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[RossP]

Recently i've been writing a lot of stuff that swings between dirty disco sounds like Death From Above 1979, and chilled out material like Metronomes and Frogpocket. I was looking to start recording a heap of stuff to try and get some solid songs. However i am a complete novice in editing software, and especially drum machine software/hardware.

Anyone got any suggestions for me on where to start? I just got a high spec laptop, so that'll cope with most software and memory usage.

[Hogisbald]

The drumkit from hell is really good for a decent selection of sounds and apparently its easy to use.

[spellchecker]

try http://hydrogen.sf.net

[HairyScaryMark]

You will want some software to help you compose/arrange your drum parts. I am not sure what is good looping/sequencing software. Maybe Ableton live? M-AUDIO

You will also need a set of drum samples (I don't know if Ableton live comes with any). I am about to recieve Native Instruments Massive which should contain some interesting drum samples. I currently have Battery 2 but have never used it. This is what happens when you buy things as part of sets. NATIVE INSTRUMENTS: home

EastWest also do some very good drum sample libraries that usually run under native instruments kontakt 2 or kompakt. Steinberg (the people who make Cubase) do one package but I don't know anything about it.
Sounds Online
Eastwest products do tend to be more expensive than their competitors, arguably better quality. Drumkit from Hell 2, however is not more expensive.

If you go onto the native Instruments website you will eventually find a list of 3rd party sample libraries. Some will be for drums.

[RossP]

Many thanks for the suggestions, i'll get to work with downloading the demos

On the basis of the demos online, the new Drumkit From Hell (Supreme) sounds a lot better than Battery 2 (which I have and use a lot) and is more flexible with mixing and matching etc.

[RossP]

Ok i'm liking the description of the Drumkit from Hell 2 package, but does anyone know if i can get more electronic/chilled out beats from this too? Or is it just "proper" drum sounds i would get?

[HairyScaryMark]

Listened to demo tracks of EZ drummer. Sounds quite realistic up until the point I notice the cymbal hits sound identical to each other. I.e a ride cymbal hit 4 times in the row, sounds identical for each of those 4 hits. You lose the human feel. Of course, you can fiddle with it to add a bit of variety but then you have to wonder 'why am I using sampled drums?'

RossP's description of what he's after sounds more the area where sampled drums have an advantage.

Best idea is to listen to as many demo tracks as possible, watch demo videos and such and actaully figure out where you will use these sort of drums.

If you are after a wider variety of synths. Possibly Native Instruments Komplete 3 off ebay (with free upgrade to komplete 4 and if you buy kore you also get to download massive for free). This would give you a fairly complete set of synths which would probably allow you to make any of the music you speak of, by yourself.

EastWest do a package titled 'collosus' which is meant to be good if you currently have no software synths. It has a wide variety of sounds.

DFH only does acoustic drum samples (although it does them incredibly well). Battery has some glitchy/electronic beats but as they are sampled you have limited editing capabilities. I'm sure there are better dedicated drum synth programs.

As for EZ drummer - it has 5Gb of samples compared to DFH Supreme's 35Gb (spread across a much smaller range of kits)