Tutorial: No more searching through Drum Loops thanks to Addictive Drums!

Introduction

Hey Songwriters!...are you sick and tired of spending a lot of time sorting through worthless drum loops that aren't tailor made to fit your songs? With Addictive Drums, you can sync it to the tempo of your song, from there you can play different loops until you find one you like. Here's how it works...

Step 1

First you open the Addictive Drums VSTI in your favorite sequencer. In Nuendo, for example, you go to Devices-vst instruments-Addictive Drums

Step 2

Then you click on the 'Beats' tab on the top right of the vsti, after that you click on 'sync' and 'tempo'. this will sync the drums to the tempo of your song.

Step 3

On the left you've got a list of beats that can be filtered using either the 'timesigns' or 'categories' filters. If your song is in 4/4 time, just choose the 4/4 filter and all 4/4 beats will be listed.

Step 4

You can preview all beats by pressing on the 'play' button on the top right part of the interface. This way you can hear them as they're playing along with your project and choose the one that you think is best.

Step 5

Once you've chosen the beat you want, you can then check out all the different variations of that beat by clicking on the arrow (triangle) just to the left of the beat name. All variations will then be listed. What's nice about this is that you can use different variations of the same beat for the different section of your song.

Step 6

On the bottom of the interface there's the mixer which lets you adjust the volume of the different elements of the beat.

On the top left you can also change the drum kit to the one that better suits your style.

Step 7

In the FX tab you can apply a chosen effect to each of the elements separately. the type of effect and the amount can be calibrated.

Step 8

In the edit tab, you can edit the sound parameters of each of the beat elements. For example if you want to add a little compression to your kick drum.

Step 9

And finally, in the Kit tab, you can change the individual pieces of the kit. For example, if you want a heavier snare sound you can do it in this Tab.

Conclusion

So that's it for this general introduction to Addictive Drums. In another tutorial we'll go more into depth about the editing and Midi capabilities of this powerful tool.