TwilightOdyssey
Darkness on the edge of Tone
After 3-4 days through trial & error/learning curve, I got Drumkit From Hell 2 and Cubase SE up and running on my PC last night.
Both pieces of software, as well as the DVD drive I needed to pick up for DFH, ran me about $300 in toto. Money well spent!!
I had originally tried using DFH through Sonar 3 Producer. This was a mixed bag of nuts, tho. So, after some searching, it looked to me like Cubase has the MIDI tools I was looking for specifically with drum programming. So, I picked up Cubase SE to use as my sequencer. I then re-installed DFH to use as a VST instrument in Cubase.
Once you finally get everything set up, which includes doing some re-mapping of the drum sounds depending on what kit you have loaded, as well as navigating Cubases's AWFUL help section, the software works really well.
I will address this in two parts, since you need to have both if you're going to use DFH: Sequencing and Drum Sounds.
Sequencing (Cubase SE)
Sequencing in Cubase is a SNAP, especially if you know the basics of music theory. If you don't you really should consider adding an external MIDI keyboard for inputting notes.
After using the Pencil tool to draw in a blank space in a MIDI track, you are then free to input the notes in any way you want: as standard notation, drum beats on a grid, etc etc. For my purposes, I opened up a drum map for that track and then input the notes in step time.
Opening up DFH as a sound module proved to be just as un-intuitive in Cubase as getting to the Drum Editor! As easy as the individual screens are to navigate, getting to them is impossible if you don't know Cubase's idoeosyncracies. The tutorials are pretty useless in this regard, too. I found DFH's skant 3 pages of VST information to be more helpful than Cubase's multi-hundred page PDF documentation!
The Drum Editor window will only allow you to write for as many measures as you initially drew in with the Pencil tool, so if you run out of measures, you need to go back to the main window and make it larger.
The Drum Editor's display is terrific! After confirming what notes played what drum sounds, and renaming several of them to make sense to myself, you can dig right in.
Drum Sounds (Drumkit From Hell 2)
Drumkit From Hell allows you 8 sets of parameters that you can customize: Kick Drum, Snare Top, Snare Bottom, Toms, Cymbals, Overheads, and Room Ambience.
The actual drum sounds are ace! My only complaint is that the snare sound is a bit lower than I would normally use. I haven't figured out an easy way to make the snare louder yet. But then, there are many things I haven't figured out yet!!
The Moment of Truth was when I took the simple drum part I programmed and exported it as a WAV to see if it would actually play back and sound the same. AND IT DID! Ain't technology grand????
Special thanx to DSS for turning me onto the program in the 1st place. You made two people very happy - myself, and Davey, who's inheriting my DR-3.
Both pieces of software, as well as the DVD drive I needed to pick up for DFH, ran me about $300 in toto. Money well spent!!
I had originally tried using DFH through Sonar 3 Producer. This was a mixed bag of nuts, tho. So, after some searching, it looked to me like Cubase has the MIDI tools I was looking for specifically with drum programming. So, I picked up Cubase SE to use as my sequencer. I then re-installed DFH to use as a VST instrument in Cubase.
Once you finally get everything set up, which includes doing some re-mapping of the drum sounds depending on what kit you have loaded, as well as navigating Cubases's AWFUL help section, the software works really well.
I will address this in two parts, since you need to have both if you're going to use DFH: Sequencing and Drum Sounds.
Sequencing (Cubase SE)
Sequencing in Cubase is a SNAP, especially if you know the basics of music theory. If you don't you really should consider adding an external MIDI keyboard for inputting notes.
After using the Pencil tool to draw in a blank space in a MIDI track, you are then free to input the notes in any way you want: as standard notation, drum beats on a grid, etc etc. For my purposes, I opened up a drum map for that track and then input the notes in step time.
Opening up DFH as a sound module proved to be just as un-intuitive in Cubase as getting to the Drum Editor! As easy as the individual screens are to navigate, getting to them is impossible if you don't know Cubase's idoeosyncracies. The tutorials are pretty useless in this regard, too. I found DFH's skant 3 pages of VST information to be more helpful than Cubase's multi-hundred page PDF documentation!
The Drum Editor window will only allow you to write for as many measures as you initially drew in with the Pencil tool, so if you run out of measures, you need to go back to the main window and make it larger.
The Drum Editor's display is terrific! After confirming what notes played what drum sounds, and renaming several of them to make sense to myself, you can dig right in.
Drum Sounds (Drumkit From Hell 2)
Drumkit From Hell allows you 8 sets of parameters that you can customize: Kick Drum, Snare Top, Snare Bottom, Toms, Cymbals, Overheads, and Room Ambience.
The actual drum sounds are ace! My only complaint is that the snare sound is a bit lower than I would normally use. I haven't figured out an easy way to make the snare louder yet. But then, there are many things I haven't figured out yet!!
The Moment of Truth was when I took the simple drum part I programmed and exported it as a WAV to see if it would actually play back and sound the same. AND IT DID! Ain't technology grand????
Special thanx to DSS for turning me onto the program in the 1st place. You made two people very happy - myself, and Davey, who's inheriting my DR-3.
