My First Try At Reaper and ToonTracks EZDrummer

[Greg Cutshaw]

I recorded a Waltz Medley using EZDrummer instead of my usual Boss DR-880 drum machine. For reference the audio links are posted here and the rhythm track is linked below.

I used EZDrummer as a VSTi in Reaper bringing all 8 channels of the drum set into one track of Reaper, then opening subtracks and linking the 8 stereo drum channels to 8 reaper channels. All the patterns are from the Nashville Expansion pack but I did use the Reaper midi editor to add a few cymbal and kick hits and to delete parts of patterns to add in fills.

I rendered the drum stereo tracks to 8 (actually 7) 44.1 khz, 16 bit wav files then exported them to my Yamaha AW-2400 music workstation where I recorded the bass, rhythm guitar and steel parts and did the final mixdown. I used the Yamaha compressor on some of the steel parts and the bass guitar. The snare and sidesticks have a bit of reverb added.

As an experiment, I rendered the EZDrummer tracks to 7 mono wav files and tried the same recording. The kick still sounded good but the other drums sounded a bit flatter, but still good in the mix. I did lose the panning of the cymbals and toms though. The overhead channel has to be there to get the cymbals but the room mic channel just seemed to make the whole drum set too spacey in the mix so I left it almost off.

There's not a lot of instructions included with EZDrummer but I did manage to manually enter some of my DR-880 patterns and save them so they show up on the EZDrummer midi pattern list. This thing is really easy to use.

For lack of any sane use of my time, I ported the whole song back to Reaper and mixed it there using the Reaper effects and compressor. Long story, but this has advantages and disadvantages for me. My Yamaha setup has the better speakers. Reaper does has a look ahead compressor and good automation but so does the Yamaha.

Here's the rhythm track off of the Yamaha AW-2400 with the Nashville expansion pack drums:

Waltz Medley Rhythm Track


Greg