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I was going to post the same question, but, since dingusKahn already beat me to it, and it hasn’t been answered yet, I’m gonna post a followup asking the same damned thing!

I’ve got a bunch of music software, Reason and Logic Studio, a bunch of loops and the Drum Kits refill but I’ll be damned if I can come up with something that resembles a decent drum beat. Adding hardware to the environment in the form of an M-Audio Trigger Finger has only helped marginally.

I think the problem for me is two-fold: 1, my timing’s not great. Needs more practice. 2, real drummers don’t stay locked in at 132.98BPM from start to finish. There’s an ebb and flow to the tempo and that’s usually led by the drums and bass.

I’d love to hear how you do it, brad.

Well, my drums are usually different from song to song. On the new record I layer a lot, so it can be a bunch of different sounds. The one consistent thing is that I compress the living hell out of them.

Personally, I like drums that hit super hard (probably the Nirvana fan in me). Any semi-decent drum samples will work fine if you treat them well. Limit/compress them, a bit of good reverb.

On Out of It there are lots of individual samples, two drum softwares called EZ Drummer and Groove Agent. And I layered them in and out depending on whatever I felt like. EZ Drummer has a nice sound but it’s kinda generic. Groove Agent I like the hihats/cymbals. And I often use one-shots from my library when I’m working on a song. Rob and I tried to work on balancing everything so it felt live but was still interesting.

The big thing to me with drums is figuring out how to make limiting/compression work to make them hit hard. That seems to be the majority of what people ask me about.

After you learn that, it doesn’t really matter what you use. Some kits will have samples you prefer more than others, but it’s probably the energy you’re after more than the actual samples.

boolean: Perhaps you’ve already tried it, but try to work with the velocity. I’m a drummer myself so it might be easier for me, but I usually just make the hihat velocity go up and down to make it less stiff. Use ghostnotes and all that too, it helps! In Reason 4 there’s also the Groove Agent which can help you vary the drum beats.