Garage Band Drums - How Not To Suck ?

Hi there fellas !

So, for the past year I've been making generic theme music for a video game I'm working on with some friends, and now that we've almost finished its development I'm trying to make it sound a bit better. Of course, I still have to work on the mix etc. but the main problem with all those tunes are the drums.

The point is, I've been making almost every track within Garage Band. No fancy VSTs nor awesome instruments, just the regular Garage Band you get out of the box (I was trying to have a "MIDI" sound and thought that it was a good way to achieve that).

However, the drums just aren't right. They sound weak and cheap (well, that's partly what I wanted but it went beyond my expectations and not in a good way). Hence those two questions :

- Do you know a free/cheap drum VSTi that would natively work in Garage Band and sound a bit better than the generic drum kits ? I'm looking for "pop" drum kits - the soundtrack could be classified somewhere between cheesy funk and FM rock.

- Do you have tips on how to improve Garage Band base drums ? I played with EQ presets, reverbs and tried to manually adjust pattern velocities but it never seems to get better.

Our small dev team would be really grateful for any answer :)

Cheers !

Anywhere to hear a sample of your work? It would help in hearing what you think is lacking.

I have no idea what functionality the drums in Garage Band but I think like the poster above, its kind of hard to tell what the problem is based on the information you provided.

Again, havent heard but maybe try layering some of the drum samples?  Thats a pretty standard technique to get drums sounding a bit beefier & more interesting.

I can just imagine those empty snares & weak kicks right now 

Hope they're as awesome as this -

Computer generated music is so not what it used to be

StocKo, you need to post the tracks or samples of the tracks so we can understand what you're talking about and trying to achieve. Also you don't need any special instruments for "good" drums - actually garageband has a pretty good selection of samples and native plugins (i know there are some decent 808 style booming kicks for example - phat as you could ever need). Don't even think you can load VSTs into garageband, unless things have moved on since I last used it... Anyway, post some examples up here and we'll sort you out.

Just run it through an eventide h8      

Yeah sorry about that ! Had to ask my team for a track to post (the material isn't copyrighted yet and hasn't been posted anywhere yet...)

Anyway we did that small trailer with a dedicated track - produced with Garage Band as well. Maybe a bit more "energetic" than the other tracks of the OST but here it is !

Sorry we made it in french and it's not translated, but if you're interested it's a game made for med students where you have manage an ER service (Theme Hospital, but in a realistic way !).

Thank you again !