Welcome to Ride-Town
Well, this has been a ripsnorter of a week for me. Just upgraded the ram on my laptop to 1.25Gb, and my HD to 80Gb, all in preparation for the installation of the ultimate in drum sequencing, Toontrack’s Drumkit From Hell Superior software package. That’s quite a mouthful if you say it fast enough. Go on, try it. Feels good yes? Well, it felt good to me. Loading up in Nuendo there is nothing this VSTi cant do in the realm of drum programming. So without further ado (and hopefully without sounding like an advertisement) I will explain my enthusiasm for the program.After I loaded up all 35Gb of the sweetest wav files to grace my system I was surprised with a new interface to the old DFH window. This window, known as the construct window, is intrinsic to the function of DFH Superior. The construct window shows what is known as the microphone leakage control matrix. Once the drumkit has been assembled, ie. the user has chosen brand of kick drum, snare, overheads etc. the amound of bleed can be controlled through the matrix. Sounds special right? It is. Too much snare through the overheads? No problem, 2 seconds later, snare no more. More ride through the room mics? Easy done. Welcome to Ride-Town.
I read many reviews for this software, as well has listened to various groups that have used it to compose their music with. Nowhere have I found anyone that disliked it, myself included. After programming a few rudimentary beats I decided to test the programs usability in producing a “live feel”. Luckily the drummer from my band has an electronic kit, so it was simply a matter of hooking up the midi ports and off we went. We recorded 7 songs using his Roland kit, and I replaced the awful GM sounds with DFH VSTi, and wow, I cannot tell the difference between DFH and real live drum sounds. The kick drum is deep and resonant blending well with the toms, whilst the overheads are crisp and clear, without that fake electronic sheen that seems to be prevalent in many drum libraries out there; LM7, Reason, etc. I am confident that with some tweaking I will have a drum sound that can match that of a kit recorded in a professional studio. I have not yet been able to explore all the functions of this remarkable software, which includes a 108 piece percusion library also. I'll get back to you in a couple o' hundred years.
posted by Daniel Murtagh @ 17:14
Comments: 0
