Soft Drummer

What it does

A brush, hot rod, hand and mallet drummer aimed at jazz, ballads, soft pop and latin, improvising in real time rather than looping fixed patterns. This update moves it from Inter-App Audio to AUv3, adds a Mac version, and switches to free download with a $22.99 unlock (free for existing owners). Kits and banks are selectable, with intensity, jam, swing, fills, a song mode and per-part reverb sends.

In the demo

Jade hosts it in AUM alongside iBassist and Pop Drummer, trading grooves between the three so bass follows drums and back again. She then records its MIDI into Logic on iPad and shows the send-notes, output and drum module settings needed for playback.

Worth knowing

The sound module for playing the kit from a keyboard was intermittent on the day. Anyone after rock or electronic kits will want Pop Drummer rather than this one. An earlier double header with Funk Drummer, from December 2020, walks the same app in its pre-AUv3 Inter-App Audio era, including the humanize page and the multitrack export into GarageBand.