Best Free Vst Drum Plugins

[Jarvarious Hunsaker]

Inaddition to a big library of around 15GB of drums, cymbals, and percussion sounds, the software has a bunch of MIDI grooves and fills that you can easily drag-and-drop into your session (along with additional expansions if you want more).

SD3 includes six drum kits, additional percussion instruments, and approximately 350 vintage drum sounds. The drum sounds are phenomenal, especially in some of the expansion packs available from Toontrack.

When I work with bands, I use SD3 as my primary drum engine. In my Cubase session, I route the audio from Superior Drummer 3 out of the sampler and into my individual DAW channels. This allows me to mix within my DAW, not needing to worry about the plugin interface. I can also use other plugins on each individual channel, like Waves SSL Channel Strip.

The drum VST plugin allows you to build your own custom drum kit with 26 unique pieces, including samples of drums. You can customize each drum to your liking by adjusting pitch, envelope, and MIDI dynamics, creating a one-of-a-kind sound.

One of the standout features of this VST plugin is its 16 individually controllable close, overhead, and room mic channels. This level of control over the mix allows for an incredibly realistic sound that captures all of the nuances of a live performance.

In addition to the comprehensive control over your drum sound, the VST plugin also includes a large library of customized drum grooves. You can audition and select drums in the kit select area, and there is a customizable key mapping page for alternate MIDI mappings and electronic drum kits.

Back in 2015, I helped in the making of Drumforge Classic, sampling the drum shells in a studio in Madison, Wisconsin. For many years, an instance of Drumforge made it onto 99% of all Vinyl Theatre demos prior to heading into the studio with our producer Joel Wanasek.

You can use your digital piano as a MIDI controller, allowing you to play in notes as you would a piano piece, and have your computer output this as other instruments (such as a drum kit) via the use of a VSTi.

If you only wish to use a few samples for different sounding drums, you can just work on a single computer or laptop and will not need a lot of RAM to do so (at least 16GB is recommended but 8GB will suffice for less intensive usage).

With an audio interface, you will be able to connect and record instruments and microphones to your computer and are not limited to a piano as your controller within your DAW. This recording works by converting an analog, electrical signal from your instrument/microphone into a digital one.

What drum VSTs you go for relies heavily on the genre or style you are composing for. You may look into electronic drums for EDM or video game scores, or softer, mellow kits for jazz ensembles.

You are likely to own a few different drum libraries for this reason. A good place to start would be to consider what kind of composition or song you are writing, or if you simply want a standard, all-round kit.

The Natural end of the scale will show clean, unprocessed presets, whereas the Extreme side will show heavily-processed, pre-produced presets. This combination addresses one of the frequent criticisms of drum libraries in that they contain too much reverb.

The AD2 program allows easy access for you to tweak one of their in-built drum presets, or to build up a custom kit of your own. The mixing tools in the preset drums are straightforward, meaning less time is spent in the tech and more time composing.

There are separate adjustable knobs to tweak the levels of the snare, kick, high-hat, as well as the overhead and room microphones. Increasing or decreasing the knob will raise or lower the volume respectively. These knobs are ultimately changing the separate levels of the snare, kick, and bass on a minuscule scale without affecting the volume level of the whole kit.

The Edit tab will take you to a window with even more settings to customize including EQ, distortion, tape, and noise. These are adjusted per drum part (snare, bass) and per microphone (overheads, room) for even further tweaking and unique custom settings.

There is a Snapshot feature in the bottom right of the window which will record your current settings. If you change settings, you can always look back at the snapshot within the UI and compare your current settings to a previous snapshot. This feature helps you get that perfect kit sound for your mix.

In the Beats tab on the top right of the window you will find a variety of grooves where you can search stylized beats with their own set of variations. You can even place what drum part goes on what beat to get finely tuned results according to your composition. This is done in the grid search.

As mentioned above, there are some really neat features that cater to beginner or professional composers and producers looking to add that perfect kit to their project. This library stands out with its user-friendly interface that comes with advanced settings to create a customized sound and beat. It is industry-standard and the drum presets sound amazing with little to no effort.

The complete collection is about $700. There are also Custom and Custom XL packages where you can yourself choose the packs to be included. For a more in-depth comparison between the AD2 packages, refer to this page.

Update 2021: Heavyocity Damage 2 has been released and contains double the sample count/size of the original Damage. The new library was recorded at the legendary Skywalker Sound in California and has an updated UI. Owners of Damage 1 are eligible for a discount.

Rhythmic suites contain loop menus and single loops. Loop menus include stylized loop presets, and single loops allow for more control settings within the chosen loop. The control settings include tweaking the mix of the processed loop, and changing its MIDI via the MIDI to Host feature.

There is a trigger FX option, where you can trigger specific effects while using a MIDI controller. The loops range across 4 different genres: epic organic, epic tech, industrial and mangled pop. The loops are customizable through the AMP Sequencer so you can create your own unique patterns.

Overall, Damage is a fantastic choice for cinematic, and industrial-orchestral fusion kits and percussive sounds. The sound palette makes it a favorite for composers, producers and sound designers. It is a must-have for those looking to incorporate epic, trailer music-style drums to their mixes.

The engineer behind the library is the multi-award-winning Chuck Ainlay, known for his work with the Dixie Chicks and Dire Straits. This library is best suited for songwriters looking to amplify their tracks with drums full of depth and flavor.

The Browser tab filters grooves into song structure formats, making it quick and easy to find grooves that are best suited for a verse, or for a chorus. The user is even able to create a folder and place their favorite grooves in there.

The sounds of the various drum kits are high-quality and can fit perfectly into your song, regardless of style. I find that the focus is on the grooves rather than building a custom kit sound, which works well for creating songs on the fly.

In college, I used a VST on my Macbook and the size of the screen was too large length-wise for my 13-inch Macbook, so I could never utilize the tools at the bottom of the window. It was so frustrating! It goes to show you that even small, subtle features can create a positive impact on your workflow.

In the right section of the window are the property boxes where you can tweak the sound of specific parts of the drum kit. This includes drum tuning, reversing the sound, pitch FX, and more.

The Grooves tab has been enhanced for Super Drummer 3. It keeps all the features from EZdrummer 2 and improves the workflow by allowing multiple song tracks to audition several different grooves at once; combining the browser and search function in the same window; introducing a tempo and time signature editor within the song tracker; and also establishes the grid editor which works like a MIDI editor and allows you to move rhythms, quantize, adjust velocities, and edit CC data.

If you wish to change the instrument that tracker automatically detected, you can manually switch the target sound to any other part of the kit. This is a really great feature with a lot of depth, so if you are interested in using this tool within your songs, you can check out more here:

Native Instruments Studio Drummer features samples recorded on premium drum kits. The library focuses on incorporating an acoustic drum kit into your track along with mixing options and a large library of grooves with fills complementing styles including funk, rock, blues, indie and country.

Each sample has up to 25 different velocity levels, allowing for a broad dynamic range to be used. The three premium drum kits that were recorded for the library include the Pearl Masters Premium Maple kit, Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute kit and the Sonar SQN Drum System. These kits were recorded at Teldex Studios in Berlin and contain over 17GB of drum samples.

The Stadium Kit brings the roomy sound of a premium recording room, the Studio Kit creates grooves with a smaller, dry studio sound and the Garage Kit boasts a dirtier, aggressive sound.

In the bottom of the interface window, you will see a tab called Grooves. Here you can sort and find the perfect groove for your session. The grooves are categorized in 11 different styles including pop, funk, jazz, hard rock, metal, blues & country, indie rock, and others. Selecting one of the styles will bring up a new window of grooves in various tempos and variations.

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