I've realized all the drum machines I saw are pretty bad for people that are looking for metal drumming. Even the drum machines with more than 200 different patterns have like only around five sounds that are moderatly decent. So does anyone know of a good drum machine for metal?

FL Studio 4.

__________________

What are good softwares to program drum beats.

__________________

Drumkit From Hell.


Its Thomas Haake's ( Meshuggah ) drum kit, meticulously sampled, and you can hear it on their newest album, "Catch 33". Yes, that's a drum machine.

Yeah, but it's a bitch getting it to work x_o

__________________

I asked this like twice before. Never got a good one either, they all sound way too unreal. I WANT MY DRUMS TO SOUND REAL, ESPECIALLY THE BLAST BEATS!!

__________________

Listen to Catch 33. 'Tis give you a good idea of DFH, since it was used on that album.

As far as blast beats ... very easy to program on a drum machine. Just because of the nature of acoustic drums, getting it to sound real is almost impossible.

They are easy to program, but the horror of how bad they sound is so annoying!

__________________

I used FL Studio 5 to sample the drums for a song I was workin on. Not too suprised, it sounded like shit. I think it has alot to do with the actual .wav samples I'm using + EQ settings. I bet if you tweaked the fuck outta it, you may get a pretty realistic sound. Also, they have samples to articulate left and right hand hits to each drum, heh include cymbals, and you got like 50 fuckin boxes to check on/off.

__________________

...you're not using the stock drum sounds are you?

I use a sampled BOSS Dr550

__________________

There's no such thing as a "metal drum machine", it's just depends on the samples you use. It's very possible to get your patterns sounding real, you need a program that allows you to change the volume, pan, rate...etc.. settings for each individual step in the pattern, as well as a high and low pass filter, beatcraft is good. You also need a lot of patience :-).

I've never use a beat program before; in Beatcraft can you change the tempo of the samples you use like in all Drum machines? Any other good program you know of?

I heard Drum Kit from Hell has real sounding drums and is hard to use and Beatcraft is good for programming and arranging drum patterns What is a better pick, Beatcraft or Drum Kit from Hell? Can you arrange drum patterns and change the tempos in Drum Kit from Hell or just get samples?

I can do that with software. I use quite a silly program (most think it's crap), but I have found a 200 mb zip file somewhere with tons of good .wav files of every piece of a drumset.

Compose your own customized drumkit with the best sounds. When writing blastbeats and you want it less monotonous, try this:

X x X x X x X x or X x x X x x X x or whatever accentual pattern you wish to use.

Both the X's originate from the same .wav, but adjust one in an audio program so that it's slightly louder/quiter. If you have lots of time, you can do this a couple of times (also messing with EQ might give you tiny variations that sound good, I think).
The loudest .wave obviously should be the X (i.e. the accents), the x's should be the quiter ones.

Sounds cool and a bit less boring than the usual drumpc stuff.

__________________

I don't know anything about drum kit from hell but the real sounding drums just depend on the samples you use.

Yes in beatcraft you can change the tempo of the sample, the volume, and it also has a high and low pass filter. These settings are able to be tweaked on each individual hit placed in the pattern, if you have knowledge of how a drummer thinks and feels, using these tools you can end up with very real sounding patterns, but if you are using a program that doesn't have quite as many options, like exodus666 said, muck around with the dynamics, this definetly helps in sounding more real.

A program you could try is SEQUBEAT, not a bad little setup, simple to use, has sample pitch change and dynamics for each step.

I think someones mentioned it already but I use a software program called Fruity Loops. You can import individual snare, kick, toms and cymbal samples and program loops into full songs that you can play along to. Also it has bass samples and synths if you fancy padding the sound out. It's a pretty good piece of kit, sounds wicked and is simple to use.
If you are really up for it you can export the wave files into a sequencer like Cakewalk Sonar or Cubase and record ya guitar tracks and vocals and make a finished song.

__________________

Is any of the boss rythm drum machines any good...
cause i am thinkin of getting one...

Whats the budget?Something like a dr880 if you have the money,or a dr3 if its a bit much.

well at least under $250 but 300 the max

i was just wondering wich drum machine is the best for its price

Ableton studio. Just download it. Or buy a good keyboard for drums.

