Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

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SMS
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Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by SMS »

I'm slowly migrating over to all VIs from MIDI land- this project needs jazz ballad brush drums... Which VI would you recommend for this- I have Steven Slate drums which is great for sticks, but the brush kit is lacking- I need swishes and swirls- ditto for the drums included w/ MachFive3.

All input welcomed.

Thanks

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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by David Polich »

BFD Jazz and Funk has a lot of great jazz brush kits. Of course, you'll need BFD (version 2 or version 3) to run it:

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=14&tab=37

Some of the other expansion packs and third-party packs for BFD contain jazz brush drums.
Here's another - BFD "Virtually Erskine" expansion pack:

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=227

You just need to click on the expansion names to hear the demos and you can see a list of kit pieces for each expansion.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by HCMarkus »

I recommend a real drummer.

Sorry. Just had to say it.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by James Steele »

HCMarkus wrote:Sorry. Just had to say it.
Man... I had to squint for that one! :)
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by rnappi »

You can do some pretty decent mock ups with Vienna Jazz Drums. The brush snares in particular are really nice. http://vsl.co.at/en/Percussion_Complete ... Jazz_Drums

Straight Ahead Samples is also good. They have stick and brush kits that use a combo of loops and individual hits. It's a little pricey, but the overall sound is very convincing. That said, I feel like the individual hits could use a few more articulations and velocity layers. http://straightaheadsamples.com/shop-2/product-bundles/



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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by SMS »

Thanks, all!

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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by Babz »

EZdrummer comes with the Cocktail Kit, which I used for this track (not a ballad; sorry):

https://soundcloud.com/babz_nyc/black-samba

There is also a nice Jazz EZX expansion, which has brush kits. Check out:

http://www.toontrack.com/product/jazz-ezx/

EZDrummer has an interface that is fun to work with.

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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by SMS »

Thanks, Babz. I downloaded the demos for both EZ and BFD and like them both. The Bfd interface won't fit on my 13" MacBook screen, unless I'm missing something not instantly obvious... For that reason along with price and your reinforcement of my initial ecaluation, I think I'm going with EZ.

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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by mikehalloran »

HCMarkus wrote:I recommend a real drummer.

Sorry. Just had to say it.
When I sold my kit nearly 30 years ago, I kept my spare snare, brushes, a pair of mallets and sticks. Came in really handy many times over the years. Can't do that anymore but nothing beats the real deal here.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by BobK »

The Roots-Brushes expansion SDX expansion pack for Superior Drummer 2 is really nice. Toontrack created an interesting way of programming the swirls on the snare (though don't recall the details, unfortunately). Very realistic.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by mhschmieder »

All of the above are good recommendations. I started with BFD and for many years used primarily VSL's at-the-time free bonus jazz drums (for early buyers of Vienna Suite).

To be quite frank though, my favorite jazz brush kit at this point is the freebie from Sennheiser (if still available), called "DrumMic'a!" (Kontakt). Very dynamic and full of articulations. Even better, it's a Kontakt Player Library, so you don't need a full Kontakt license to use it!

I've had trouble with VSL in the mix as it is so soft that I have to pull it WAY up before I can start working with it. It has a lot of snare articulations. Still amongst the best, but the cymbals are a bit weak. You can easily augment those with cymbals from various BFD or Kontakt-based sets though.

Wavesfactory may still be celebrating their anniversary with a 50% off sale. They recently added a nice BrushDrums library.

I went ahead and bought the Straight Ahead! libraries during their sale a few months back, and also the Supeior and Addictive jazz material, but can't comment as I haven't had a chance to use them yet.

Wavelore also has a Brush Kit, and you can test Straight Ahead! with their freebie kit first.

One of the nice things about Straight Ahead! is that they also include mallets (on a drum set).
Last edited by mhschmieder on Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by toodamnhip »

rnappi wrote:You can do some pretty decent mock ups with Vienna Jazz Drums. The brush snares in particular are really nice. http://vsl.co.at/en/Percussion_Complete ... Jazz_Drums

Straight Ahead Samples is also good. They have stick and brush kits that use a combo of loops and individual hits. It's a little pricey, but the overall sound is very convincing. That said, I feel like the individual hits could use a few more articulations and velocity layers. http://straightaheadsamples.com/shop-2/product-bundles/



rich
As a straight ahead Jazz player, I find that the folks at Straight Ahead Samples are REAL jazz people. Does this mean their stuff is the best? I can’t be sure. But if you watch the videos there, they are seriously anal when it comes to little nuances on bass, drums etc.....
They really care and really understand these nuances and seem to go to great pains to make things legit.
For example, Upright Bass pull offs, or..when a bass player would change to an open string in a bass line..they UNDERSTAND this and incorporate this understanding into the programming of their VIs.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by mhschmieder »

Nevertheless, Kontakt is not a very good interface for drums. That's why I didn't list Drum Masters 2 (though many of those kist a re also now available in BFD format, thankfully). I mentioned the freebie from Sennheiser just because they bothered to do heavy scripting and also because the sampling is so deep and musical!

I hope to start making more use of the Straight Ahead! stuff the next time I get back to my MIDI based jazz projects. Too busy recording live musicians and doing live gigs at the moment. But the couple of trial runs I did impressed me, except for the awkwardness of using Kontakt to do it.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by Rick Cornish »

My 2¢...

Having played jazz for most of my life, I'm skeptical that a VI would be able to capture or reproduce the nuance in jazz brush playing—particularly on a ballad. Perhaps if the user isn't too picky and the part isn't too exposed, a result might be able to be achieved that would be considered "good enough" for some, but can only imagine it would take an inordinate amount of time to do so. Personally, my choices would be (1) if at all possible, record a real drummer (a real jazz drummer with the right kit and chops) or (2) as a last resort drop the needle on a sample CD (Peter Erskine's "Living Drums" or Samplephonics' "Brushed Grooves" come to mind) and spend my time doing some creative audio editing of real playing to get the part to sing.

Again, just one guy's opinion.
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Re: Best Drum VI or library for Jazz brush ballad?

Post by Shooshie »

Rick Cornish wrote:My 2¢...

Having played jazz for most of my life, I'm skeptical that a VI would be able to capture or reproduce the nuance in jazz brush playing—particularly on a ballad. Perhaps if the user isn't too picky and the part isn't too exposed, a result might be able to be achieved that would be considered "good enough" for some, but can only imagine it would take an inordinate amount of time to do so. Personally, my choices would be (1) if at all possible, record a real drummer (a real jazz drummer with the right kit and chops) or (2) as a last resort drop the needle on a sample CD (Peter Erskine's "Living Drums" or Samplephonics' "Brushed Grooves" come to mind) and spend my time doing some creative audio editing of real playing to get the part to sing.

Again, just one guy's opinion.
I think most of us feel that way about our own instruments. VI libraries never come close to what we actually do with our instruments. As a saxophonist, my reactions to most sax libraries range from disappointment to outright laughter, never "wow, they GOT it!" But we accept the compromise, because most of us can't afford to pay a full orchestra to show up at our houses every day to record another round of doodles that may or may not amount to anything. That's why most people call these "mockups." I've tried to make actual recordings with VIs, and it works if it's slipped into a bunch of live instruments, but an entire recording of just VIs usually lacks something... something big.

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