2018-01-21 09:27:19 (edited by black and white 2018-01-21 09:28:15)

Hi guys!
So we wanted to begin using reaper for our music stuff but we're stuck at the beginning big_smile
We're looking for a good and usable drum VSTI for our drum tracks but no results yet. therefore, we decided to ask here.
By usable I mean we can use it by some tricks. I don't expect it to be fully accessible cause it's clear that nothing's perfect in the VST world.
Currently we're using samples with "VSTi: ReaSamplOmatic5000 (Cockos)" but from the things we observed from some VSTI such as "Superior Drummer" or "Addictive Drums" they've got much much better quality and are more natural sounding than what we've got right now.
We tried to work with "Superior Drummer 3" but no luck there, it wasn't a bit accessible in bridged mode.
We haven't tested "Addictive drums" yet but we're planning on doing so.
So, what y'all are using and we're looking forward to your suggestions on drum tracks!
If you have another suggestion on making drum tracks, we're looking forward to that also!

2018-01-21 10:25:43

Since you won't have to worry about midi mapping,  and depending on your screen reader, here are my choices.

For Windows using NVDA:

Addictive Drums 2 is somewhat accessible with OCR.  You can load some presets and change some kit pieces.  May take a little fiddling with to understand some of the clutter, but it's doable.

As for other solutions.  Cakewalk Dimension Pro or Studio Instruments would do something decent.  They are both accessible with OCR and when you click on where you need to for loading presets, the rest is  speech accessed, and you can go through and select whatever it is you want.

Native Instruments Kontakt 5 is accessible with a script from Access4Music, however it only goes up to version 5.6.  They do have some nice drum stuff there, too.

A hardware solution for this would be to get a nice used Roland drum module.  Since you won't need pads, it will be much cheaper.  Additionally, you can get V expression  preset packs that will make the module sound WAY better, and yes, I use emphasis on Way because it does make a differenced, but they could be harder to load.  Some good choices for the module, that are budget friendly, are the TD-11, TD-15, TD-12, and TD-25.  If you have the money, a TD-30 or TD-50 would definitely rock, too. but those are in the four figures without the pads.
  THe best of the budget solutions  is the TD-25.
Check out www.vexpressionsltd.com for  more info on vex packs for modules.


A TD-6v may do what you need to, who knows, just give it all an ear.  The guys will be very helpful with you.


Moderators: Sorry, I am not trying to advertise VExpressions, just want to try and help others. 

To the OP.  Hope this helps.  Any further questions, feel free to ask. I am a drummer, too.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-21 11:41:33

Thanks for the reply.
Yep I forgot to mention that I'm using NVDA+OSARA on windows10.
There are some points I had a question about:

  1. What is midi mapping?

  2. How to use NVDA win10 OCR in VSTs? from I've used, this OCR presents the text in a kinda HTML view unlike JAWS OCR, so it's unclickible.

  3. Is it possible to use NI Kontakt without that script?

Thanks again for your in-depth reply!

2018-01-21 15:48:18

1. Midi mapping is more specific for drummers who use an electronic kit. It won't be necessary if you are programming drum tracks within Reaper's midi editor.
2. WIndows 10 OCR with NVDA is clickable.  I did not know this for the longest time, either, but it does work, so if you find what you're looking for, hit enter, and it will activate.
3. No, Kontakt is not usable without  the script.  However, if you have Golden cursor, and a second set of eyes, you could make some clickable locations.  Problem is, in order for that to be fully successful, you have to have your presets load within the extension of Reaper, in other words, it can not be a dedicated window, because the window position changes on every instance of reloading, and with it within Reaper's plugin window, you can maximize it and it is stationary on that note.

