Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

joelap

joelap

Red&Goldologist
Hai tharr.

I'm looking for a drum machine that doesn't suck. Something with realistic sounding drums. I plan to record with it and possibly play live with it. It needs to easy to program... I had an old zoom drum Machine that was small and sounded ok but had a lot of programming burps. What do you recommend?

Thanks
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

Ez drummer's pretty good. Just burn it to an mp3 and run it through the PA
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I'm sorta partial to roland/boss stuff since I've used it forever... no drum machine really sounds "realistic" IMO. Sort of like V-drums at best. Part of doing a convincing job is programming, and I have no idea what current boxes are at the top of that game for storage. Bought mine a long long time ago (better then 10 years) and haven't looked since.

Most guys I know who play gigs with a machine are using software... or a pre-recorded backing track on a CD or something similar.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I like Alesis' SR-16 myself. I've been using mine since the early 90s and while it won't put any drummer out of work, it's decent enough sounding to use for "scratch-pad" material, and I've used it live once or twice when our drummer was out in front doing emcee stuff.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

Hellion said:
I like Alesis' SR-16 myself. I've been using mine since the early 90s and while it won't put any drummer out of work, it's decent enough sounding to use for "scratch-pad" material, and I've used it live once or twice when our drummer was out in front doing emcee stuff.
Click to expand...

+1...same here, you can make "scratch-pad" material sound pretty good with it.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I used to have the Alesis machine. It's cool. The last two drum machines that I've owned were Boss DR-660s. I've still got one in a drawer somewhere.

But lately, I just prefer to use a keyboard as a MIDI controller and get my drums to HDD via Session Drummer 2/3. I hate the tediousness of pounding-out drum tracks on a drum machine -- especially since I'm not a drummer. To each his or her own though...
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

You can probably pick up a Roland TR626 for next to nothing. Decent drum and percussion sound set. Easy programming, Shuffle function, separate output jacks for instrument groups.

Nowadays, there is no shortage of drum machine apps for smart cellphones.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I played in a blues/rock duo for a couple of years using the SR16. We were lazy so we never programmed it but we did use pedals to activate the fill patterns. Sounded really good and a million times better than the Boss machine we used previously. You can buy them in the UK now for around £70 used - a real bargain.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I've used Akai MPC2000 types and others like it and they are great! I actually sample my own drums and use the pads to "play" the drum parts. It will time correct it (since most of you guys aren't drummers) and I think it's easy to use.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

If you don't mind having a laptop Addictive Drums sounds good and is easy to use.
 
Re: Drum machine that doesn't suck or take 8 years to learn

I agree with the rest... drummachines suck unless you get a reaaaly expensive one maybe but I doubt that is what your looking for.

Anno 2010 there are just so many things you can do software wise, I highly recommend you to go the ezdrummer (the best inexpensive drum vst IMO)route. Those are good sounding samples and you can easily drag and drop drum beats and fills the way you like them. Because the program has a humanizer it makes it sound less 'stiff' or 'robotic'.

All it takes is a decent laptop, audio interface or soundcard and the software. Costs are about the same or maybe a little more than a decent drum machine but in the end it's the superior choice really.
 
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