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AND the best song mode (for simpletons like myself etc).
I'm always most interested in what is available in an app right now when I'm ready to make my purchase: 1) user interface and available options 2) quality of product (in this case drum sounds), 3) connectivity to other apps, 4) flexibility. The developer's vision when offered helps a lot to understand whether a product is or will be used to it's fullest within the goals of the user. This can often times explain perceived instability issues.
As @niallobrien, I'm also trying to make the best choice in drum apps today.
@richardyot I'm interested to hear what your workflow is for Drumagog and also, how are you using cymbals and hi-hats?
Folks, you can achieve the most satisfactory results out of DPP by triggering the drums internally.
It cannot be stressed enough.
It can be MIDI triggered from a DAW, such as Auria, but if so, the drums will sound mechanical and lacklustre. There are some features you have when playing from DPP's own grid - humanizing, velocity randomizing, two handed drums, sample randomizing etc - that make a ton of difference to the overall result and don't seem to work when using an external MIDI source.
In fact - and I did multiple test instances to be sure - even if you export MIDI from DPP and use this MIDI data to control it from a DAW, say, Auria Pro, the sound quality will be far from what you get when you play the original pattern or song from which the MIDI was generated from inside DPP!
So you can either export what you programmed inside DPP as a stereo file or as stems to be further processed in a DAW, or record the drums into a stereo channel or multiple channels in your DAW by using IAA or AudioBus: your choice. But stay away from triggering DPP from MIDI, because you'll het disappointed.
P.S.: and it's rather unfortunate DPP's song/stem exporting is hardcoded to 16-bit audio - which most probably means DPP's samples are 16-bit as well, and that does have impact in the overall result. @Gilbert and @Marinus, can you tell us if you plan to add 24-bit support in the foreseeable future?
Correction; Drum Session does seem to have have a time signature adjustment feature.
Am I able to record the midi out from DPP ? And there fore getting the benefit of the humanise etc....and still be able to trigger sounds in something else
You can export MIDI from DPP in the export page. But the resulting MIDI won't have the humanizing/probability/two-handed/etc info. These aren't ordinary MIDI commands, it seems. At least it's not the way DPP works.
Midi notes don't need those commands they just trigger sounds based on velocity and other factors but then again what don't know. Just guessing I guess
What I meant is the advanced functions - two hands, probability etc - doesn't respond to external MIDI commands in DPP, @MusicMan4Christ!
Is the exported midi already humanised ? Or is it as built in the grid ?
I want a drum humanising brain that I can use with whatever quality sounds are available at the time, so not depenendent on in built sounds
You can still put your own sounds in.
I don't want to do that, I want to be able to use the same pattern/midi to drive a different either software or hardware sound sources.
Perhaps when DPP has real time MIDI out connectivity, some the advanced functions will be integrated. The problem is, how useful would be to integrate a function like its approach to drum realism, where it randomizes a combination between for "low" and "high" samples for each intrument (or each "hand" if you program a two-handed drum or play it with the dual live pads), to control a drum machine, hardware or otherwise, that doesn't work that way?
Skimming through and still offering a point of view on the apps talked about, as I have them:
If you want to program your own drums, DPP is the best, especially if you have your own multi-sampled library to create kits from. The GUI does take some time to get used to. Depending on how picky you are you can squeeze in more instruments (drums, cymbals) by utilizing the right/left hand sample banks for each instrument. My main kit has 24 instruments, most of them using between 5-16 samples depending on the sound I'm after, and I can alter for example chinas/splashes by changing a hit from right-hand to left (and for my needs I don't use 8 sample slots for a splash in any case).
If you own Drumagog you can use the regular .gog files from your desktop. In fact, that is the only way of making them too. If you don't own it for the desktop you can download the free-to-use-for-30-days trial if that is enough to create your kits. It was for me.
Drum session has an insane amount of patterns and it sounds good. I've had some issues with the piano roll, but could be user error so will give it more time and test more thoroughly.
Rock/Funk/Soft drummer all sound great - I mainly use them for sketching though as I am quite finicky with every hit on the final mix, and loops are not really my main thing as I have other things in my songs that need more control from the drums. There is an editor which I find a tad limiting. They do make up for it by doing improvisation fills I hadn't thought about myself, so can be good for creative process (I love collaboration and the random chaos that comes with that, and I can get stuck with infinite details if I'm only me, myself and I), so the apps from Rock/Funk/Soft drummer apps as well as Drum Session, for me, are more stops on the route for me when writing, than they are likely to end up on the final result (which will be coming from my home-made kits in DPP).
