In your DAW
Funk Drummer in Logic Pro
On iPad, and on any Mac with Apple silicon. A funk drummer that improvises, on a track, following your session.
Add it to an instrument track and it behaves like any other Audio Unit: tempo and transport follow Logic, the plugin window is the app's own interface, and everything you set up is stored inside the project. Open that project next month on another device and your grooves, your kit and your Live Pads are where you left them.
Two Audio Units show up in the list, and the difference matters. Lumbeat: Funk Drummer is the full instrument: it generates the groove and plays its own kit. Lumbeat: Funk Drummer (MIDI) generates the same groove but loads no sounds at all and sends notes instead, for when you want the phrasing but your own drum library. In a slot meant for MIDI, pick the entry with (MIDI) in the name.
Multiple instances are supported, which is more useful here than it sounds: a second instance on its own track, with a different kit and a different jam amount, is how you get a second drummer answering the first.
Why this one
Why Funk Drummer in Logic Pro?
Some DAWs arrive with a drummer of their own, and they are good. They keep time, they know the style, and for the first few songs they are plenty. What catches up with you is not a wrong note, it is familiarity: a programmed drummer works from a closed vocabulary, and after a few sessions you start to recognise its gestures. The same turnaround shows up in the same place, and once you have heard it you cannot stop hearing it.
Funk Drummer is built to put that moment off for as long as possible. The two-axis pad is where it shows: one thumb, two parameters, jam for how much the drummer improvises and intensity for how hard it hits, both moving while the track runs. Nothing was decided in advance. The bar you are listening to was played as it went past, and the next one will not be a copy of it. Drop a fill by hand where the song asks for one, or let it place them every so many bars, and none of it has to be drawn into the timeline first.
Underneath there is enough material for that to stay interesting past the first session: 153 factory grooves across seven banks, plus the ones you save into your own, guest drummers who change how the improvisation and the fills come out rather than just how the kit sounds, and sounds built from three hit types with round robin, so two snares in a row are never the same recording. Inside Logic it stays an ordinary Audio Unit, with its own mixer and per-track effects in the plugin window, and what you record is a performance rather than a pattern.
On the Mac
One step people miss, once per Mac
On Apple silicon Macs the app runs as an iPad app, and the plugin runs inside Logic as a separate piece of software from the app itself. Because of the way macOS keeps those two apart, the plugin cannot always see your Full Version purchase on its own.
Opening the app once on that Mac is what links them. After that, the plugin recognizes the purchase in Logic Pro, in GarageBand, or in any other host on that machine. It is a one-time step, not something to repeat, and it is the answer to almost every "I bought it but the plugin still asks me to" message we get.
The same logic applies to your content: that first launch also moves your grooves, soundsets, Live Pad Sets and mixer presets into the shared storage the Audio Unit reads from. Load the Audio Unit before ever opening the app and it will start with the factory content only.
While you work
It waits for the bar line
Add the plugin to a session that is already rolling and the drummer does not jump in. The Play button shows off, nothing is heard, and there is no beat animation. It is following Logic, it simply has not come in yet.
Tap Play and it joins on the next bar, in time. From then on it follows the transport: Logic stops, the drummer stops; next time you roll, it plays with you, with no extra tap. Fill and play works the same way and brings you in with a fill.
The reason is musical rather than technical. Coming in halfway through a bar would put the rhythm out of phase with everything else, so it waits, and meanwhile you can pick the rhythm, pick the kit and set the jam amount without anyone hearing you rehearse.
What the project remembers
The groove, the kit, the mixer, the jam and intensity amounts, your Live Pads and the play lock all travel inside the Logic project. The full Settings panel is available inside the plugin too, which was not the case before version 5.00.
One control does nothing here: the MIDI tempo fader. Inside a host the tempo belongs to Logic, so a controller sending that CC into the plugin changes nothing. Everything else on the map behaves exactly as it does standalone.
Free to try, 7-day trial. Download Funk Drummer
Tip
Record the drummer as MIDI on another track
Everything the drummer plays can also land on a second track as MIDI notes, so you keep the performance and can edit it, quantize it or move it to another drum instrument later. It takes two settings, one in the plugin and one in Logic, and the steps are the same in Logic Pro for iPad and for Mac.
- Let the plugin send notes. In the plugin, open MIDI Setup, go to the Notes MIDI Map and turn on SEND NOTES. It is off by default, and with it off the drummer plays its own kit but sends nothing out. The (MIDI) version of the plugin always sends, so there is nothing to turn on.
- Create the track that records. Add a new Software Instrument track. Put a drum instrument on it to hear the part through another kit, or leave it empty.
- Point it at the drummer. With that track selected, open the Track Inspector and set Internal MIDI In to Instrument Output → Funk Drummer. On iPad a Recording menu appears next: choose whether the track takes only the drummer's notes or your own keyboard as well.
- Arm it and record. Play as usual, and the drummer's notes arrive as a MIDI region on the new track.
If nothing gets recorded while the drummer is clearly playing, SEND NOTES is the first thing to check. If the notes arrive but trigger the wrong drums, the receiving instrument uses a different drum map: change the notes in the plugin's Notes MIDI Map to match it.
Also worth knowing
Not only Logic
The same two Audio Units load in GarageBand, Cubasis, Drambo and the rest. AUM has one wrinkle of its own worth reading before you load it there for the first time, because its plugin list can hand you the wrong one of the two without saying so.
And if what you want is the opposite direction, sending the groove out to your own instruments rather than hearing the app's kit, that is what the MIDI plugin is for.
One older piece of plumbing, in case you were planning a rig around it: Logic Pro cannot be slaved to incoming MIDI Clock, so clock sent from the standalone app will not drive it. Inside Logic there is nothing to send, because the plugin follows the host transport by definition. If you want the app running standalone next to Logic instead, use Ableton Link, which both speak and where either side can lead. The app's own clock endpoint, and what it will drive, is on the MIDI map.
Ready to groove?
Download Funk Drummer free and try it for 7 days.
Free to try, 7-day trial. In-App full version.
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