What are you guys using to make drum loops/beats ITB?

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

For me Fruity Loops as a VSTi in the bee's knees.

DAW audio and MIDI recording power and the depth of FL. Fully functioning demo is free (saving is diabled). control surface integration is outstanding, as well.

Highly recommended.

Bill

[Jeff White]

I've been using Live since 2004, though I haven't touched it in over a year, since everything that I've been doing is tape-style recording in Digital Performer. I need to revisit this stuff since the next Swivel Chairs record will be recorded to a click and they want to incorporate some drum machine and MIDI stuff for the first time.

Live... I like the Impulse Drum Machine (I'm still on version 5.2), and I like to totally mess with ambient loops in there.

I have Battery, Kontakt and Reaktor and a shit-load of samples, too, so sometimes I'll play some stuff, or write some stuff in DP or a Reaktor step sequencer, and just record and edit into a grid in DP for loops.

What I usually do is Rewire Live to Digital Performer and simply use Live as a really powerful sampler/instrument. Loops, drum machine, etc. I set all individual channels in Live to aux channels in DP and basically mix on DP's board, adding plug-ins, etc. I'll record individual instruments (snare, kick, etc) from Impulse on separate channels in DP.

Speaking of samples, has anyone checked out the Tape808 and Tape909 samples yet? I've been meaning to pick them up for some time.

http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/tape808.html

Lots of free stuff on this page, too. (check out the cassette 808!!!)

http://www.goldbaby.co.nz/freestuff.html


Jeff

[Wilkesin]

I've tried to use reason for so long and could never ever make anything good happen. There is something about the Redrum that just turns me off. The GUI is frustrating beyond imagination.

I dont use premade textures/loops/pads or anything as a rule. I'm all about making the patterns myself so izotope iDrum has been my go to for beats and Addictive Drums for 'live sounding" drummer demos.

Maybe I just need some tutorials on how to use the thing, but it was never anything but a total frustration for me. As soon as i got iDrum, bam! beats were raining down from above...

[calaverasgrandes]

I found reason to be a cinch to use. Though I think a lot of the intuitiveness leverages previous experience with Roland/Boss/Korg gear. EG if you have made beats on a Boss DR50 than the drum machine in Reason makes more sense. Ditto for Subtractor.
I dont really bother with it anymore because I always spent too much time trying to make it sound less generic. You can get cooler results using individual VST synths (like Schwa oligarch and Waldorf Attack) and a DAW like Logic or Sonar to do you looping and midi editing.

[schaf]

What type drum beats are you looking to create (ie what style or sound)? Are you looking for something that does more than just drum sounds (like synths and virtual instruments) or do you just need a basic drum programmer?

Reason and Ableton are both great tools, for different things. I use both. Try the demo versions and see what you like. Or watch some YouTube demos/tutorials to get an idea of the workflow.

Reason is a sort of all-in-one virtual electronic music studio with all sorts of rack mount gear including synthesizers, drum machines, sample playback devices, and effects units. If all you want to do is make some simple drum beats it might be overkill.

In general, the instruments in Reason are excellent sounding and very versatile, as are the effects. The advanced reverb (which includes a great delay) and "scream" distortion in particular sound excellent. The thor synthesizer in the newest version is fucking amazing. There are two major frustrations I have with reason - the sequencer is extremely clunky and really frustrating to use. Worse still, reason will not record audio so if you want to record your own samples you need to record them into another DAW and export them, then load the wav files into reason. The sample playback deceives do not give you any visual view of the waveform, which is pretty limiting if you want to be able to crop or otherwise slice up the samples.

Ableton Live is more of a dedicated sampling/loop centric tool plus DAW. The interface is brilliant - simple, elegant aesthetic and a "session view" that allows you to interact with music clips (audio loops and midi sequences) as a palate. The sampling tools give you so much control over how your samples are played back and processed. Some people have mentioned the impluse which works well for very basic drum sequencing. but in the new version there are more powerful "drum racks" which create a separate chain for each drum sample and have a grid view that integrates with pad controllers like the Trigger Finger and Akai MPD. This basically allows you to use Ableton like an MPC. I don't have much experience with any of the built in synths in Ableton because they do not come with the basic version I own (you have to buy them separately). But a lot of people seem to like them. On the downside, the built in effects aren't anything special (but you can use VST pluggins). If your doing hip hop or anything glitchy that requires a lot sample slicing, Ableton is a very good choice.

[calaverasgrandes]

I never understand why people take this approach to Reason. The best set up (for me at least) is to use Reason as a rewire client into Sonar, PT, Live etc. Then you keep tweakability of your reason tracks, plus you can split it out into a bunch of inputs on your DAW if you do it right, and use grown up effects on the feeds. You keep your vocal/guitar/kazoo tracks fully editable and effecty.
I see so many folks do as described above. One guy I know mixes down his reason track, then plays it back from an ipod while he sings it into his little wave recorder freeware (with a decent mic actually) Then he has to line up the vocal track with the reason track using uh...NNT8? Is that what its called? The sample player.
Anyway...
I tried to help dude out. Showed him how to rewire reason and Sonar. Showed him how he could mix from Sonar, then told him to do his vocals with headphones to get rid of the boxy phase problem he had from monitoring with his 824's full blast.
He got all mad and called me a bunch of names.
fucking sound guy.

[schaf]

I don't think I described an approach to using Reason...I was just pointing out that Reason can't record audio and that the sample player (NN-XT) is somewhat limiting for cropping or slicing samples. I think we are in agreement about this.

The point is, if recording and cutting up your own samples is part of your intended process, Reason will not work as a standalone solution. And if you want to use Reason's audio processing tools on sounds you record yourself from records or acoustic instruments, the only way to accomplish this is to record samples into another program and then import them into Reason. Which, as we'll agree, is less than ideal.

Using Reason as a rewire client is a good approach. But it doesn't address the above problems, because rewire will not allow you to patch audio streams into Reason - it only allows you to control Reason via MIDI and patch audio from reason to your DAW.