Hi! First of all thanks Rob for the awesome content, it’s so well explained. I’ve been less than a month but I’ve learned so much in this time thanks to you!
My current setup is a Novation Launchpad X, which has really good pads and it’s a 8x8 matrix, so I’ve set it up following your recommendations for those big controllers and configured some extra pads to the trigger other sounds. It was easy following your guides.
But when it comes to the software, although I’m currently using Ableton’s drum rack, I agree that Addictive Drums 2 sounds awesome and it’s more flexible, so I’m considering buying it as it would also be useful for my music productions.
The only thing is that the regular price is expensive. Do you know when they do usually discounts? I’ve seen from previous posts that in Easter last year there was a sale, so maybe one is coming soon?
Hey Gaego, I strongly recommend waiting for the next Addictive drums sale. I think they do quarterly sales, with the best ones being 40% to 50% off the regular price.
It depends a little on what they discount. Sometimes it’s everything, sometimes it’s just AD packs, sometimes only starter kits etc.
But if you can make things work for a couple months you will be able to hop on board for (I think) less than $100.
Great, thanks for the quick reply! I can indeed wait a few weeks/months as I can survive with a custom drum rack in Ableton. Not ideal from sound perspective but enough to follow your lessons.
I use Addictive Drums. It’s very good and I have nothing bad to say about it. I also use Battery 4, BFD 3, and Native Instruments Abbey Road and Drumlab. I find that Abbey Road and Drumlab are fun, they are not very easy to set up key maps. They are not very intuitive. Drumlab mixes acoustic and synthetic drum labs for each kit piece. Kind of fun, but it contains quite a few significant bugs. Battery 4 I think is more oriented to non-acoustic drums, and you are not likely to find enough velocity layers in the kit pieces to really give an accurate drum sound.
Which brings me to BFD3. I’m a beta tester for BFD 3.5. As a result, I have to watch what I say so I don’t give away any secrets. But as many of you may know, the last major release was about a decade ago and there have been various bugs reported by people. Since then it was acquired by InMusic, which also owns Akai. Alesis, and M-audio. They have really made a good faith effort to improve BFD and I’m here to report that the stability, flexibility, general architecture, and sound quality are fantastic. The existing expansion packs are quite good, and there can be as many as 80 velocity layers on a kit piece. It’s definitely my go-to drum software. BUT, the size of many of these expansion packs is tremendously large, so if you have limited hard drive space that could be an issue. The file size documentation is not easy to find, but if you need to know contact me and if it is something I have I’ll check the size and get back to you. For example, the Vintage Recording Techniques expansion takes up about 13.2 Gb, but Dark Farm is almost 90 Gb!!
Now I’ve got all these great pieces of drum software I just have to learn how to finger drum! Luckily, Quest for Groove is really helping me make progress in a measured fashion. I wouldn’t have bought all the BFD expansions unless I had faith that the Quest method was going to be successful. I agree with Rob that programming or using midi files just doesn’t cut it. I wish it did . . . but it doesn’t. There is no substitute for just learning how to drum.
Hello, I was in Portugal for a couple days, back now. Sorry for the late reply.
I recommend the following ADpacks, since I made almost all drums presets with these kits:
Fairfax 1
Funk
Black Oyster
When there’s a sale at XLN audio the price for a custom starter pack with 3 kits will drop to about $99 so the 97 euro price seems like the best discounted price you can get. For as far as I know Gear4Music is not a scam website so buying there should be possible.
Thanks! No worries, and good to have you close (I currently live in Spain ;D).
I have already purchased it and indeed it is a good deal, I’m really happy with it as I can use AD2 again. So far I’ve chosen Fairfox and Black Oyster, I’ll consider Funk following your recommendation!
I can really recommend you the new Vintage Dry kit, it comes with lots of kit pieces and good presets and has its own distinctive sound. But Funk is great, too.
But maybe the smartest move is to not make a decision yet, get a feeling for the 2 kits you already have and after a while you might know better what works for -you-.
Thanks Fannon! Indeed I’ve not chosen yet my third kit (that’ll be a bit commitment! :D) and I’m still hesitant, so I agree with waiting more until I know what fills the gap best for me.
And thanks for your recommendation also on the Vintage Dry kit! I’ll take a look to it too!
Yes Vintage Dry is a lovely kit indeed. If I would start QFG now it would probably be one of the 3 main kits I’d recommend.
There are also ADpack sales regularly, so you can always wait for that as well to expand your kits.
The one thing I can say is that you’ll be fine with what you have now, especially while you’re learning and especially with that one “wildcard” kit you still have available.