DAACI Natural Drums — A Mix Real-World Review

DAACI Natural Drums is a virtual drum instrument for Mac and Windows that is designed to make it easy to program MIDI drum beats in various styles. Although AI-based, it requires user input for optimal results. The AI, according to the company, has been ethically implemented.

DAACI, which stands for Definable Aleatoric Artificial Composition Intelligence, is dedicated to creating AI-based instruments for musicians. The company is affiliated with Queen Mary University in London and Abbey Road Redd (an “incubator” owned by Abbey Road Studios that seeks to nurture music technology innovations), among other organizations.

SYNC OR SWIM

When you open the Natural Drums plug-in as an instrument insert, it’s automatically synced to the DAW tempo and transport. It loops its active pattern while the DAW is playing. You can load a preset pattern or program your own. With a single button push, you can also turn off its built-in sequencer so that its internal drum sounds only respond to incoming MIDI from your DAW.

Another way to use it is as a MIDI effect, where its patterns trigger another virtual instrument and its internal sounds are unavailable.

Either way, its GUI is essentially the same and is divided horizontally into two main sections: a programming area at the top and a piano-roll display at the bottom. The display reflects the currently playing four-measure loop. A fill gets created at the end of the fourth measure when the Fill button is activated.

The Piano Roll itself is only for editing velocities, not changing the rhythmic placement of notes. You can select and adjust the velocity for groups of snares, hats, etc. (the plug-in determines the groups based on similarity), but not individual hits. It’s helpful but limited. The best part of the Piano Roll is that it provides visual feedback of the changes you make as you adjust the various aspects of the beat. Rudimentary mix controls are provided for changing velocity levels and muting or soloing kit elements.

SKELETAL STRUCTURES

Before getting into the plug-in’s options for creating and arranging drum parts, let’s start by looking at how to program a single bar.

Natural Drums provides a 16-segment grid where you can select the beats on which each drum or cymbal will play. Instead of programming everything in a single grid, Natural Drums splits up the process. First, you establish the kick and snare pattern, which DAACI refers to as the “Skeleton,” and then, in a different window, you add the cymbals. The smallest rhythmic value you can access is a 16th-note.

Hi-hat hits can be open or closed. Ride hits can be on the main part of the cymbal or the bell. Having the hi-hat pedal playing along with the ride is also possible.

A third cymbal option is labeled Trapifier. It creates “Trap”-style hi-hat rolls that include many complex ghost-note phrases that use subdivisions as small as 128th-notes.

There is no way to generate beats based on a floor-tom pattern. You’d have to create the part without the floor-tom hits, export it as a MIDI pattern, and add them via your DAW’s MIDI editor.

VARIETY SHOW

One of the strengths of Natural Drums is its ability to create variations. When programming the kick and snare parts, they each have knobs called Busy and Complex. The higher you turn them, the more intricate their patterns become. You can add accents and specify off- or on-beat hits when programming the cymbals.

Individual Shuffle buttons are available for each drum and cymbal. They’re designed to create intelligent variations of the “embellishments” of your beat, often adding ghost notes to the snare or cymbal phrases. The results are informed by the AI engine and its “drummer-like” intelligence.

There are Swing controls, too, which let you adjust the amount of swing and choose whether it’s based on eighth- or sixteenth notes. In addition, a knob called Humanize Velocities dials in minor variations that make the part feel more natural.

FILL ’ER UP

If you activate the Fill button at the top of the programming area, Natural Drums places a fill at the end of every four-measure section, and you have significant control over their content. You can adjust their length and turn the toms on or off. Several fill styles are available, including a couple that include ghost notes.

Programming MIDI fills that sound like a drummer played them is never an easy task. I’ve found the best ones to be those played on MIDI kits by real drummers. That’s obviously not the case with Natural Drums, which generates its own fills. Depending on the musical context and the type of kit you’re using, they’re usually pretty good, but there were times when they sounded too “programmed” for my taste.

Part of the issue is that the fills created can only consist of snares and toms. That’s a shame because some of the coolest fills you hear from real drummers also feature subtly placed hi-hat and kick drum hits.

THE COMPACT FACTOR

Natural Drums is a powerful tool, whether you’re experienced at programming drums or not. For those in the novice category, it offers a simplified programming interface option called Compact Mode. It eschews the grid for a series of circular control sliders for Kick, Snare, Hats and Fills, which increase their complexity.

Above are style buttons for Dance, Funk, Pop, Trap and Swing. Clicking on them creates a new beat variation in the appropriate genre. Another way to access style-specific beats is by opening one of the many patterns provided in the Preset menu.

One significant limitation of Natural Drums is that it only supports 4/4 time. On its website, DAACI says, “We are working on adding more time signatures shortly to expand its versatility.” Nothing more definitive has been announced at the time of this writing.

GETTING LOOPY

Natural Drums allows you to program and play back a four-measure loop. Up to three separately programmed measures, designated A, B and C, can make up that loop. You can select the order in which they play back over the four-bar duration by choosing AAAA, AAAB, ABAC, AABC or ABCC from a drop-down menu.

Once you have programmed the measures and chosen the order, you can export your loops to your DAW over MIDI or as audio using an easy drag-and-drop method. What’s more, there are four Snapshot slots into which you can save loops for instant recall.

Unlike some drum instruments, Natural Drums doesn’t support the creation of song-length parts. However, it’s easy to construct such a part in four-measure segments. One way would be to create beats for the different song sections using the A, B and C parts. For example, A for verses, B for Choruses and C for the bridge. You could then drop those into your DAW at the appropriate places and generate variations in the fills and subtle changes in dynamics or hit placement to build a natural-sounding part over the course of the song.

KIT PIECES

DAACI Natural Drums is more than just a drum programming environment; it’s also a MIDI drum instrument with 17 included kits, which are broken down into Acoustic, Electronic, Lo- Fi and Experimental categories. There’s also a link to download additional kits through a collaboration with Spitfire Audio LABS, a sound subscription service.

One drawback to the internal kits is that they only have 11 drum sounds in each. For example, each kit only has one snare sound, so there are no cross-sticks or rimshots.

Despite that limitation, the included kits sound quite good. They’re not just raw drum samples; they’ve been processed to be mix-ready. Still, lacking a full-fledged mixer with effects is a limitation. One workaround is to solo each drum or cymbal and export each as audio, one at a time. Then, you can mix them in your DAW like multitrack drums.

If you want to access sounds beyond what Natural Drums offers, the plug-in lets you host other virtual instruments from within it. The first time you select Plugins from the Kit menu, Natural Drums scans your system for instruments, which then appear in the Kit menu’s Plugins category. Not only can you access other drum instruments with the patterns you’ve created, but also synth or sampler sounds, which can lead to some cool results.

If you need to compensate for instruments with different MIDI note-mapping, you can open the Settings window and quickly remap any kit element.

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NATURAL WONDERS

I’m impressed with Natural Drums and I am sure I’ll use it a lot on future projects. It makes programming beats or extended MIDI drum parts fast and easy. I love that its AI component is ethical and designed to think like a drummer. The ability to create variation in the parts for the different kit elements is helpful and a real time-saver.

The lack of support for time signatures other than 4/4 is a limitation that will hopefully be addressed in future versions. I’d also like to see additional mixing features and more creativity in fill generation.

With a price tag of under $100, this plug-in should prove a handy addition to the toolkit of anyone who uses MIDI drums in their productions.