But can it drive a car into the hotel pool?
Last week I described SellaBand's
snazzy music service where bands can upload demo songs in the hopes of acquiring a respectable
following. However, getting that initial demo recorded can be somewhat tricky. A
number of products have been released to help with things like guitars, but one of the more difficult and arguably
intimidating aspects of recording a demo is achieving a drum sound that doesn't bring to mind
images of garbage cans (ahem...I think we all know who I am talking about). Sure, you can buy a
microphone kit tailored toward drums, but that can be costly and you'll still have quite a bit of
tweaking to do in an audio editing program. Besides, you have to actually play the
drums to go that route. On the digital side of things, programmed drums are fairly popular, but
they risk sounding robotic and you're limited by the quality of your samples. What's a budding
rock star on a budget to do?! Well, you could pick up Toontrack's EZDrummer. This plugin makes the process of constructing good sounding drum tracks nice and—wait for it—EZ *hangs head in shame*. If you don't have the slightest clue how to write fills and whatnot, don't worry; it comes preloaded with countless MIDI loops so you'll have a respectable beat behind your guitar riffs in just a few clicks. But most importantly, it sounds good. All 7,000 included samples have already been processed and will generally cut through mixes. In addition, the robotic concern that I previously mentioned is addressed by EZDrummer's humanizer feature.
If the program's mixer is insufficient in tweaking the sound to your liking, you can also pick up a couple expansion packs giving you additional kits.
Now that I've hyped the program to death, let me quickly bring you back to reality. This drum sampler, while very cool and definitely worth the price, is unlikely to replace a professional studio for drums. Sure, you can tweak the sounds, but you're limited in that the samples have already been processed to a certain extent. If you really want a positively frightening level of control, EZDrummer has a big scary brother called DFH Superior. As you'd expect, it's more expensive, requires a more powerful computer, and also has a substantial learning curve. Regardless, I can't recommend EZDrummer enough. Their web site has a number of mp3 samples for your listening pleasure as well as a Flash tutorial. Interested? Be sure to verify that your audio program is indeed compatible with the program!
Quickly now, go forth and rock!
Sean