A friend of mine is working with something he created called "SIBIAC" problem is, we don't know when it will be ported to Reaper, but I used it in Sonar X3 and it worked wonders, but since the Fall Creator's update with WIndows, it's not been working properly, so we are having to figure it out, but when it's available, it will be an NVDA add-on that will make addictive drums very much accessible, including the ability to relocate and reroute dru ms to specific channels.  It will be free, too, and we will probably integrate Kontakt as well.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-21 20:10:44

hi, you might also wish to check out this nice drumkit, made specifically for reaper itself, though more and more versions for other samplers besides the reaSamplomatic one have come out  but for being a free one and for the immensely high amount of detail that went into its sampling I think you cannot get any better than that.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2018-01-22 00:41:58

@G-Rad
Thanks again.
That part about NVDA OCR was way cool.
I tested it and it really did work.
And I'm eagerly waiting for what you are making.

@UltraLeetJ
Thanks for that wp blog.
It didn't come up in any of my searches.
I checked that out and it was awesome!

And if anyone else have another suggestion, We're still looking forward to it.
And does anyone know of a website (or somewhere in the net) to download free HQ drum samples?

2018-01-22 04:26:54

Another vote for the SM drums. If you have some drum samples you like and a bit of patience, you can set up your own kit similar to the SM one with ReaSamplOmatic. I can't think of any free high quality ones off the top of my head, but I've had great success with the sample and loop packs from Beta Monkey, and those are pretty cheap.

Los Angeles Based musician, blogger, and programmer.
https://artistibarra.com/

2018-01-22 07:25:01

hi, smDrums does have a whole working reaper set with the reaSamplomatic setup already, with a complementary free pack from groovemonkee (its in the wordpress site) . though my sampler of choice is the sforzando one there is lots of quality instruments for it as well and the sm drums works really nice with it. Still am going to check out the other stuff all of you have mentioned. very nice stuff.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2018-01-22 10:53:55

@UltraLeetJ
Could you explain further on that sforzando you mentioned?
It might be also useful for us.

2018-01-22 12:25:28 (edited by flackers 2018-01-22 12:40:21)

Before I got superior drummer, I used to use a drum machine program called drumsite. It was okay at the time, but I wouldn't use it now because it sounds mechanical and shit compared to a realtime drum sampler. The thing is though, it came bundled with two discs full of decent quality samples of several kits that I think were made by a different company. I still have them, but haven't really got a use for them. I'd happily share them with anyone who wanted them, but the thing is, they're not labelled on the disc, you have to use the included sound manager software to import them, and that correctly lables them and puts them into folders, but it's not accessible. It's a shame because I think they're good samples, and there's a ton of them. I might see if I can figure out how to use ReaSamplomatic, and see if I can make a decent kit out of them. The trouble is I'm utterly clueless with this sort of stuff. I mainly record guitars and stuff that goes down a mic, or comes in through a line-in. I started recording home noodling back in the days of Fostex 4 tracks lol.

2018-01-22 14:18:55

Well for me, I would like something that I can trigger with my E-kit if I don't decide to use the onboard swamples, so with doing so, I need to remap midi notes because my aux inputs on my odule don't line up properly with any sampler or even major VST program, so I have to train them to learn my kit.

However for  hand-programming, these definitely would be a good way to go about doing things. 

I'll throw this out there, but if anyone needs any real-time drums with sounds, I can do some recordings for you guys. I have nothin' but time on my hands and always looking for something to do/work.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-22 16:13:53

I just got a few things done with a friend using  Facetime, and now I can somewhat use Addictive Drums 2 again.    Using golden cursor, I am able to cycle through presets, and do some midi mapping.  I am determining if usind the kit page or edit page is more sufficient for selecting kit pieces, because if it's in the same place on the edit page, then making  g c  parameters would be much more sufficient since I can change then just select instrument  up or down, rather than making an up and down arrow for 18 different kit pieces, making a total of 36 additional clickable positions.

My resolution is 1920x1080 and I will gladly post the values if anyone wnats them.  I am not about to keep it all for myself, haha, just know that it is in the reaper   app, not host or anything.  I did this by maximizing the fx window with AD2 loaded, making my job much easier and everything stationary.

