My son's really digging into making his own kits in Steven Slate Drums (3.5 Platinum), but likes what he's hearing on Soundcloud with Superior Drummer for his style. I agree, maybe we need to check out some of these other programs. It's been a while since I asked this, there's a new SSD and tons of others now so wondering what you like for modern stuff. His music is between Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor, lots of riffs and polyrythms so the drums need to be kinda "bigger" than say rock/metal ones.

This seems like a good one. Used the drummer from Meshuggah. Can't go wrong there.




Not a lot of mixes to check out though.

Misha used SD 2 on everything he made AFAIK, including Animals as leaders albums(first one and the new one) You can't go wrong with SD 2 for pretty much any style.

My only gripe with it is the signature sound it has, it's cool but it' s on almost every bedroom project i've heard...nothing wrong with that since it's still the most advanced drum vst out there, sounds great and is expandable.
Funnily enough, i went from SD 2 to Steven Slate 3.5 platinum and couldn't be happier. I still think the cymbals sound nicer in SD 2 but overall, Slate is much more "plug and play" and almost mix ready out of the box. I found the included plugins with SD 2 good but cumbersome to use and i could never get it sounding as big as the big boys altough i blame my mixing for that, not SD 2 hehe.


BFD and Addictive drummer might be worth checking out too, but i have no experience with those.

My buddy Matt who does have 11 rack doesn't come here much, I tried to encourage him to............ but he swears by addictive drums there is a sample or would you say free VST that you can use before buying the full version I think it sounds pretty cool to me..... I really have no experience with any others.

Interesting. I like the ease of use of SSD 3.5 Platinum, once you discover what the kits are and find your gotos, it' awesome. I think what my son's trying to do is copy the SD2 sound, and he's pretty close. I don't see why you can't make the same sounds, but they aren't there as a kit or anything. I told him to save the kits because I don't think there's any user kits out there trying to copy the SD2 sound haha

He fortunately, seems to be great at figuring out programs. He's teaching me stuff about drum programming. Kids these days, they soak it all up.

I've been using Addictive Drums and BFD2 for quite a while and am pleased with them both.

Just got BFD3 in AAX for PT 11. I must say that I really like it. It is faster, more memory efficient and sounds good.

Addictive did not change, from what I understand when it went to AAX so I am sure it will be just as good. I have not upgraded my copy yet though.

Your son is doing much heavier style music than I do, so I don't know if this would work, but I use drum loops from www.smartloops.com

What I love about them is they are real drums played by a real drummer, there are countless fills that come with them, and there are lots of variations of basic beats.

In addition, they are very affordable.

Probably not a lot of Meshuggah style loops out there, but for more rock and pop oriented material, they are great. Incidentally, I like the loops that came with PT's 8, but there are almost no fills or cymbal hits in the drum beats, so you pretty much have to use one loop an entire song (not that it hasn't been done, for example John Mayer's Heartbreak Warfare).

I don't know if Maschine counts? Maschine, combined with Kontakt drums is a favorite of mine.

I have a few different things, but I am too stupid to figure out how to make any of it work..

My son's found that a step sequencer is on the top right hand corner of VSTs, including Kontakt. It pops up a sequencer where the console (mix window in Cakewalk) is. In Cakewalk, it opens at the bottom instead of being a separate window altogether like Pro Tools. That has made it much better for me to work in Cakewalk. I have always ignored "built in stuff" but it is a very easy thing for creating drums, much like Fruity Loops. I think I saw it in the past versions of Cakewalk and was really tiny, but now it's big like the drum machine in Pro Tools has. I just have Cakewalk Music Creator 6 Touch (the one you can buy on Steam, the gaming service but now they do Cakewalk stuff). Thinking about going to X3 for $50 since I mostly just need the DAW and VSTs.

Drum programs should come with templates that are set up with sequencers and synth tracks, but I guess they assume we are good at this stuff already lol