One of the coolest things about pc-based home recording studios is the wide-open world of virtual instruments. And of all the different kinds of instruments we can play via MIDI on our computers, drums are probably the most used. And why not? You can have a drum track on your song without even touching a drum. Technically you don’t even have to know how to play drums (though I think it helps a LOT if you can) in order to have them in your recordings. And perhaps the biggest benefit for my wife – I don’t have to make all the racket in the house that a drum kit would create. This is also a plus if you live in an apartment and drums would generate neighbor complaints. One of the down-sides to all this is that it’s actually fun to play drums for real! But finding a place for the kit to live is hard if you don’t have a lot of space in your house. Plus, even though it’s a lot of fun to play drums, recording them is typically not easy.
In order to record live drums, not only do you have to have a kit (space issues), and a drummer good enough to be on your recording, you have to have a bunch of additional microphones. For example, the kick drum needs a certain kind of mic (like an AKG D 112, for example) that is very different from the snare drum (typically a Shure SM57 or two), which is very different from what you’d need for overheads (2 large diaphragm condensers like the Rode NT2-A). So by using virtual drums, you’re saving yourself a lot of money for mics if nothing else.
Figure 1So what is virtual drumming anyway? Well, if you’re recording a song, you can load up a software plug-in/program (into your multi-track recording software like Reaper), which contains recorded samples of actual drums (usually – though there are synthesized drum programs as well), and have your computer play these drums via MIDI. It’s like having a drum machine inside your computer.
There are several different ways you can build a drum part. For those of us who are control junkies, you can do it like me. I like to build my tracks one measure at a time using my MIDI keyboard. Drum programs will typically assign each drum in a kit to a specific key on a MIDI keyboard. See Figure 1. I will turn on the metronome in Reaper to keep me on the right tempo, and play, say, the kick (bass) drum part for a measure or two by simply playing the “C” key on my keyboard. Then I’ll do the same for the snare drum part, using the “D” and “E” keys […]
Read the full article here: http://www.homebrewaudio.com/virtual-drumming-use-your-computer-to-drum-without-drums
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