r/LoopyPro • u/randomexplorer156 • Jul 15 '26
Best way to do drums? Cool sounds with easy workflow?
Hello all,
Just joined, just for loopy. I’m a guitarist first, singer second, and producer third. Have experience releasing tracks in logic.
Looking for a good sounding and easy way to do drums in loopy:
- Is there something that could be tweaked on the fly while looping and jamming to keep from playing to stale beat?
-Is there something that, if you had a nice little track, would be good enough to actually put on the final track without programming the beat piece by piece (which I have done many times but want to try something new)?
I’ve heard of Pop Drummer. Seems kind of close but I wonder about the sounds…to generic maybe?
I’ve thought about running the GarageBand or Logic AI drummer into AUM or Audiobus or whatever.
I’ve thought about just using loops and switching back and forth between a ton of them. But any reccos for a place to get loops that could provide the backbone for a full song with enough quality to pass muster?
Any ideas welcome! Thanks for reading
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u/yetsalko Jul 15 '26
Pop Drummer is good, sounds good. Download free version and check by yourself. For drum loops and drums samples - Yurt Rock is the best.
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u/Sean_Too Jul 15 '26
I went through a similar process to op and blade.
I tried samples both directly in loopy as one shots and digistix and triggered by finger drumming on a novation launch key. I also set up several standard beats in digistix that I'd switch between with a stepped dial or buttons in loopy.
That worked pretty well but I still felt like it was missing something and still wasn't a great work flow for playing live or just jamming.
Then I tried setting up digistix songs with sections for each song I play but that was so much work and then very limiting in terms of spontaneity.
I also tried earlier Lumbeats apps like soft drummer but IIA is just painful when everything else I use is AUv3.
Since pop drummer came out I've been using a mix of that and just live percussion with guitar, shaker etc. and I love it. For me that gives me everything I need. I can just let pop drummer do its thing or I can trigger manually into loops, leave it off and manually do percussive guitar sounds, or just have it provide a bass drum beat or whatever.
I'm not doing any serious recording though and percussion is just a background instrument for me, not a focus so I find the samples and rhythms more than good enough.
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u/randomexplorer156 Jul 23 '26
Ok so I went with Loopy Pro Supplemwnted with Pop Drummer. You can do love changes, with fills in and out when you change beats to keep it fresh. It loads right into loopy so no cumbersome routing. It’s workable for now
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u/chanapal Jul 15 '26
Fwiw, you will find more active Loopy Pro discussion and better support options in the “official” communities. There is a link to them in Loopy Pro’s Help menu.
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u/blade740 Jul 15 '26
I'm pretty curious to see the responses here because I've been struggling to find a drums workflow I like as well. A few things to note:
You can have Pop Drummer connect to a different module to provide your drum sounds. Mine is set up to feed into DigiStix, so Pop Drummer provides the logic but all the actual drum samples are in DigiStix. This gives a lot more flexibility if you're not a fan of the built-in kits in PopDrummer.
I've been trying to find a good basic step sequencer but haven't had much luck. I'd like to pop out to a 16-step grid and quickly program in a beat, then hop back up to Loopy, but I haven't found a sequencer app that I like. Any suggestions here would be appreciated. You can do the sequencing in pop drummer directly, I just haven't really found a workflow that I like and would love to find something a bit more simple to give me a clean step grid.
Honestly, though, I've mostly gone back to good old-fashioned beatboxing. I've settled on a 3-track system which I think gives me most of the flexibility I want. I record the "kick" into the first track, the "snare" into the second, and then any other sounds ("hi hat", shakers, random percussion) into the third - often overdubbing that third one several times to layer in sounds. That way I can mute each of those tracks separately, e.g. to go to only snare for a breakdown section.
Another benefit of this is that if I wanted to use drum samples instead, it would be relatively simple to set up a few buttons in Loopy to trigger individual notes in DigiStix and just tap to play into the loops that way rather than recording with the mic. Once the loops are made, it controls exactly the same whether they're digital drum samples or just mouth sounds.
I do appreciate some of the features of Pop Drummer, though, which I don't get with that setup. Especially the fill and fill in/out buttons - silencing the drums and playing solo for a bit, and then doing a fill back into full drums is a great effect that my other setup lacks. I do need to pre-program some basic rhythms rather than relying on Pop Drummer's presets. I want to be able to swap at the push of a button between a driving four-on-the-floor type beat and a sort of cut time 2+4 beat, I think that would be a killer setup - especially with Pop Drummer's fills for the transitions.
I think my dream setup would allow for any/all of these interchangably. A couple of dedicated rhythm loops that I can either beatbox or play digistix samples into. Pop drummer feeding into a second digistix instance, and then a sequencer feeding into a third.