Best Submit Onlywire!: Logic X Drum Kit Designer

As we saw a couple of months ago in this column, one of Logic
Pro X’s most powerful features is Drummer, the new virtual
instrument type which uses real session players’ metadata to
help you create extremely realistic drum performances. The
default plug-in used to play these back is the new Drum Kit
Designer instrument and whilst this can be substituted, so that
Drummer can drive anything from Ultrabeat to EXS24 sample kits to third-party
drum plug-ins, it’s equally true that Drum Kit Designer can be used as an
instrument in its own right. Indeed, the plug-in itself has capabilities beyond
those offered when the Drummer engine is acting as its ‘front end’, so this
month’s tips will be dedicated to exploring those.
On a separate note, the recently released 10.0.5 update to Logic Pro X offers
new Drummers, so if you’re enjoying creating drum tracks that way, download
the update and the additional content. This bodes well – let’s hope Apple keep
providing new content for this powerful drum engine.
Stereo options
If you set up Drum Kit Designer directly from Logic’s list of virtual instruments
1
you’ll initially be greeted by the SoCal kit, which maps drum hits to the
accepted General MIDI standard of the main kick drum on C1, the snare on D1
and so on. As well as the drum kit pieces you can ‘see’ in the main window, this
kit and all of the others available within Drum Kit Designer offer percussion
sources of a Shaker (on A#3), a Tambourine (F#2), Claps (D#1), a Cowbell
(G#2) and Sticks (D#4). Access to volume offset sliders for these percussion
sounds is provided by the small arrow in the bottom left-hand corner of the
Drum Kit Designer GUI – just click here to toggle this pane open or closed 2.
Of course, you can switch this default kit for any other, with the Factory
Default drop-down menu at the top providing access to the remaining kits 3.
However, the power of Drum Kit Designer begins to show itself when you decide
you want to customise kits. Clicking on either the Kick or Snare sources within
your kit will produce side-pane windows, with the left-hand of these allowing you
to swap the selected kit piece for an alternative sound source, and the
right-hand pane providing access to key parameters such as Tune, Dampen and
Gain offsets. For the cymbal and tom sounds, whilst no alternative sources are
available to swap in and out within your chosen kit, the Edit window on the right
will allow you to either edit ‘All’ pieces within a group of instruments (globally
offsetting the tuning of all Toms, for instance), or to select a single piece for
individual tweaking 4. This is extremely
useful – if you like the Damp length on your
High Tom but the Low Tom is outstaying its
welcome, for instance, here’s your chance
to make an individual change.
So once you’ve configured a kit with the
Kick and Snare of your choice, made
tweaks to the available parameters for the
other kit pieces and either programmed a
drum pattern or moved one from a part
created with Drummer, you should have a
great sounding result. However, these will
all be limited to a single stereo track, where
the individual kit pieces are all routed to
your output of choice ‘as one’. As you’ll
know if you’ve ever recorded a multi-track
drum session, a stereo mix in this way won’t
provide you with the same level of flexibility
afforded by having captured each drum
sound onto an individual channel, with
extra channels to provide room ambience,
overheads or other sources. Don’t worry,
though – if that level of detail is what you’re
after, Drum Kit Designer is ready to
respond, with a little help from Logic Pro
X’s reconfigured Library.

Friday, 6 June 2014

Logic X Drum Kit Designer

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