Drums in Garageband...

Hey there,
I've recently started to track some more demos in garageband and I would really like to get some drums added to it. What is the best way to go about this? Do I need to buy a drum machine or midi keyboard? It'd be nice if there's an easy way to do it straight through garage band. I tried the keyboard with the drum kit setting but it's really hard to get anything decent sounding playing with my fingers... Do you suggest I track each drum peice on a different track? I'm pretty new with trying to record into garageband but I have the guitar sounding great already(as far as demo quality is concerned). Thanks in advance.

There is three ways you can do it, loops, which I think are lame being a drummer and all, program one thing at a time, IE, one track for kick, the other for cymbals and snare, another for toms, etc. Or you can go into the preferences of Garageband and switch on the Cycle recording feature which is a multiple pass non-destructive overwrite. I use the second, it allows you to more accurately EQ and adjust each thing just like real drums.

ErikJenkins1187 said:

There is three ways you can do it, loops, which I think are lame being a drummer and all, program one thing at a time, IE, one track for kick, the other for cymbals and snare, another for toms, etc. Or you can go into the preferences of Garageband and switch on the Cycle recording feature which is a multiple pass non-destructive overwrite. I use the second, it allows you to more accurately EQ and adjust each thing just like real drums.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I wasn't really digging the loops idea. I definitely need some more customization and stuff. When you do the second method you spoke of, doyou just record it in real time with the keyboard under the drum effect?

Yeah thats how I used to do it, now I just run triggers on my acoustic kit or use my friends electronic drums. I used to just lay a track with snare and cymbal work, then go back and record a kick under all using my Line6 KB37. For fills a lot of times I would just apple-click where I wanted the midi note in bottom editor pane to play and arrange the notes from there. A wise investment would be EZ Drummer or BFD Drums as an instrument generator for your drums because honestly even with all the jam packs GB's drums just sound synthetic.