Heavy metal/Hard Rock drum programming.

[thereformant]

Just a thought, and call me old fashioned, but whats wrong with a proper, human drummer?

They cant keep time, they only play at loud or louder volumes, they dont understand what "less busy" means, they scav money for rehearsals and beer and so on and so forth

[vorax]

For metal drum sounds I'm a big fan of the Metal Foundry Expansion pack for Superior Drummer. However, I think that BfD2 has a much better and more useable collection of MIDI patterns and grooves that cover hard rock, metal and nu metal styles. None will be perfect, but its a good starting point - you can export the midi data into your DAW and then tweak it. If you want to check out a track I did using this approach have a listen to the "In da (rock) club" mash up I did here: www.myspace.com/uk1000eyes. Never got round to finishing it (or any of the other stuff on that site for that matter, so ignore the lack of production values...), but the drum track is a good example of what you can do with BfD2. Sound wise I'd say that BfD2 will definately do well for most metal styles - Metal Foundry is just a bit better for the more extreme end of things IMO.

Whilst I think it's important to learn how to program drums from scratch as it enables you write drum tracks that closely fit the dynamics you intended for the song, its difficult to recreate the groove of a (good) human drummer. That said, you can always get into using groove mapping tools to nick grooves from your favourite tracks, but that is another layer of technique to learn - sometimes it is just quicker to edit a pre-existing midi part.

[kidkunjer]

They cant keep time, they only play at loud or louder volumes, they dont understand what "less busy" means, they scav money for rehearsals and beer and so on and so forth

and i like to keep auteur-ship of my sound...

ah the great ship auteur, sailing accross the seven seas of up-my-own-arse-istan.

[Jazzy_Jefferson]

They cant keep time, they only play at loud or louder volumes, they dont understand what "less busy" means, they scav money for rehearsals and beer and so on and so forth

In the case of metal drummers. I think you are right Us laid back types who enjoy a bit of light jazz (insert smooth musical style here) now and then, are more than capable.