iDrum Review

Reviewed by Daphne Kalfon

Soapbox – the copy protection protocols that are integrated into the installation process only serve to unnecessarily annoy the people who actually intend to legally use the product. For those who intend not to - as the expression goes, “if there is a will, there is a way” - they will find a way around those protections. As a result, the whole installation process was very “geek” oriented and confusing in all the various steps that were required to have it authorized and installed, and not artist/creative friendly at all.

Also, iDrum used to be owned by a company called Glaresoft. If you previously were running the Glaresoft iDrum, then when you install the Izotope one, it will not copy over the files from the Glaresoft version into your Izotope version. This was the case for me as I was previously using a Glaresoft version, so after I had installed the newer version from Izotope, I realized that I might have inadvertently done some damage to one of my songs that I had used iDrum in. Well, I opened my GarageBand project and listened to the song, and the iDrum track was indeed no longer the same. Panic!!

What I had to do was do a spotlight search for iDrum, which showed me where the Glaresoft original folder was with the patches that I had used in that song, and bring those presets from that folder into the folder of presets in the new program so that it could find them. Once I did that, my song sounded fine again, with my iDrum track restored to the patches I had originally chosen. That was a relief, but not explained anywhere I could see during the installation process.

Whereas GB has a way of allowing you to choose which jampack you want to work with, iDrum doesn’t have that easy differentiation between the kits in regards to the XRB kits vs. the iDrum kits. After scrolling through them all and looking them over several times, the one thing that defined one set from the other was that for the loops/kits in the XRB library, there was a number (representing the loop’s default tempo) and the letters “bpm” (beats per minute) preceding the name of the loop, while the iDrum loops each had names followed by a number which indicates the preset tempo for that loop.

The built-in “help” section explains what all the various controls on the iDrum interface do and how to go about accomplishing what you want to do with iDrum, and goes into more detail on various concepts for those who wish to delve deeper.

It found it to be generally quite helpful, although for those who are entirely new to iDrum, at times it assumes a little bit too much “prior knowledge” on the part of the new user.

Lets look at a few key features of iDrum. The interface is made up of what are called “channels”, each representing a different sound in the chosen kit. You can physically move around the various channels that make up the iDrum interface, which is handy if you want to arrange certain sounds in a certain order.

If you click on the actual name of the drum sound on each channel, you can view the entire list of sounds to which you can change that sound. There’s also an up and down arrow button which allows you to simply choose one after the other, and there is also a little file button which when you click on it, brings up a window which allows you to not only see the sounds, but to also choose, if you wish, a sound from a different folder of sounds. In the iDrum folder, you can choose between different samples/sounds such as hi-hat, kick, percussion and snare.

There’s also a sample folder called “aM samples”, which if you open it, also gives you a wide range of choices to choose from in each folder of hats, kicks, percussion and snares. The most recent addition to iDrum is the XRB library which allows you to choose from claps, cymbals, sound fx, percussion fx, hi-hat, hi-hat open, kicks, percussion, snares and toms.

Navigating around to find the individual samples for the XRB and iDrum libraries was not exactly straightforward, so I would say that finding one’s way around was a little hard to get used to at first.

All of these choices mean that you can completely customize your drum kit to whatever sounds you choose, and editing them in all kinds of way, within iDrum.

Clicking on the little forward arrow to the left of the sound name allows you to instantly listen to the sound you have just chosen. As well, you can either mute or solo each individual channel of iDrum. There is also a pan dial and volume slider for each track, plus you can physically go in and adjust the volume where it shows in the individual sections or “steps” to the right, of which there are 16.

“Slave to host” allows iDrum to be controlled by the transports in GB and to play at whatever tempo is set in GB. Changing the tempo in GB results in a corresponding tempo change in iDrum, for example.

The “midi drag” feature is really cool – it allows you to bring your drum loop from iDrum, directly into your GB project, and from there, now that it has been turned into midi, you can edit its component parts in edit mode just as you would anything else midi that you’ve recorded in GB.

Speaking of drum loops, in addition to individual sounds, iDrum comes with lots of drum loops as well. There are iDrum drum loops and XRB drum loops. I was very impressed with the sound quality of the XRB library as these drum loops are much larger in size than the iDrum kits.

The preset tempos for each drum loop can be changed by clicking and holding on the little “tempo” window in iDrum and dragging upwards or downwards.

Each drum loop comes with a preset number of patterns which, using the “pattern” window, you can scroll through and listen as the drum loop plays in iDrum. If you have “song mode” chosen, iDrum will arrange the patterns in a way that are suitable for use in a song, and you can drag and drop these patterns into your GB arrangement in whichever order you like, to suit your song.

If you create a drum loop you really like, you can save it and then you’ll have it as your own preset that you can use again some other time in perhaps a future project – allowing you to build on the loops iDrum came with, and create a library all your own.

There’s still a lot more to iDrum than I can cover here, but these are the main features to keep in mind if you are considering getting iDrum.

Altogether I would say that iDrum is an extremely versatile and powerful program and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to add to their drum arsenal in terms of samples, kits, and many hours of creative fun.