VSTBuzz offers 71% off Virtual Drummer Heavy from UJAM. Virtual Drummer Heavy (€99 value) is available for €29 until July 1st, 2021.
As mentioned in previous articles, UJAM picked up the Virtual Guitarist series where Steinberg left off and has been improving/expanding the virtual instrument range ever since.
UJAM has done a couple of fundamental things to improve the user experience since the Steinberg days. Firstly, the sound quality and amount of tweaking available are continually improving. Secondly, they make sure their products are super-easy to use.
Having used Virtual Drummer Phat previously, the GUI looked pretty familiar to me. At the top, you’ll see two interactive keyboards, one labeled Instrument and the other under Style.
The Instrument keyboard on the left allows you to play the individual instruments that make up the selected kit. You can create your own grooves and patterns, much like you would with any drum software and a MIDI keyboard.
When using Styles, each key will trigger a specific groove or pattern. You can hold the key for as long as you want a pattern to continue or switch on Latch, and it will continue after you release the key.
The Style keyboard has seven groups: Intros, Verses, Fills, Choruses, Endings, Specials, and Breakdowns. There are five kits, 200 presets, 60 styles, and 1,380 grooves.
Micro Timing allows you to apply swing, change the feel, and humanize the performance to make it sound more genuine.
You can now drag and drop MIDI straight from the interactive Style keyboard to your DAW. Being able to lift patterns like that makes it easy to build songs and opens it up to much deeper tweaking. It also offers multi-outs for individual mixing in your DAW.
The available kits are shown on the left, with the six Mix presets on the right. You also get the Slam slider, also found on other Virtual Drummer releases, which can utterly smash your drums.
The Instrument section offers up to four types of Kick, Snare, Tom, Hi-Hat, Ride, and Crash. You can process your selections individually by type using the Decay, Tune, and reverb controls. Additionally, the Master section offers global controls for Reverb, Saturate, and Maximise.
Would I tell Vinnie Colaiuta I don’t need him anymore because I got Virtual Drummer from UJAM? NO, and I’m sure that won’t offend anyone.
Does Virtual Drummer Heavy sound real and offer enough variation to pass as authentic? Yes, and that’s what matters.
We’d all love to have the best live session players on-call daily, but that’s not reality. Virtual Drummer Heavy is fun, beginner-friendly, and suitable for pros who need fast, authentic results.
Available for macOS and Windows in 64-bit AU2, VST2, and AAX formats.
More info: Virtual Drummer Heavy (71% OFF @ VSTBuzz until July 1st, 2021)
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