a LONG time.

So, you might consider searching the net or actually buying one of the many books or DVD's that specifically address the Acid paradigm.

Good luck,luces

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: liquid

Date:5/8/2006 8:31:36 AM

I understand the concept well. However, none of the programs seems to cater to slow drums. A slow groove isn't the same thing as slowing down and fast groove until it's slow. Wven if it's not streaching the audio, a fast beat slowed down sucks. I'm looking for slow smooth grooves. The bfd thing looks promissing, but the demos on their site are all medium tempos. I'm going to buy this product anyway, and give it a go since I'm pretty sick of loops too and the bfd looks very advanced. I'm just wondering, doesn't anyone else have slow groovey music? Love to hear slow stuff done in acid.

Subject:RE: Slow drums!!!

Reply by: dafduc

Date:5/8/2006 8:40:37 AM

eLab has some r&b drum loops that sound pretty good slow. They're modern r&b so they get a little busy, but there's good representation for tunes with slower tempos.

And Steinberg Groove Agent tends to sound a bit generic, but it actually does soup-stirring, and other slow styles. I'm having problems with the SE version in Acid 6.0 though.

Good luck,

Daf