I'm a dumbass when it comes to learning how to use complex new software. I have downloaded the following thingers:

Fruity Loops
Acoustica Beatcraft
Drumkit from Hell Superior.
some other thing.

I already deemed Fruity Loops useless(despite having learned most of the basic stuff in it ) as I can't change tempo within a song without piano rolling the fuck out of everything which seems pretty complex.

Been trying to figure out Beatcraft with the following tutorial geared towards metal ppl: http://www.demondigital.com/tutoria...Metal_Beat.html

But I still don't know how to arrange a beat into a whole song.

I haven't tried DfHS yet, can you use your own drum samples with it? And change tempos and stuff?


What's the easiest to use, but also powerful drum simulator around? Any good quick guides that will help me be able to learn all the basic shit to start making songs right away? I really want to get down some fuckin beats to record kintar riffs over, but I haven't found a drum machine that is remotely easy to use. Kthxbye.

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Dude, I love beatcraft and use beatcraft all the time. You can check out my songs via the links in my signature. It is very easy to use and cheap. I have been using it for the last year and while it did take me some time to get decent at programing once I got the hang of it I love it. Check out the beatcraft forums as well and post there. Allot of people are very helpful.

Peter

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Whoa, Beatcraft seems way more badass than FruityLoops. I'll have to obtain it.

Yeah, check it out and let me kow what you think of it.


Peter

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I used to use Beatcraft a lot until I got DFHS.

Beatcraft is great, easy, and cheap. You can't get as a sound as DFHS but for a sequencer/drum sampler in one its great. I highly recommend starting out with this, messin' around with it 'till you get your 'beats' down, then decide if you want to upgrade.

It probably took you forever to DL DFHS seeing as its 9 DVD's worth of samples. To answer your question about using your own samples in DFHS, you can't (you can in Beatcraft). DFHS is samples, all packed into a nice VSTi for your favorite sequencer (Cubase, sonar, etc. ). The great thing about DFHS is its all untouched (no eq, compression, etc) recordings of many different kits and cymbals at different hit velocities, so if your planning on using this make sure you know your in for some EQing to get a good sound (in the end its worth it), also make sure your computer is good, along with your sound card. I've been spending the last couple months outfitting my comp to be able to work with Cubase/DFHS.

Final thoughts - Unless your experienced (or want to endeavor) with a sequencer and VSTi, I wouldn't use DFHS just yet, a sequencer drum pattern is gonna look a lot different than Beatcraft (even though its the same concept). If you wanna mess around with sequencer drumming get the chopped down version of DFHS called EzDrummer, that will help you get experience with VSTi's.

EDIT -

BTW if you wanna hear some of the amazing drum sounds you can get with DFHS check out www.myspace.com/iambulb and www.myspace.com/tesseract and of course Meshuggah's Catch 33 album.

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i use native instruments 'battery', and play out the patterns manually just cuz i hate the sound of sequenced drums. if you have a velocity sensitive controller it sounds great, you can load w/e samples you want.

I also hate the sound of sequenced drums, but I sound like slop playing drums on a midi mini-keyboard. One big problem im still tryin to figure out, how to get a more realistic sound from a machine.

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^ sensitive velocity is the key. if you have the money, you could get a trigger pad instead of keyboard ... its easier to drum on. something like the maudio 'trigger finger'.

Never mind fellas, I found this guide for Fruity Loops(the only one I actually understand the interface from so far):

http://www.cjmmachinery.com/FL/index.html (found it on some dead google-cached link to an oldass expired thread at the Decrepit Birth forum just by coincidence!)

Geared for making death metal. Explains CLEARLY how to do BPM/tempo and time signature changes, something I wasn't able to figure out previously with it hence I was looking for other software. I FINALLY found something that clearly explains how to do this stuff.

I only downloaded the DFHS software, not all the samples, but I never got around to install it. I still have mixcraft, beatcraft, and leafdrums but I'll be using Fruity Loops for all my drums and then record to the tracks in either Cool Edit Pro, Sonar, or Cubase(probably CEP for now).

I also grabbed Reason 3.0 for shits and giggles(it was 2.0 Gb, downloaded in less than 1 night). I have not installed it yet but what the hell does it do? Does it have a drumkit sorta thingy or does it "linkup" with Cubase or DFHS?

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I knew all that stuff before but i didn't know about the changing of tempo.

Good find man.

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^That was the most important thing for me, I had no idea how to make a song with a variety of different speeds/beats. Ie: had no clue how to go from a skank beat to a blastbeat, to a fill, etc.

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OMG! I thank you SOOO freakin much dude! I've been manually hacking at the exported file to get the time sig changes smooth. It was so time consuming! I can't thank you enough Soreu for this tutorial!

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Rofls you're welcome, but I didn't make it, f0rbidden off the Decrepit Birth forum made it!

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DFHS isn't a program, I dunno what you have but if its not samples than its pointless. DFHS is a VSTi with a basic interface (mic bleed control/sample control/beat pads) that allows you to play the samples through a sequencer. I think Reason and Cuabse can link up with ReWire, don't really know how it works though.

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Oh damn. I don't know much about VST-related apps. At most I've used one of those realtime guitar amp/stomp box simulators and that installed some VST stuff, but I have no idea what its for.

But what is Reason for? Is it like some complicated mastering/mixing/sequencer kinda thing like FL or Sonar?

