Drum ROMplers
While anything goes when it comes to electronic drum parts – synths, samples, found sounds, etc – if you’re looking to get the sound and feel of a real drummer playing an acoustic drum kit into your productions, you’re going to need a high-quality drum kit ROMpler. Names to look out for include Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 3 and its much cheaper but ‘lighter’ sibling, EZdrummer 2, FXpansion’s BFD3, XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums, Steven Slate Drums 4 and numerous libraries for Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler.
These multi-gigabyte virtual instruments use velocity-layered multisamples to realistically emulate kick drums, snares, toms, hi-hats and cymbals, often employing ’round robin’ playback techniques to subtly vary the sound of consecutive hits at the same velocity, thus avoiding the ‘machine gun’ effect that immediately gives away any amateurishly programmed drum part. They can be programmed manually in a DAW’s MIDI editor, or played and recorded live, ideally by a drummer using a MIDI drum kit (‘edrums’).
Some drum ROMplers also include onboard groove libraries – MIDI clips performed by real drummers – and pattern programming tools, from the preset-driven song arranger of EZdrummer to the full-on sequencers of Superior Drummer 3 and BFD3. These make for great alternatives to the regular DAW piano roll, with their trigger-based drum editors and percussion-specific tools, enabling realistic performances to be programmed or recorded entirely within the ROMpler itself.
It’s no exaggeration to say that all of the kits above sound so convincing that even experienced drummers and engineers have trouble distinguishing between them and real ones. Not a great time to be a session player…