[Ed. Note: Last week, I shared some of my favorite music technologies unveiled at NAMM, America's biggest musical instrument show. Veteran music tech writer Tim Tully was also covering the show for us, but with a different perspective: he's been off in digital video land for the past five-odd years, so I asked him to describe the experience of diving back in to the maelstrom of modern music production. With the rate technology is changing, many of us have been in a similar position, so I enjoyed Tim's simultaneously wide-eyed and world-weary approach. You can read more of my picks on page 4. —David Battino]

So there I was, cruising the 21st century Anaheim aisles across from Disneyland in the middle of January. The editor said my hiatus from music technology would give my report an "interesting perspective." Sort of the "Does any of this stuff actually work yet?" approach. So I started scouring the '08 Music Gadget Fest for ways an electronic musician or guitar player might use a computer to enhance the value of playing, practicing, or jamming. Interestingly, the role of drummers was still, as ever, represented principally by attempts to replace them with technological ingenuity. Case in point . . .

Submersible Music DrumCore 2.5

This was the kind of thing I'd really hoped to see when I got this gig. For all the frankly astounding advances in music recording technology since the 1970s, one element has proven elusive.

If you play guitar or keyboard, or even one of those MIDI wind controller things, you can record lots of different parts of a piece of music. You can get different sounds and do melodies and fills, rhythm parts and lead parts, string and horn sections, and innumerable odd noises. You can even add vocals.

But the one thing that's always been elusive in desktop music production has been good drum and percussion parts, and not just because some of us would rather not invite the drummers we know—and yes, Gerald, I'm talking about you—into our homes or studios. From drum machines to ruthlessly quantized parts, to boring simple-enough-for-even-me-to-do-it tracks, we tried and tried, but the results left us wanting. For a guy just getting started with a guitar, a computer, and a dream, this can be discouraging.

But it's a new world now, and drum pattern software has taken it several steps up. The one that jumped out at me at NAMM was Submersible Music's DrumCore 2.5. It includes audio and MIDI drum loops, fills, and drumkits played by world-class drummers like Matt Sorum, Sly Dunbar, and Lonnie Wilson in the styles at which they excel. The loops are recorded at a range of tempos 10 bpm apart, to capture the subtle playing differences at different tempos and avoid the audio degradation of excessive time-stretching.

The world is awash in drum loops, but DrumCore, a combination database and virtual instrument, helps you find the good ones quickly. The program was originally designed for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. (Click to enlarge.)

The performances can inspire new ideas as well as add the right groove to songs you've already started. A intuitive loop librarian and search engine helps you find and audition grooves based on drummer, style, feel, or tempo. You can drag and drop the groove you want to Acid, DP, Live, Logic, Cubase/Nuendo, Pro Tools, Sonar, Tracktion, and other popular recording software. DrumCore uses ReWire for sending multichannel audio to these applications and for receiving MIDI and tempo information.

KitCore is a more affordable path to DrumCore grooves. (Click to enlarge.)

These are very well recorded, 48kHz/24-bit files. They actually sound like a real drummer played them, simply because they were. The loops represent a broad array of performances, from sophisticated and subtle to crude and boisterous. It's like having several of the world's best drummers always available. They play at any volume you want, and when you're done, you just close the file. (You can also use your existing WAV, AIFF, SD2, Acid, REX2, and MIDI files.)

At $249, DrumCore is not the cheapest piece of software, but can save so much time and add so much musical quality, it's worth a real hard look. For a taste of DrumCore, you can start with KitCore, a simplified version that costs just $49. [Ed. Note: Also see our interview with drummer Reek Havok, one of the minds behind DrumCore.]

www.submersiblemusic.com