New Drum Tools

Drummer, the track type introduced with Logic Pro X to allow users to build more realistic acoustic drum patterns, has spawned an electronic equivalent with the 10.1 update. Now, when you set up a Drummer track, options for Electronic and Hip-Hop producers are listed alongside their acoustic siblings. These allow you to configure Drummer’s existing parameters – pattern complexity, strength of hits and pattern variations for different kit pieces – either to run live through a track or, having been converted to a MIDI region, to be edited further.

Just as a dedicated plug-in for acoustic drum playback was launched with Drummer’s original release (Drum Kit Designer), so Drum Machine Designer is revealed now. This plug-in feels a bit like NI’s Battery 4, with virtual pads hosting individual drum sounds, which can either be loaded in entire kits, or with individual pads swapped to create your own hybrids. Smart Controls come to the fore here too – as well as control over key parameters for each drum sound, effects and grouped volume balances can be achieved for Drum Machine Designer’s kits within the GUI itself, making it quick and flexible to use.

If you prefer programming beats directly in the Piano Roll display, Collapse Mode should prove popular. This shrinks the Piano Roll to only display notes already programmed, so the window contains no ‘gaps’ for empty keys between programmed sounds. It can be toggled on and off to increase the number of notes within a sequence and it provides a much more focused workflow.

Lastly, the Piano Roll also provides a new weapon – the Brush Tool – which can be used to swipe empty grid spaces to create runs of notes with a single stroke. You can see all of this in action in the video.