Just my £0.02
Think someone's already answered. Many of the features are pointless running other apps excepting maybe the percentage feature. If that is what you want, maybe Patterning does it? I've not looked to check if it sends its percentage chance of hit out or not. I think it does.
I've now ruled out Drum Session because it doesn't have humanise functions....this is essential to me as it is the whole point of getting a specialised drum app to me. I could manually humanise if I wanted to.
At some point in their processing, the drum apps that do humanise timing and velocity must have a stream of drum hits with the timing and velocity for feeding into the sound engine, that stream as midi is what I am after.
I'm thinking that rock drum machine may be what I need, have downloaded the free version but there is no midi out, I can select a midi receiver....but rock drum machine does not appear as a midi input in other apps.....is this available in the paid for version ?
What's the opinion here of Garageband's Drummer? Is there anything else similar but with options for midi out and/or stems and more flexibility? Do any of the apps in this discussion approach this?
Yes this...is that app DrumJam ?
Are you wanting to change settings on the fly for midi? Or would you be ok with the song made and then using a humanised pattern played from another app? DPP can do the later as the midi export does include that information according to the manual. If it's the former, I don't believe it can, although I may be wrong....I often am lol
Yes... you can add any tempo and any time signature multiple times in any segment of the timeline...it's kind of fun
We just released an update and improved piano roll greatly...I actually enjoy it now...lol
You may then want to try a IAP pack. A quite different realism level of samples. And a larger collection of patterns in the chosen style.
Also you will find out that DPP's patterns can be made "dynamic/live" ( instead of static/fixed ) by programming probability for any stroke/ group of strokes/instrument. Even much more flexible with its unique feature of linked sets (16 per pattern ) that can basically turn a pattern to a mini song/section in itself, with fill variations and improvisation.
But yes, like for any musical instrument, it takes some practice to learn/exploit these extensive possibilities, and reach amazingly realistic results. Understanding how a real drummer think/play, certainly helps.
Good MIDI out or export from a good drum app, coupled with Auria Pro's MIDI humanize functions might be a powerful combination. I might have to look into that.
The most success I ever had with realistic drums was with a PC VST called Jamstix 2. It was pattern based, but had AI for variations, left/right hand, and humanization. But the killer feature was it could be made to listen to the rest of the audio (or any part of it), and it could react based on the dynamics. Play louder, and the hits would get harder. Play a busier rhythm and it would throw in more hits. Pull back to a quiet passage and it would go drop the snare to rim shots. It was beautiful. I keep hoping something like that will come to the iPad some day.
If anyone wants to hear an almost purely Jamstix automatically generated drum part, done in one pass, and have a little Christmas cheer, here's a little something I did for fun years ago when I was first messing about with DAWs. The rest of the song makes me cringe a bit, but I'm still impressed with the drum track since I basically just pressed play in the VST and let 'er rip.
My issue with DDP isn't the programming aspect, it's the samples, even with the IAP packs - the metal one sounds terrible imo.
And, FYI - I am an experienced heavy metal drummer, so "thinking" like a drummer is no problem.
It also had an atrocious UI, lol.
I used Drumagog on pretty much everything I made until about a year ago, when I switched to GB and Luis Martinez apps for my drums.
Back then I was using DPP or Impaktor to program drums, exporting the stems and then replacing the sounds with Drumagog.
But in the end the Drummer in GB converted me to using algorithm based drum programming because I could never program drums to sound that natural. My best friend used to be a drummer, and he heard the GB Drummer he was pretty amazed at how good it was. So for me at least it doesn't make sense spending hours programming drums that don't sound as good as the results I can get in minutes with GB or Funk Drummer.
Of course this means I had to adapt to working with drums already bounced to a stereo track rather than stems, but for the naturalness of the results it's worth it. Pro-MB is great for working with drum tracks, if I ever need to tweak the kick for example.
Also the Luis Martinez apps offer a pretty wide range of sounds and you can select them individually for each drum. So if you want a beefier kick just select one from the list. The jamming algorithm in his apps sounds extremely natural and feels like you're playing with a real drummer.
@richardyot Were you replacing cymbals too? If not, what app were you using for your cymbal samples?
The Luis Martinez apps can't export stems though, correct? This makes proper mixing very difficult.
I want to be able to get humanised midi out, then I can use that midi to trigger whatever drum sounds I want. I can do this with meticulous programming in a sequencer, I want something to reduce the programming and create the midi, doesn't need to change on the fly once produced, but would like to be able to change on the fly when first generating the midi.