7 Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope
Program beats from the future with drum machine plugins from Audiomodern, Beatsurfing, Forever 89, and more.
Not every drum track needs to be from a classic TR emulation. When it’s time to go boldly into the future, reach for one of these drum machine plugins pushing the envelope.
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope
I love me some classic drum emulation plugins. I won’t lie. Whether it’s a TR drum machine or sample-based box from Roger Linn or Tom Oberheim, I’m down with software that recreates past glories. But sometimes you want to take things into the future, and that’s why today we’re looking at seven drum machine plugins pushing the envelope.
These seven software drum plugins are all taking percussion into entirely new realms. Whether that be in terms of sound creation or sequencing, each of these is boldly redefining what a drum machine can be. If you guessed that AI is probably involved, you’re right – it certainly is. But this is more than just an AI fest, with all kinds of inspiring sound design, sequencing, and production workflows going on.
Grab a notepad to take notes, or just open each link into a new tab and bookmark it. Whatever you do, you’re going to want to make sure you don’t forget about these drum machine plugins pushing the envelope.
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: Beatsurfing Random Metal
Last month, I wrote about seven soft synths pushing the envelope. One of them was wild bass and lead synthesizer Random from upstart developer Beatsurfing. The same team has also made a percussion version, Random Metal, and dare I say that it’s even better?
As with the original Random, the main focus of Random Metal is happy accidents. Utilizing the power of randomness, you create new percussion sounds by interacting with a moving blob in the center of the screen. You get a lot of other controls as well to shape the sound, with plenty of starting ‘materials,’ the basic building blocks for the sounds, at hand. Use it to churn out all sorts of percussion, from metallic hi-hats and cymbals to claps and shakers.
The sounds are extremely usable and sound generation is a fun and inspiring process. With Random Metal, all you need is a kick synthesizer and something to make snares. For the latter, I also recommend Beatsurfing’s 7DeadlySnares.
Don’t sleep on Beatsurfing. They’re pushing against the edges in all the right ways.
- Beatsurfing Random Metal product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: Forever 89 Visco
Oddly enough, Random Metal isn’t the only blob-based plugin on this list. Visco from Forever 89 features a similarly blobby UI but approaches sound design in a different way. Rather than relying on chance, Visco lets you combine two different samples and then interact with the blob to change the melding of the two sounds. It sounds like a novelty but the results are pretty incredible, giving you percussion sounds that you didn’t know you needed.
It’s more than just a sound design tool, however. It also has a built-in eight-track step sequencer plus lots of modulation and other parameters to change your sounds over time. It’s also a delight to use and intuitive despite the uniqueness of it. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Forever 89 was started by two ex-members of the Teenage Engineering team.
Embrace the blob.
- Forever 89 Visco product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: Excite Audio Bloom Drum Machine
In my personal best of the year article, I praised Excite Audio’s Bloom Drum Breaks as being an innovative plugin for working with breakbeats. This isn’t the company’s only percussion-based product. Last year also saw the release of Bloom Drum Machine, which does for drum machine samples what Bloom Drum Breaks does for sampled drum loops.
Bloom Drum Machine lets you think about rhythm tracks in a slightly different way than usual. With Bloom Drum Machine, you start with a fully realized drum sequence that you can then edit, alter and combine with other sequences. It has both one shots and loops plus a workflow that involves MIDI triggering for performance-based rhythm creation.
Bloom Drum Machine may not replace typical drum machine plugins but it can complement them in unique ways. It also makes an excellent song starter.
- Excite Audio Bloom Drum Machine product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: XLN Audio XO
XLN Audio’s XO represents a new way to interface with your personal drum sample collection. It scours your hard drive and then creates a visual representation of all of your drum samples like a star map, with similar sounds organized as color-coded constellations. This then makes finding the right sound easier than manually trawling through folders, with similar-sounding files sitting close to each other in the map.
Once you have the sounds that you need, you can then use XO’s comprehensive sequencer to make your beats. It’s more than just a bog-standard TR-style sequencer though, with per-lane swing settings, an Accentuator for overall adjustments, groove templates, effects and modifiers, plus randomization.
XO may not make your snare sound good but at least it’ll help you find it, making it one of the more unique drum machine plugins pushing the envelope.
- XLN Audio XO product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: Audiomodern Playbeat 3
Audiomodern makes some wonderful plugins. I’m a fan of the company’s free sample player Soundbox, and also of Playbeat 3, its AI-powered “groove machine,” which mixes high-quality drum sounds with flexible sequencing parameters.
Playbeat 3 features what the company calls a SMART algorithm. Train the algorithm by tagging the presets that you like and then hit the random button. The AI will change up your current preset based on others that you have selected. You can do it as many times as you like and it’ll always turn out something new. There are also non-intelligent random and remix modes too.
Playbeat 3 is very electronic music-focused. Producers of genres like tech house, IDM and bass music in general will feel just at home. Endlessly inspiring and incredibly affordable. What’s not to love?
- Audiomodern Playbeat 3 product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: DAACI Natural Drums
Playbeat 3 is great if you’re into electronic music. If your tastes tend towards the more traditional like rock, pop or funk but you still want to take advantage of AI-powered sequencing, then DAACI’s Natural Drums is the one for you. (The name gives it away, doesn’t it?)
The idea behind Natural Drums is that it uses AI to create original drum patterns much like a session drummer would. Start with a preset pattern or create your own using the sequencer, which lets you add in separate lanes for kick and snare, hats and fills. It’s easy to create evolving patterns and, with the help of the AI, which you access by dialing in amounts of variation, you can craft realistic-feeling drum grooves.
Given the focus on the sequencing elements, which are uniformly excellent, something I didn’t expect was the quality of the drum kits samples themselves, particularly the acoustic drums. There are even two kits from Spitfire. The electronic kits are less exceptional but they’ll get the job done, and you can always use your own samples, either by exporting sequences as MIDI or using Natural Drums as a MIDI sequencer. You can also drag and drop as audio.
Always wanted to make your own breaks? Now you can.
- DAACI Natural Drums product page
Drum Machine Plugins Pushing the Envelope: Audialab Emergent Drums 2
I have a confession to make. I haven’t really been that impressed by AI when it comes to sound creation. That is, until now. Emergent Drums 2 from Audialab is the AI-powered drum synthesis plugin of my dreams – and I expect that you’ll be impressed by it too.
Like Random Metal (above), there’s no sequencer, so it’s really more of a sample-based drum synthesizer than a rhythm machine. Given its power and sound quality, though, you won’t even miss the sequencer.
Emergent Drums 2 gives you 16 pads, each with a different drum type. You then use the AI to generate a new version of the sample based on how similar you want it to be to the currently loaded one. Change the pitch, attack and release, and character of the sound. You can also edit start and end points.
You can use Emergent Drums 2 as a MIDI player and set up choke groups but the real power here is in the sound creation itself. You may just want to export the sounds as audio and build beats in a separate sampler or directly on the audio timeline.
Emergent Drums 2 really does feel like the future, making it one of the best drum machine plugins pushing the envelope.
- Audialab Emergent Drums 2 product page
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