I miss SIBIAC, lol.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-25 10:29:27

Guys, How about superior drummer or EZ drummer? the toontrack products I mean.
Is there any way to use those?
because from the demos I've listened on youtube they sound waaaay better than something like addictive drums.
Similar to the one Alex was using in the CBT podcasts.
Addictive drums sounds more acousticcy.
I'm looking for something more clear sounding, more elictriccy or something like that If you get what I mean.

2018-01-25 11:44:41 (edited by flackers 2018-01-25 13:17:47)

I had a look at superior in reaper using NVDA. All the menus are readable once you get them open. Just using screen review you can navigate to the library, load, and save menus, route the mouse, then left click to open them. So you could access the libraries, and the load and save menus. The problem is with loading say a combined preset is that it then opens a dialog that offers all kinds of check boxes asking exactly which aspects of the combined preset you want to load, for instance, drum kit, mixer settings, FX etc. I could navigate around the names of these check boxes because I was familiar with them, and so knew what they were, but don't know if routing the mouse and clicking would check or uncheck them. I couldn't find the dialog's ok button even with OCR, so you'd need a golden cursor point for that. Though I'm using win7 so dont' have win10's OCR capability. Just getting access to the libraries and presets is doable without too much fuss, but everything else will require a bit of work. As G-Rad pointed out the other day, you could switch to classic mode and do mouse positions for all the kit pieces so you could swap them out if you wanted. The other problem would be if you wanted to access sliders for adjusting volumes of instruments or microphones. Nothing useful shows up in the parameters list, and you can't really do cursor positions for sliders because they move. I know I'm flogging a dead horse, but this is where jaws scripting is really useful if you're not a programmer.
The other option would be to set up superior in reaper with each kit piece sent to a separate track, which reaper offers everytime you try to load superior. You could then use reaper's track panning and volumes. Don't know how well this would work because I've never done it. To do this however you would also need to go into superior drummer's mixer window and set each channel's output manually. The mixer window is the trickiest window in superior because of its being too big to fit in a single window and needs to side scroll. Dragging the slider just enough so that any controls you've done cursor positions for end up in exactly the same place every time is a challenge. I know because I did it with jaws, and this window drove me mental.
As for Superior vs Addictive; they are both trying to simulate acoustic kits. If addictive sounds more acousticlike, it actually is better at the job they're both trying to do. I personally prefer the sound of addictive for the same reasons you dislike it heheh. If you are looking to create more electronic type music, there are probably better solutions than superior and addictive, but |I wouldn't know what they were.

2018-01-25 13:51:26

AD2 and SD2 are both equal, just depends on the presets selected.      When I used SD2, I always used the kits raw, haha.   

Here's a demo of one of the AD2 presets I used yesterday for a drum cover.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beykiVjSahA

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-25 17:54:43

The question is that how to change the presets?
I've tried all sorts of things with the NVDA OCR thing but nothing.
I guess it has multipal presets because I was able to change the kick.
But I want to be able to select some pre-made kits with a different snair, kick and such.
Not changing all by hand.

2018-01-25 19:22:26

There are arrow buttons you click on with AD2 to change presets, I have them mapped in my list of commands for Golden Cursor.

My Solo album, "A Life Seen Through Broken Eyes", available now:
iTunes Spotify YouTube
My YouTube Channel

2018-01-27 22:20:59

@9:

Sforzando is a free vst plug-in  designed for sampled instruments, many of which are free. There is a version of that kit on the wp blog I gave to you which has been converted for use with sforzando, in case you prefer to not use the one that uses the reaSamploMatic setup.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2018-02-11 20:21:20

I just use reapers sampler 5000
Put them in separate tracks & saved the project as a template

So am ready to go once I load it
To change the sounds I just open the tracks fx window & click on my sound banks drop down list
Use the arrows up & down to go through my sounds