Hey guys, in this video we'll cover some completely free VST drums you can use with
a digital audio workstation.
These are VST plugins you can add to a MIDI track in programs like Reaper.
The MIDI track contains all the information about the timing and velocity of each note,
and it tells the virtual drum instrument what to play.
Then, you'll be left with a fairly decent sounding drum kit you can use to create music,
completely within your computer.
For the following examples, we're only considering virtual instruments that are compatible with
Windows, but there's also plenty more that work for Mac.
For this tutorial, we'll be demonstrating all these virtual drum instruments using Reaper
as our digital audio workstation.
All the MIDI tracks were either made using the piano role or with the Akai MPD218 when
we wanted more variation in the velocity.
Drumatic 3 by E-Phonic is a drum synthesizer with a pretty decent interface to work with.
Looks aren't everything, but having a graphical representation of the different controls makes
it easier to figure out how they're affecting your tone.
Though I do like the way everything is displayed in this program and the interface is very
clean, that's where the good things end.
The defaults for this program provide the best sounds I've been able to get out of
it.
Beyond that, I feel like I'm working with a wave generator that just creates a percussive
sound.
So it can create some useable sounds, but it's not a very easy drum plugin to work
with.
Here's the sound we were able to get out of it.
Drum Boxx by Sonic XT is another decent sounding drum synthesizer.
This program has a variety of presets that work well to create beats, but it has a lot
of controls and can get very complex when trying to build new sounds from scratch.
For most purposes with this plugin, I'll usually just start off with whatever preset
I like best, then make some tweaks to the controls, such as the pitch and attack settings
to get it sounding how I like.
Let's listen to a sample from this plugin now.
EXD-80 is an electronic drum synthesizer by Third Harmonic Studios.
This is more of an advanced plugin, with a lot of features for the kick, snare, hi hat,
and percussion modules compared to some of the others.
It works as an actual drum synthesizer instead of just a program that modifies pre-recorded
samples, meaning all the different tones you get out of it are completely adjustable using
all the knobs displayed on the plugin.
This is great to really dial in an electronic drum sound, but it takes a lot more work to
get useable results compared to some other options.
The sounds you'll end up with definitely sound artificial, but they're fine to create
beats with, especially considering the sounds you can get out of the kick drum module.
There's quite a bit you can do with this, and that's beyond this video, but here's
a sample of the sounds we can get from this plugin.
Another drum plugin that allows you to create electronic drum sound is called Beatfactory
Drumz.
This plugin has a few different virtual drum kits, including sounds from the Roland TR-808.
There's also a few generic kits called 80s kit, dubstep, hip hop, Indian, sample kit,
and trap kit.
A lot of these produce very consistent electronic sounds, making it great for hip hop and pop,
but not good rock music when you want an acoustic kit.
This plugin also has controls for how each drums respond, such as attack, decay, sustain
and release.
Finally, there's a master control for panning, reverb and volume.
Here's a quick beat we created for the Beatfactory Drumz plugin.
Line of Legends is a simple drum plugin that can create both acoustic and electronic drum
sounds.
This plugin has kick, snare, and toms for the drum section, hi hat, ride, and crash
for the cymbals, along with a clap and snap sound.
Each of these has more than one different sound within it that can be triggered on the
piano roll, which allows it to make either standard drum kit sounds or electronic sounds.
Each part of the drum kit has one control to adjust it.
For example, there's a control for punch on the kick, snare, clap, and snap.
This doesn't really seem to change the attack much, but increasing the punch just makes
it a little louder and cut through the mix better.
The snare, clap, snap, ride, and crash all have a release control.
This sets how long the note will continue if the MIDI event ends.
If you just press the note and have a short release it will get cut off before it finishes.
A longer release will allow the note to completely finish after only a momentary key press.
Finally, for the toms and hi hat, the control provides panning within the stereo field.
Here's a quick beat we created with it.
For a lot more control over electronic drum sounds,
there's the Impakter plugin.
This plugin has 4 separate drum modules called boomer, smacker, tweeter, and lazer.
The boomer is the kit drum.
Smacker is the snare and is mapped to 2 keys on the keyboard; one normal, and the other
with a higher pitch.
Tweeter is the high hat, and it is mapped to 3 keys with 3 different decay modes.
Lazer is used for various other percussion sounds and has 2 additional higher pitches,
all of which are mapped to 3 keys.
The Impakter plugin includes 320 samples that can be assigned to each of the modules and
triggered by MIDI key presses.
This is an example of the sounds you can get out of the Impakter virtual instrument.
Though the sounds out of this plugin are pretty good, there is some lag when using it which
makes it very difficult to actually use.
MT Power Drum Kit 2 is a free virtual instrument that sounds like an acoustic drum kit.
It's very simple to use, and sounds great as is in the final mix, but this simplicity
limits how much can be done with this plugin.
This plugin doesn't really have different options for the drum sounds, but there are
adjustments for panning, level, and compression applied to each part of the kit.
Let's take a look at how this sounds.
My favorite plugin so far isn't technically free on its own, but it does come for free
with the Akai MPD218.
Sonivox Big Bang Drums is a virtual acoustic drum plugin with a lot of different drum kits
and it sounds fantastic for what it is.
This program integrates nicely with a MIDI drum pad or keyboard, and has a lot of great
features and effects to perfectly dial in a drum sound.
The different drums can easily be changed, such as a rim shot, or center snare hit, and
the program makes it super simple to remap the drum kit if you're using a MIDI file
with different drum mapping.
This program doesn't do electronic drum sounds, but I find it's usually the only
plugin I need for my projects when I'm going for an acoustic kit.
Here's a quick sample of what it sounds like.
If you're looking to create your own MIDI drum tracks without an electronic drum kit,
we recommend using the Akai MPD218.
This is a small finger drum pad that acts as a MIDI instrument over USB.
This MIDI instrument has a lot of customizability, allowing the drum triggers to be reprogrammed
and saved as different presets.
Using a drum pad is a lot easier than programming each note individually, and it results in
a more realistic drum sound since there's a certain amount of randomness to the velocity
of each note.
The Akai MPD218 also comes with BigBang drums for free, which is a fairly good virtual instrument
that I use on a lot of projects.
What are your favorite drum plugins?
Let us know in the video description down below.
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