drum tracks / loops in complete songs

[Bad Mac 24]

I have been out of the recording hobby for a bit. Any suggestions where i could get some rock / heavy rock drum loops / tracks / midi tracks. Hoping to find some that are either complete song formats or are matched with beats, fills, intros, bridges etc.  Any suggestions ?

[twelvetone 22]

The internet is full of sites that host sample sets. Loops, esp. heavy drums, are the most common.

Some are construction kits of various kinds, so you may get a full loop accompanied by each instrument in its own loop.

Or with samples of the instruments themselves, so you can create your own variants or breaks.

[John Vere 636]

To start with the SI Drum kit has a bunch built right in. Pretty limiting but I have found some of them worked well for a starting point when looking for a drum machine groove to start a song going. I then replace everything in real time using a controller track by track. 

Open the SI Drum GUI, look on the list and open say the Jazz& Blues, Now grab the 12 bar and drop it into a empty midi track. These are groove loops so you can drag them out for the length of the song. Tip: zoom out so the 3 minutes shows as you whole screen. 

The problem with using loops is there are literally millions of them. To me it's just way faster to make my own drum patterns than spend hours digging through all that listening to them all. 

 

[Craig Anderton 710]

I've used the Discrete Drums loops by Chris Hughes for virtually all my projects since 2016 (except for the 2020 project, which is a different musical genre). Hard to find better IMHO, he's a pounder with finesse and style. 

You can hear the Discrete Drum loops on my albums Neo-, Simplicity, Joie de Vivre, and The Singles (except for the cut "Puzzle of Love"). 

[Bad Mac 24]

cool

next questions. What is "SI" ?  Folks still using ezdrummer ? I am looking form something that sounds good and i don't have to do much mixing with. setting levels is fine, but not wanting to have to eq etc. like i did with BFD. What is the go to drum software these days?

 

[scook 2,815]

SI is likely Studio Instruments, a suite of synths bundled with Cakewalk.

Ezdrummer 2 is a considerable step up from SI-Drums. There is  demo for it.

 

[John Vere 636]

I mentioned SI drums because if you have Cakewalk you have it. Myself I use both Session Drummer and Addictive drums both which came with Sonar versions. back when. SI Drums is very basic but at least better than using TTS_1 drums. 

[Alan Bachman 9]

3 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

I've used the Discrete Drums loops by Chris Hughes for virtually all my projects since 2016 (except for the 2020 project, which is a different musical genre). Hard to find better IMHO, he's a pounder with finesse and style. 

You can hear the Discrete Drum loops on my albums Neo-, Simplicity, Joie de Vivre, and The Singles (except for the cut "Puzzle of Love"). 

Thank you, Craig.  Where did you find these Discrete Drum loops?  I found this site below, but I am uncertain if it is the correct website:  https://www.sonomawireworks.com/discretedrums/  

 

Thank you!

Edited December 16, 2020 by Alan Bachman

[lapasoa 86]

I had EZ Drummer and Addictive Drums 2, both good drum sequencers.

Recently I bought Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 that is fabulous.

 

[msmcleod 2,230]

This has a bunch of grooves built in you can drag/drop to your tracks, and is also a great sounding drum VSTi:
 

 

BandLab Assistant has a bunch of loops you can use too.

[Starship Krupa 1,736]

There are MIDI loops that come with Cakewalk.

In the Browser, click on the tab at the top that says "Media." From there, the MIDI loops are in Cakewalk Content\MIDI Library.

[57Gregy 289]

On 12/15/2020 at 12:19 PM, Tracey A Meyer said:

I have been out of the recording hobby for a bit. Any suggestions where i could get some rock / heavy rock drum loops / tracks / midi tracks. Hoping to find some that are either complete song formats or are matched with beats, fills, intros, bridges etc.  Any suggestions ?

I don't think you will find complete song drum loops, but there are thousands of popular songs in MIDI format that you could download and remove everything but the drums if you wanted. Some cost money, but there are many that are free. A little slicing and dicing to fit your idea for your song and wala, a complete song drum track.
But you could do that with the supplied loops, and it's not that hard.
Or, get a cheap MIDI keyboard and play in your own drums. Again, not too difficult.
Welcome to the forum.

Edited December 17, 2020 by 57Gregy

[scook 2,815]

10 minutes ago, 57Gregy said:

I don't think you will find complete song drum loops

Groove Monkee includes a few in their MIDI packs.

[bdickens 283]

I always found drum loops or ready-made midi patterns too limiting.  Spending gobs of time searching through not-quite-right premade patterns really gets in the way of making music for me.

 

I would suggest Jamstix instead. Load up a kit, pick a drummer and a style and let 'er rip; it creates a drum part on the fly. Where it really shines, however, is when you dive into the controls and nudge different things. Like the kick/ snare groove but not the hi-hat pattern? Change it. Wanna add some tom accents? Done.

[Glenn Stanton 219]

9 hours ago, bdickens said:

I would suggest Jamstix instead. 

how's the connection reliability on those? i was going to buy a set and saw massive numbers of complaints about the bluetooth connections getting dropped, resets, and latency. this was about 1 year ago...

oops, never mind, i was thinking the "freedrum" and "aerostick" thingies...

Edited December 18, 2020 by Glenn Stanton

[Bad Mac 24]

Thanks guys. a few things i did.

1) groove monkey  - got may midi packs

2) toontrack midi packs

3) Ugritone midi packs

4) i bought EZDrummer 2 ( already have BFD2) . I loved the Session Drummer. sounded good and was easy to use. I just want to record and write and mix quickly. I am not an engineer. so the easier the mixing is the better for me. I do this for fun.  I have played with EZDrummer 2 and so far, it is cool.

5) I sometimes find it easier to grab a midi loop and edit a bit to make my own when i write a tune without drums and need to add them in. But sometimes i just pick a groove and write a tune around it. But what is most valuable to me arethe fills. having a large library of these is great. 

[Carl P Clovis 8]

drums on demand

 

[Craig Anderton 710]

On 12/15/2020 at 9:11 PM, Alan Bachman said:

Thank you, Craig.  Where did you find these Discrete Drum loops?  I found this site below, but I am uncertain if it is the correct website:  https://www.sonomawireworks.com/discretedrums/  

Thank you!

First, apologies...his name is Chris McHugh, and the full name of the set is Discrete Drums Series 2. Sonoma Wireworks bought the Discrete Drum libraries; the DVDs aren't available anymore, they've been incorporated into their drum plug-in. You can sometimes find the DVD set on eBay or Reverb.com. Although the listing ended, this is the droid you're looking for. 

[Alan Bachman 9]

Thank you again, Craig.  I will keep a lookout for that DVD set!  That was a good price on reverb!