Let’s see what this particular friend brings to the table. Perfectly recorded acoustic drums may be king, but a good drum library is like a faithful friend-always ready to hang out and always ready to make music. In a perfect world, we’d all have access to multi-million dollar studios every day of the week, but (and you may have noticed this) we don’t live in that utopia. For example, there are several ways to make phrases sound human and expressive (not least because they’re deliberately recorded that way). They also were a lot more open and crisp than the DAW samples I’d used before (and some of these were already very good, by the way).īut it’s more than that-the high level of customization and adaptability opens up a world of options to explore. I gave it a go and instantly saw drum libraries in a very different light. That’s when my friend-also a professional drummer-recommended EZDrummer. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I tried to rebook the live room, only to find that it was unavailable for the foreseeable future.

I could’ve messed around with EQ and noise gating and removed the unwanted sounds, but I’m not the most patient person in the world, and it’s nice to have a clean recording from the outset. However, on the recording, I hear it every. I must have been standing on a loose floorboard because each recording was punctuated with annoying creaks and squeaks as my weight shifted from one foot to the other. I thought I did a pretty good job with it all, but when I listened back to my shaker track, I realized I’d made a mistake.

That was until I recorded acoustic percussion for a ten-track album. I used to wonder why anyone would bother with them when recorded acoustic drums usually sound better and when Logic’s range of MIDI drum options is already pretty extensive (for programming and triggering with an electric kit). But, up until this year, I’d been pretty skeptical about drum libraries like EZDrummer.

Toontrack ezdrummer 3