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Yep pretty sure its just another Cubase/Sonor, there might be some advantages or differences, fuck if I know.

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The file was over 2 gigabytes, it's a 3-CD install, I sure hope so!

I have almost 4Gb of software installers(stuff like FL, Cubase, etc.) and I think it's time that I burn all this to a DVD-R.

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Make sure you don't go into the cubase/toontrack forums, they'll rip you a new asshole if you tell them you dl'd all your shit. I also torrent but I use the modo "Try before buy" I bought cubase after I used it (prolly do the same for DFH eventually).

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Haha yeah I bet that's bound to happen at any software developer's site's forum. I never admit that I download stuff in such places, nor do I post there for that matter.

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reason has a good soundbank and fx, but it doesn't make for a very good host. it's an analog board looking sequencer thing thats more geared for on-the-fly dj type stuff. probably of little use to you.

I don't know about your Soeru but this tempo changing thing is STILL a pain in the fucking ass beyond asses.

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What can't you figure out man? It's real simple. Just do exactly what it says.

Click the pattern you wanna edit and open the step sequencer.

Right click the tempo box next to the Play/Stop/Rec buttons and hit "Edit Events", and using the Pencil tool(not the brush) click the bottom left corner and drag it vertically til it shows the tempo you want that specific beat to be in the BPM reading under the Tools/Help menu, here:

http://www.cjmmachinery.com/FL/editeventswindow.jpg
(the top arrow shows what I mean) It's not the same as the tempo box next to the Play/Stop/Rec buttons.

Then close the window. You have to do it for every individual pattern though, cuz if you change one pattern the rest of the song starting from that point will be at that tempo.

One thing, every time you're gonna do this if you already edited 1 pattern's tempo, you have to open the right click menu on the tempo box and click Edit Events TWICE. The first time you do it, the "edit events" thing will become unchecked. Do it again and it'll open the Edit Events window correctly again. I have no idea why it does this, it seems retarted, but I can get away with it.

Like the tutorial says, do it for every individual pattern, including the first pattern in the song so the tempo doesn't change if you're looping the song.

I'm piecing together a quick death metal clip for fun, almost done with it, want me to pass the FL file to you?

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Here's the mp3 of the thing I made, let me know if you want the FL file so you can open it and see what's going on:

http://storeandserve.com/download/7...l_b3at.mp3.html

Couldn't avoid the little spaces in between the blocks, hence it sounds like it skips in 1 or 2 parts, but I'm happy with it.

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I did all that, but every time i tried it made these ridiculously long patterns every time. Then you have to manually click and attempt to evenly level off from the beginning to the end with no snapping. Its just piss poor.

I mean the function works but its about the shittiest way i've ever seen or could imagine.

Why you couldn't an easier way like that edit events, then just change the number for the pattern is just beyond me.

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To get it all even in a pattern you have to use the pencil thing instead of the brush, because the pencil colors in all the blocks uniformly in the Edit Events window.

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Here, I did quickly few patterns in Reason. I am not satisfied how it responds with 32th kick drums, but slower stuff like 16th or such is pretty good.

EDIT:Reason patterns

if you use FL as a vst in Cubase, you can use cubase to control the tempo ... much easier than doing it in standalone FL (this according to a friend - i have not tried it).

i use fruity loops (flstudio) all the time for making drum tracks....get the drum kit from hell plug-in....i think it sounds awesome.......check out my soundclick for a sample....all songs on that page i made the drums with flstudio.....any feedback on the tunes would be great too.....

I'm a complete noob when it comes to digital recording, is Fruity Loops just samples? Is it the same as something like Beta Monkey Double Bass Mania etc and which is the simplest to operate?...

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Fruity Loops is a sequencing program, a loop-maker generally geared for techno/R&B people but with the right samples you can make metal stuff with it.

lugzz are you talking about DKFH, DKFH2, or DKFHS? DKFHS is a 30Gb install!

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If your a noob get something cheap like Beatcraft so you can get your feet wet first. You can d/l a full version for a week.


Peter

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Yeah but a week is not enough to learn how to use it lol. I find beatcraft annoying as fuck to use. FL is easier for me, I like the GUI more.

leafDrums is supposed to be the easiest and most efficient one out there. Sadly you can't do vast changes to the drum samples(the stock ones are crap), but if you load your preferred samples into an editor and tweak/EQ/whatever them to your pref's then problem solved

I really wanna get Drumkit from Hell superior(VST drum machine for Cubase, Nuendo, etc.) but it's a fucking huge install. I've deleted like 20Gb of music, still trying to free up some space for it.

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Wow 30gb that fucking huge! that over a 1/3 of my whole storage! So I guess neither Fruity Loops or Beatcraft is the same as just plain samples right, its actually like programming software to create your own beats? Because I've listened to Beta Monkey stuff and it sounds awesome, loads of options on varying tempos and time sigs without having to start from scratch. Anybody have experience of that particular software and how easy it is to incorporate into say, Cubase or Cakewalk Sonar etc?

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Yeah Fruity Loops and Beatcraft both come with samples, and you can use external ones.

But DKFHS already comes with a shitload of drumsounds(hence the 30Gb), you can't load external sounds but who the hell would need to! It's supposed to be the most realistic sounding drum machine out there.

Cubase ad Cakewalk Sonar will work with Drumkit from Hell. I think FL too though I have no clue.

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