Drum Loops are a Godsend!

[Resonant Alien]

Let me preface this by saying that nothing sounds better than real drums mic'd really well in a great room played by a great drummer, BUT......sometimes you don't have a great drum room (or room for great drums), or you just can't afford to work on a drummers "loose" schedule (sorry drummers!), I've found that well-recorded acoustic drum loop libraries are really improving in quality.

A couple of years ago I decided to go with FXPansion BFD drum VI because I couldn't find a drum loop library that I though sounding like real acoustic drums - most libraries I found seemed to be focused on electronica, remix, etc, and had that mechanical feel.

BFD sounds great, but alas, I am not a drummer, so even though I put together some nice sounding tracks, they were just a little dull. I recently went searching for drum loops again and this time found Drums On Demand and Beta Monkey. Both of these have deep libraries for real acoustic drums playing for rock, pop, country styles.

I was still a little unsure about how flexible it would be using loops - would I be able to find loops to fit the songs I was writing? So far, it's been awesome. I always seem to be able to find a loop set that fits the song I'm working on, and it is FAST putting together a track versus using BFD (since I'm not a drummer, no doubt). Every once in a while, I can't get something tweaked just right, but not very often.

I've found using loops to be much more enjoyable than trying to program a track from scratch in BFD. They other nice thing is that you get a tiny bit of that feeling that you are working with another person - instead of having to come up with all the drum ideas, the loops sometimes present ideas that you hadn't thought of.

Of course, like I said, nothing is better than working with a real drummer (assuming it is a GOOD drummer - nothing is worse than working with a BAD drummer), but loops are the next best thing!