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Why Do People Use Drum Machine Plugins?

mobius017

Aspiring ∞ Creator
Apr 8, 2018
1,982
I'm curious about drum machine plugins. Why are they useful?

I can understand how a physical drum machine would be useful for a live performer. It would automate production of a static percussion sequence/set of static percussion sequences, so a live performer wouldn't have to rely on a pre-made loop(s) or play the drums him/herself.

Why would a person with a DAW use a virtual drum machine, though?

I've put together a few ideas below, only one of which seems like a definitive advantage of drum machines over MIDI, so I'm curious to hear others' feedback. I found out about XO by XLN Audio awhile back, so some of my ideas are based on that.
  • A drum machine would provide a single place to input/adjust a percussion pattern that repeats.
    • But on the flip side, I imagine most DAWs have something like Studio One's shadow copy feature, where you can make a drum sequence and then copy it, and altering any one copy alters all of them.
    • At the same time, a drum machine would be more cumbersome in terms of adjusting if you wanted to temporarily depart from the drum sequence you created--i.e., for the space of a single bar, stop using one of your percussion instruments, or change what your instruments are doing, before resuming the original pattern later.
      • On the flip side again (orz), XO, at least, seems able to be controlled by MIDI in the DAW directly. If that's the case, that negates that problem...but also seems to negate the original semi-advantage of drum machines....
    • Similar to the above, drum machines also seem to be limited in the number of patterns they can store. Direct MIDI sequencing doesn't have this limitation.
  • XO, at least, lets you swap out individual drum elements for other ones. So, if I have a percussion pattern of cymbals, kicks, and a toms, I can switch to a different kick (for example) while keeping the pattern itself/other percussion instruments intact. If all drum machines work this way, that would be quite convenient. It's doable with MIDI drum kits, but if you switch between kits, there's no guarantee that the keyboard key from the first kit will be the same as its counterpart in the second kit, so it's not as convenient.
  • Using a drum machine would keep all your drums compacted/hidden within the drum machine, so the layout in your DAW stays cleaner.
    • On the flip side, I think applying effects (other than the ones the machine comes with)/mixing those individual percussion instruments might be rendered impossible? If that's true...that would be a big detraction, I'd think.... It's hard to believe that could be the case....
  • Drum machines probably often have features that can make the beat swing/etc.
    • On the flip side, you can do that in MIDI, too. Certainly there are humanization functions, at least. If you want to make the beat swing, you might have to do that manually, so the drum machine might be more convenient in that regard.
I think that's about as much as I can think of. Does anyone have thoughts for/against using drum machines or MIDI sequencing?
 

Buck

Aspiring Fan
Apr 8, 2018
27
Some drum machine plugins might be able to do cool stuff. One thing that is notable about having midi patterns you can play back from a drum machine as opposed to samples is that you can change the tempo of your project and it will not need to time stretch the loop (time stretching is really noticable on drums).

XO, the plugin you pointed out, is more notable for it's ability to sort your sample library and let you explore it in an unconventional way which is useful for people who get into ruts or just need help to find ideas.

Another drum machine that has a unique advantage is Superior Drummer, which is notable because it plays back the sample through multiple channels with different degrees of filtering/reverb to attempt to simulate bleed through different mics, the way it would sound if you were recording an actual drum kit with mics. This is pretty hard to do on your own, no reason to when you can just buy a plugin that does it for you.

afaik that's about the only reason to use drum machine plugins.

  • On the flip side, I think applying effects (other than the ones the machine comes with)/mixing those individual percussion instruments might be rendered impossible? If that's true...that would be a big detraction, I'd think.... It's hard to believe that could be the case....
This is really the big problem for most drum machines. You would need to load a new instance of that drum machine for each sample you intend to use, which defeats the purpose of them entirely.

Most people I know (and this doesn't represent the entire music community all that well, but I don't think there is a consensus anyway) will do one of three things with drums

  1. Put the audio samples where they want them directly in the timeline view as audio clips. I don't know how people work this way but it has some advantages. Not only can you treat each element of the drum kit as a separate track, you can treat each individual clip in a unique way as well. Especially for messing with crossfades.
  2. Load a sampler for each sample you want. This sounds convoluted but there is one situation I'll get to in a moment where this works really well.
  3. Recording the samples from a physical device or from a real world drum kit using mics
Sometimes drum machines have samples unique to them, but usually for all the popular ones (808 for example) you can just find sample packs online so you can work with the audio files instead of needing to load a unique plugin that won't let you mix the way you want.

Now there are probably exceptions that I don't know about. Obviously one thing that using samples doesn't help with is live playback from a MIDI controller. I know there are some people who, the way they will record drums is by putting in a drum machine and then actually recording their MIDI playback from a controller. This works for some people, but it has all the downsides you mentioned of course.

However one big exception is in FL Studio because of the way it's plugin ecosystem works. If you drag an audio sample into the channel rack, it will load up a sampler for you so you can just drag->drop-> start sequencing using the step sequencer. This works in the same pattern system that applies to the piano roll as well so it's super simple. You don't get total control over each individual note, but depending on your style you might not really need that a lot.

If you wanted to use a drum machine you can use patcher to have each individual audio output for the pads go to their own mixer channels. It's a bit of setup but you could save the preset and as long as you use the same channels for your drums every time it would be fine. Most drum machines I've had have one output for each pad, but some might not and this wouldn't work.

Ableton Live also has a drum machine where you literally can just put effects directly on every pad. So it doesn't have this drawback either.

Another last thing worth mentioning is you can control your levels and panning and whatnot through the MIDI expressions if you are using a drum machine. You can also do this for everything else that uses MIDI and it doesn't really offer you that much control. It's better than nothing though.

So tl;dr it depends a lot on the DAW and the specific plugin you are using.
 

Stigbn

Aspiring Fan
Jul 21, 2018
74
Denmark
I mostly like to see all the drum-elements in one midi-channel, that sends to a drum maschine, either a representation of a "real" drumset (Superior drummer) or a collection af samples (like in Studio One's "Impact" or in NI Battery 4). I've never been accustomed to having tracks for each drum like I can see many producers do. It's not the way I think about a drumpart, I've tried it, but I always end up using Superior drummer or Impact or Battery. And as Buck said above, Superior Drummer is excellent in recreating the sound and ambience of a real drumset, if that's what you're after. You can also get many, many pre-recorded midi's for Superior, a good way to get ideas, even if you most of the time end up using your own rhythms.
 

mobius017

Aspiring ∞ Creator
Apr 8, 2018
1,982
Thank you very much for all your info! Surprisingly, despite my original thoughts, I've actually gotten interested in XO. I have a few freebie sample collections, and XO seems like a really good way to expose them and give them some work. It seems to have at least an output bus for each instrument in the kit (so it should be mixable), and I'm hoping it'll take MIDI input, too (haven't been able to determine that yet), rather than being limited to the two patterns you can put into the built-in sequencer.
 
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