Drum Loop Recommendations or similar

danm

I know 'drums on iPad' is an area of much discussion and I've read many of the posts about various drum/drum sound options, but as someone who is new to music making on the iPad, I still am unclear how to proceed, and realize there are likely multiple good options for me.

I write songs typically with vocals, guitar, bass, and drums and prefer acoustic drum sounds.
I'm experimenting a lot with Loopy Pro lately too and currently just using the metronome in LP until I figure out some better options.

My instincts tell me that I'll probably be most satisfied by purchasing some acoustic drum samples/sounds with some different variations in several different BPM's and just importing those into Loopy Pro clips, since I determine the BPM of my compositions up front and probably can get away with just one or two different beat styles per section (ie: intro, verse, chorus, bridge).

If there's some easy combo of apps that I can run within Loopy Pro as plugins to drive this from a midi perspective (ie: some combo of Drambo and/or OneShot drum sampler and Autofills?), I'm very open to that too. Just hoping to find some approach that allows me to start with a few basic acoustic drum options that I can map to my different song parts to get things started (whether those are audio drum loops in various BPMs or a midi approach using some combination of those apps I mentioned (or others) that would be quick/easy to set up and go).

Your thoughts are welcome and if you feel you've covered this territory elsewhere, please feel free to point me in that direction.

Thanks

zzrwood

A quick and dirty (and cheap) approach might be to use the excellent “Drummer” feature in GarageBand to create loops.

If you start a new song in GarageBand, then create a drummer loop of as many bars as you want, and then use the downward arrow at the top left corner of the screen to go to My Songs you will see your drum loop file. Long press on the file, then select share from the menu and you can export your drum loop as audio.

If you dig into drummer a bit you can get some good rhythm tracks… 👍

Pete Johns has great GarageBand tutorials, including this one which runs over the steps to export audio loops:

hellquist

It also depends on what style of music you are creating. For me, ready-made sampled drumloops is not do-able other than for very specific purposes (like a specific passage, or a specific effect), but otherwise they would limit me far too much, and no matter if they are recorded with real "organic" drums or not, if they don't follow my music, which often is not in 4/4, it doesn't feel "real" no matter what I do.

So then I use multi-velocity single-hits that I've purchased from all over the place (DrumDrops etc) over the years. Currently I'm loading them in to Digistix 2 as I haven't decided on what level I will go in on OneShot, but regardless, either is only a "sample holder".

The trick is to get decent drum patterns from somewhere, either via Garageband/Logic Pro or create them yourself from other rhythm sequencers, and this is where iOS/iPadOS is sorely lacking alternatives to the desktop such as Superior Drummer, EZ Drummer, Slate, Addictive etc, where you quickly can build advanced drum sequences. With advanced I mean all the little nuances that make it feel like a real drummer. Ghost hits, flams, timing/velocity variations, creating probability-chains (where the probability of the first hit is the variable, but if it happens the entire chain should happen, otherwise they should not) etc.

Currently I'm playing around mostly with Octachron and Digistix 2 when I'm not in Logic Pro, where I've also have been exploring Logics pattern editor for creating quick beats.

I am still hoping for a DrumPerfectPro AU version, or that the Lumbeat apps become AU. Or that Octachron had more instrument slots and also probability chains. But yeah, the area of creating "real drums" in a quick and simple fashion is still the missing piece on iOS/iPadOS, and right now we use all the work-arounds we can think of.

Poppadocrock

Welcome to the world of iOS music making!

As you mentioned there are a ton of options. It’s really hard to tell you the best one since there are so many ways to go about this, a ton of possible tools to get you there, and a lot of personal preference involved.

It’s honestly a hard to answer question since it involves your personal preferences, workflow, approaches, options.

My best advice would be to experiment with as many free options as possible. Samples, loops, apps, sequencing, etc…

I’d experiment with several if not all approaches to see what you like best. I know it sounds like a daunting task with potential missteps, but it’s the only real way to find out what you like best and/or what works best for your particular track. You can surely narrow it down, and make educated guesses, but ultimately….. there will be some trial and error.

Personally I don’t have a universal way of working with drums. I’ll use any option if it works, drum synth apps, drum apps, build kits with one shots/multilayer samples in DS2/Sitala/etc. I’ll use loops that downloaded, created, or even generated.