I use Redrum in the program Reason. With that you can make it sound any way you can possibly think of, and it's very easy to program.

__________________

Programmed blast beats usually sound crap due to the quantizing and the accents (as someone else said). A basic drumm machine will 'hit' all the drums with the same power with a very mechanical accuracy in terms of timing, and humans just don't. If you spend a little more time, you can adjust these depending on what you're using, and how much time you want to spend on being picky.

I suppose it depends on whether you are trying to actually produce music with it or just knock up a quick demo for the rest of your band.

I really wish there was something that was as easy to use (and as well laid out) as PowerTab for drums. You just write in the drum tab in midi, copy sections and arrnagements, chnage the timing and tempo of sections/patterns and choose the samples, and export it as a wav or something. If there is actually something that simple and intuitive, please tell me!

__________________

i have the dr 880 and im pretty happy with it there are no shared eq's on any of the individual drums and if you tweak it it sounds ok its hard to belive but the eq really works

I used a MKII at one point. It suffered the same "not enough good sounds" as most other machines. There was one kit however that sounded pretty decent, but that was it. However you could find one for like 50-75 bucks on ebay. It has a mini step editor that worked pretty good for what I was doing, and the one kit was ok. I ended up purchasing an Alesis SR2. Once again, there really isn't a good variety of sound, especially in the snare, and high hat, and cymbal categories, but the step editor in it is incredible. It's a bit to learn, but once you figure it out, you can make patterns really easy, and create/setup songs from the patterns. Like you can program when it is going to go to what pattern, how many repetitions before changing, when to switch to the fill pattern. etc. Once its all programmed, just push play, and away it goes, playing the full drum patterns, switiching when it should, untill all of the patterns have played through on your song. It also has a swing editor, quantiziation, volume, pan ,pitch as well as velocity settings. I belive they have come down price, 150 new I think. Could probably get one used for around 100. I would recommend one based on the step editor alone.

Guitar Pro 4/5

Very similar to Power tab (but will also clearly tell you if you are over the time sig or under it). They put RSE (Real sound engine) in GP5 which is ok, but alot of people dont like it. You can still use midi drums in it, too. Im sure that its exactly what you are after, and it does have .wav export as well. Ive done exactly the same thing for my own band, except I used it to map out drums whilst also having a view of the riffs at the same time, so I could see how I should compliment them with the drums. (then program them in something more advanced)

If you are familiar with power tab itll take about an hour to pick up, at most.

__________________

I hate to drive this offtopic, but is there a way to convert Powertab files to GuitarPro files? I really hate the look on the PT window, the tabs are so hard to follow that I'd much rather look at a text tab. I wish folks like Yura and others would make their tabs in GP format as well, unless there is a way to easily convert them into GP.

Also having to look at the fretboard instead of a tab in GP makes it so much faster to learn songs.

I tried GP5 with the RSE and I didn't like it, but the drums sounded way better though. So I got rid of it and went back to GP4.

I have FL Studio... but I never learned how to use it well. Like if I want a looping blastbeat it's hard to do cause the boxes are an odd number I think, so it never sounds steady. Is there a way to increase the length of boxes in a loop? And how do you link loops together so you can actually create a real song and save it to a file?

What do you guys use to merge a drum track and a guitar track together, Cool Edit or something? Does that let you arrange the timing if they're a second or 2 off, and does it let you arrange the volume/EQ of the drums and guitar?

__________________

I tried Guitar Pro 4 recently, and I can't stand it.

A fair amount of my dislike must stem from the fact that I'm used to PowerTab, and that I don't know how to use GP4 properly, but everything seemed like such an ordeal. All the riffs/repetions seem to get dumped right next to each other in a long line of bars until the screen forces a line break, and there is no apparent way of defining a certain number of bars as a riff to be repeated, as is the case in PowerTab.

I'll get my friend who gave me it to show me how he uses it one day, to see if he can prove it isn't a useless unintuitive piece of junk after all.

I think PowerTab's next version (or one in the near future anyhow) will be incorporating drums.

__________________

Tried exporting as midi from PTB then importing midi scores to GP? I know GP5 allows importing PTB files but you dont use it, so... midi it is.

__________________