Ok, so, I'm finally gonna getting myself some home recording gear, and I'm gonna be buying EZdrummer. However, after doing some reading on it, it seems to me that I'll only be able to string together pre-recorded grooves to make a beat. Can you not sequence together individual drum sounds to build a beat?

Quick responses would be most helpful. I get paid thursday and am wanting to try and record something this weekend.

You can program your own stuff in it. I find the preset grooves are helpful to use as a sort of skeleton and then move around the hits and mess with velocities and all that.

I've read in some places that you need a midi keyboard or some kind of keyboard program to do it?

It's a VST instrument, which you can program the same way that you program any other VST instrument, which is either by pressing record on your recording software and playing something in via midi, or by directly editing the midi data with a mouse and keyboard in a piano-roll-style view.

See, I don't really know much about all this. Would I be able to do that with the Ableton Live that comes with the Line 6 Pod UX1, which I'm also planning on buying this weekend?

You don't need a MIDI controller or keyboard. The basic grooves and fills EZdrummer comes with are great for starting out and for a lot of songs, you don't even need anything else provided what you want is fairly straightforward. Drum mixing is far more important to learn, although again, the basic output will get you started if you're not used to recording and mixing. For more control you'll want to invest in a solid MIDI controller with good key action - the Korg MicroKey is a great choice for a relatively inexpensive one, as it has nicely weighted keys that a lot of cheaper MIDI controllers don't have.

Nah I disagree, drum ‘recording’ using a MIDI keyboard has always struck me as a bit pointless.

Anyway to OP- yes you can use EZdrummer with Ableton. Look up how to use VSTs with Ableton and it shouldn’t be too hard to get started.

Unless you want to manually adjust velocity, doing it with a keyboard is extremely fast. Getting the dynamics right on a keyboard is much, much easier, especially for cymbals and hi-hats, but also for your playing in general. Sure, you can use loops, but any time you run into something you can't do that way, playing on a keyboard usually works out great. Besides, a MIDI controller is a good thing for any musician to have.

Well if you already have a keyboard, sure. But if someone was looking for something specifically to do drums via MIDI it makes more sense to get sample pads or an electronic kit.

Playing drums via keyboard always struck me as awkward and unnecesary, you can just write and adjust velocity to the notes/hits in midi via piano-roll or score in whatever DAW you're using much faster, easier, and you don't have to worry about fucking up with the tempo or a misplaced keystroke.

Best advice I can give if you're jumping into the world of vsts for the first time: be patient, it's just like learning to play an instrument, at first you will end up with messy and shitty stuff, it will take you ages to get something done, but once you get used it becomes much easier, just don't expect everything to start working out from zero because you'll get frustrated, go easy on it, experiment and don't stress yourself too much.

By the way, when learning how to use the EZ with whatever DAW yer using, remember: youtube is you friend; some of this stuff is much easier to understand if you're watching how it's done rather than reading it out of a manual or trying to understand the explanation given by someone else on the net.

Ok, got everything, now how do I open EZdrummer? I installed it, but I don't know how to open it in Ableton.

I've never used Ableton, but I believe you pretty much open it as a plug in. At least that's how I remember it working in pro tools.

Don’t be lazy, go read your manual or find some start up guides online!

Ok, so I've looked up how to do it, but there's a problem: I can't. EZdrummer does not show up in the list of plug-ins when I click that tab, and I don't know how to find it. Did I install it wrong? I bought the download off the toontrack website as opposed to the physical copy, could that have anything to do with it? It will open in the toontrack solo program, but I can't have that and ableton open at the same time, it screws ableton up. I also tried downloading Reaper, and it still won't show up in the VST list when I look in it. I ask again, is this the result of an incorrect installation/download?

Edit: I tried dragging and dropping a beat from ezdrummer opened in toontrack solo into reaper, and it seemed to work, but there's no sound.

Okay, so typically your DAW (either Reaper or Ableton) will have one directory where it reads VST plugins from. What you likely need to do is to copy the EZdrummer VST file to that directory.

I had a quick look at an Ableton FAQ- do you have a file path “Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST” from your Ableton folder? Or something similar? If so, find where you installed EZdrummer to, and copy it over. You might need to re-start Ableton for it to show up.

http://www.ableton.com/pages/faq/vst_and_plugins

re: edit- it probably just imported the MIDI instructions, but there are no sounds in reaper to be triggered.

Okay, well, I'm not sure how to get back to the preferences window thing to fix the file path, cuz I already saved it as something else.

Also, just in looking at the interfaces for Ableton and Reaper, I feel like I'll like Reaper more, so how do I fix the issue with that?

Uninstall all the software, reinstall Reaper, this time pay attention where you're setting the VST folder to be, then install the EZ and when asked, and make sure you point out that adress to install the vst plugin.

What, no! You dont need to uninstall everything to change a simple pathway setting!

*searches google for 2 minutes*

set your pathway under - Preferences > FX Plug-ins > VST plug-ins. Or alternately dump EZdrummer into the directory listed. Click re-scan.

Christ.

Well, but I assume he has a mess of folders split everywhere by now, sometimes it's better so start again and leave everything more organized, it's not like it'll take more than five minutes.

ok, I went to preferences in reaper and to the plugins tab and clicked add and found the ezdrummer folder (which only has sounds and midi folders, nothing I could see about the program itself, that normal?), added it, clicked apply then ok, then when I went to try and find it in the vst folder, nothing there, only the reaper preset stuff. Should I try and reinstall it? Maybe even see about re-downloading it from the toontrack website?

Have you tried checking on C:\Program Files\VstPlugins (or whatever other drive you use)*? There should be a few files called ezdrummer.dll, ezplayer.dll and something else, that's what you're looking for, you have to copy the dlls into the VST folder from Reaper. Then Reaper will detect the plugins.
For easier use in the future, I'd suggest you go to the settings on Reaper and set it's main vst folder to something easy like C:\VSTs and in the future, when you're installing a vst, make sure the dlls go there.


*alternatively, just use the search function on windows and look for those filenames

Holy fuck, that is what finally worked. Thank you sooo much. Now, if only the toontrack site would stop freezing my browser so I could authorize my metal machine ezx pack.

What do you think of 'Addictive Drums'?

To write/edit the drum tracks, read and watch videos about the piano roll and/or percussion editor (called like that in Cubase)