Drum plugin/software for "jamming"?

[Russ]

I love writing bass parts to fit interesting drum/percussion patterns, but I'm not the greatest when it comes to drum programming, so it'd be nice to have something that can just throw drum grooves at me and that I can react to.

 

So I was wondering, is there such a thing as a drum plugin or other piece of software that can generate patterns and grooves that change over time, that you can jam along to, and that your DAW can record so you can pick bits out of later and assemble into songs? 

 

Any suggestions welcome!  

 

 

[rwillett]

+1 for this. 

[SH73]

I have been using Ez Drummer 2 for many years. It has various styles of drumming, grooves. It has patterns you can mix and match, intro , chorus, verse etc. Just check you tube for tutorials. You can manually play drums with keyboard or pc keyboard and it will find the best match. There's an update available to choose from different music genre. But it looks like you're looking for a more AI based drum stuff (no fun in it in IMHO). I believe Ez Drummer has been now upgraded to 3 and even maybe 4 version. There is also one called Steven Slatter vat and many more.

[BigRedX]

The "Drummer" instrument in Logic will generate drum parts based on the recordings of other instruments. However unless your tastes are very mainstream you might struggle to find rhythms in the style that you want. In the long term I have found it more effective to use a beat/groove detector (Recycle! is what I am most familiar with) on sampled drum parts that are close to the style/pattern you want and edit the results. That way not only do you get the rhythms you want but you also learn about how an actual drummer puts those rhythms together which will lead to improvements in your own drum programming.

[Woodinblack]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

more effective to use a beat/groove detector (Recycle! is what I am most familiar with) on sampled drum parts that are close to the style/pattern you want and edit the results.

 

Just got Recycle (its free), and tried it with a drum pattern. When you select export to midi, it complains there are too many slices and exports 91, but the midi is an odd ascending scale!

[BigRedX]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Just got Recycle (its free), and tried it with a drum pattern. When you select export to midi, it complains there are too many slices and exports 91, but the midi is an odd ascending scale!

 

If you've got 91 slices either your pattern is too long or you haven't correctly identified all the relevant slice points and removed the "ghost" ones. You need to play with the sensitivity slider until it detects all the slice starts that you need and then delete the ones that aren't required. Unless it's very busy, a typical 2-bar pattern should have around 16-24 slices, and none should be shorter than 1/16 note

 

The ascending pattern is created with the intention that you also save each slice as an audio file. You then load these into a sampler (real or plug-in) each one to a note. When it plays the MIDI file it will replay the pattern but now you can change the tempo without changing the pitch. However if that's all you want to do, it is simpler to save the REX file and if you have a Mac and are running Logic convert it into an Apple Loop which will do the same thing automatically.

 

If you want to use your own drum samples you'll need to identify what each slice does (which is why it's important to remove the ones you don't want) and the edit the MIDI file in your DAW moving each note to the correct pitch for the relevant drum sound and duplicating those that correspond to multiple drums that occur on the same beat. Alternatively you can save the MIDI pattern as a quantise template and then program your own drums and use this template to replicate the feel of the original rhythm.

 

HTH

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

If you've got 91 slices either your pattern is too long or you haven't correctly identified all the relevant slice points and removed the "ghost" ones.

 

Yeh, it was 16 bars so I could get all the variations

 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

The ascending pattern is created with the intention that you also save each slice as an audio file.

 

Yes, that is the bit I couldn't find, the export audio part!

 

TBH - I should be doing this in the MPC-10 which is obviously designed for it, but I am not used to 'its' way of doing things, seems recycle copies heavily from the MPC workflow, which is the bit I haven't got used to yet.

 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

If you want to use your own drum samples you'll need to identify what each slice does (which is why it's important to remove the ones you don't want) and the edit the MIDI file in your DAW moving each note to the correct pitch for the relevant drum sound and duplicating those that correspond to multiple drums that occur on the same beat. Alternatively you can save the MIDI pattern as a quantise template and then program your own drums and use this template to replicate the feel of the original rhythm.

 

Thanks.

[Russ]

11 hours ago, SH73 said:

I have been using Ez Drummer 2 for many years. It has various styles of drumming, grooves. It has patterns you can mix and match, intro , chorus, verse etc. Just check you tube for tutorials. You can manually play drums with keyboard or pc keyboard and it will find the best match. There's an update available to choose from different music genre. But it looks like you're looking for a more AI based drum stuff (no fun in it in IMHO). I believe Ez Drummer has been now upgraded to 3 and even maybe 4 version. There is also one called Steven Slatter vat and many more.

I've got EZDrummer, never really got the hang of it since it seems you do all the arranging in the plugin's little window, not directly in the DAW and I don't like that. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. The sounds themselves are great though. 

 

This is more to help me come up with ideas based on rhythms that I might not have thought of, or that might be a little out of my comfort zone, to help prompt creativity. 

[Dood]

IK Multimedia's MODO Drums has a free version. I've also noticed that after isntalling AIR Music / InMusic's free channel strip they've just given away, they now seem to own BFD drums and there's a lite version for free from them too. If you're on a Mac, then Logic's Session Drummer is useable - I guess GarageBand would offer a drum option too, but I havent used that app for ages. I do have EZDrummer 2 & 3, they are, as mentioned, paid options but very, very good. You'll hear a mixture of MODO and Logic Drums on pretty much all of my review videos. I improvise everytihing (badly ha ha) so drum loops are really useful! EZD hasn't featured much, I should get it back on track!

[lowdown]

Here is a 2025 list of some of the free Drum plugins knocking around:

 

🥁 FREE Drum VST Plugins (2025 Update) - Bedroom Producers Blog

Edited Wednesday at 23:18 by lowdown

[BigRedX]

18 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Yeh, it was 16 bars so I could get all the variations

 

 

Yes, that is the bit I couldn't find, the export audio part!

 

TBH - I should be doing this in the MPC-10 which is obviously designed for it, but I am not used to 'its' way of doing things, seems recycle copies heavily from the MPC workflow, which is the bit I haven't got used to yet.

 

 

Thanks.

 

I'd do it in 2-4 bar segments. With 16 bars I suspect that you've been limited to the nearest whole bar by the number of different notes that MIDI supports.

 

Export audio is in the Format drop down menu in the Export dialogue box. The default setting is just the MIDI file, but if you change that to one of the audio formats the next dialogue asks if you also want to export the MIDI file as well.

 

From what I recall (it's over 25 years since I last used it like that) ReCycle! works/worked very well with Akai samplers. I bought my copy to use with an S2000 which was connected directly to my Mac via SCSI. 

 

As I suggested in my last post, if all you want to do is change the loop tempo you are better of using REX files so long as your DAW supports them.