A few apps to look into might be… smart drummer in GarageBand as mentioned, DrumJam, one of the Lumbeat apps, patterning 3, OneShot, or The acoustic Drum App in Korg Gadget, also a separate AU, I’m totally blanking on its name, lol.

Also Find some Drum samples and use an app like sitala, DS2, Koala, etc… apps like DS2, or even AudioLayer allow you to have/make multisampled drum kits with several drum hits of different velocity/type for each hit. This adds a more realistic sound, and allows you to dial in better sounding variations. Consider one shots and drum multi-velocity or drum multilayered samples.

Now playing the drum sounds is another important consideration. Other then downloaded loops, or created audio, it’s important to consider the sequencing as well.

For sequencing drums I use many different methods. One sequencer I use a lot is Octachron combined with Auto fills.
Sequencing is important element to consider when talking about making drums for your song. The sounds are obviously part 1, but part 2 is how to realistically sequence or play the drum sounds, other that audio loops.

Oh man… Sorry to ramble, there’s a lot to say, and consider. Hopefully some of this helps in some way. Lol. Cheers mate!

hes

Not sure if this is kind of thing OP is looking for, but DrumGenius app is source for loads of (mostly jazz oriented) drum loops: https://www.projazzlab.com/drumgenius/

espiegel123

@danm : you might find that one of the Lumbeats drummer apps suits your use-case better than a collection of pre-recorded loops.

EdZAB

I've used different approaches on iPad including Lumbeat drummer or Logic Pro's drummer, drum loops from Garageband or recording them in live myself, and then editing the MIDI to fine tune them.

After much experimentation, I would break down my approach to drumming into two broad categories: (1) Groove drumming and (2) Song based drumming. I consider groove drumming to be applicable to EDM type music, where the drum patterns can last for long stretches with breaks and different layers coming into play, so you can layer drum patterns together and weave them in and out. That can be contrasted with song based drumming - and great examples of that would be Led Zeppelin IV or Ringo's drumming on the later Beatles albums, where the drums have a steady backbeat underneath, or an underlying structure, but they change dynamically with the song, and drum breaks and fills become very important.

So if you're dealing with a situation where you just need a drum pattern to run throughout long sections of your song, in my experience that lends itself well to using drum loops, but when trying to make drums that really enhance the song and give it life, you've got to have a lot of subtle variations, fills and breaks at the right places, and that becomes very tedious for me when working with loops - finding the right loops at the right tempo, the right fills, the correct feel, finding fills, etc. but YMMV. I'm sure there are some great videos out there from people that have excellent workflows for working with drum loops in all sorts of genres, but that's not for me.

I'm leaving out all sorts of scenarios where I don't have much experience here - Metal, Hip-Hop, DnB, for just a few, and those all have their own drum and percussion needs, and the advice you need can vary greatly depending on the style you're working in.

Regarding the drum apps and samples, and what might work for you, I agree with @Poppadocrock. Using a drum app and then something like Auto-Fills to generate fills (for apps that don't have that option built-in), can be a great method.

So, no specific advice here, but I do think it is helpful to think about the type of drumming that you're looking for in your music, and what apps and tools will suit the type of drumming that you need. One personal observation that I must add is that mediocre drums can destroy a good song, and great drums that support the song and act like punctuation and are really customized to bring out the character of the music can turn a good song into a great one that grabs people and makes them move. So, whatever choice you make make, I recommend selecting one that opens up the possibility of really customizing the drums to suit your taste, and will not limit you in the long term. Something easy up front may be just OK, but never exceed that level, and something more challenging yet more flexible and dynamic may be better in the long run. Just some food for thought.

wim

This isn't really relevant to the original post, but it was fun to make and does provide some basic beats with fills. Consider it a thread bump. 😉

The step counters trigger fills on the kick, snare, and hats respectively. Kicks every two bars, snare every 8, and hats every 4 in this screenshot, but is of course variable. The sample and hold modules provide a little bit of variation to the fill intensity for each, and the VC-polarizer controls the overall complexity of the fills for each. The patterns and overall density are controlled from Topograph.