Drum Machine Questions

Right now I use the Hammerhead Rhythm Station to do everything, I put in my own sounds and then pitch bend them with Cooledit Pro, then overlap different parts. "Tonal" parts are lines of streched out sounds. Are all drum machines basically advanced versions of Hammerhead, or do they work in completely different ways? What drum machines would you suggest? Am I making things more complicated than they have to be as far as music making?

haha hammerhead. i started with hammerhead. got me hooked i guess. i then tried lots of different software, not just drum machine software but trackers (like buzz) and pretend rack (like reason) and other software too. reason reminds me of hammerhead a little. its very visual and has a drum machine rack. i didn't choose it myself as it felt a little simple. i chose buzz but that has no visuals.

i think the best stand alone drum machine is Native Instruments Battery. its got a nice interface, loads of nice prebuilt patches and it integrates pretty well with every other software (except buzz) as a VST. it works in a simliar way to hamerhead you load up whatevere sample you like to each zone then program away, although you'll have to use it through some other software (or hook up a midi beater) to do that obviously.

personally i'm currently just using the built in impulse modeule of abelton live. onlydownsde i can see right nwo is that its limited to 8 sounds per unit. but if you need more just add another instance.

hands on

get a tr-707

the fun is endless!

or one of them classic alesis sr-16

software

impluse in ableton is good!

the hr-16 beats the shit out of the sr 16.

great wee machine nonetheless.

needs some heavy eq and compression to fatten the sounds though.

i was thinking about vaule for money

  loganfive said:

the hr-16 beats the shit out of the sr 16.

 

 

great wee machine nonetheless.

 

needs some heavy eq and compression to fatten the sounds though.

Yeah, I love that drum machine.

I love my HR-16, it's a great machine. But the membrane buttons are shit.

  chris moss acid said:

i was thinking about vaule for money

you can get an hr-16 for about 20$ on ebay.

i love crunchy aliased grooveboxes

At the moment I'm using reason. You can choose to load samples in the drum machine, or chop them up in the Dr. Rex loop player. You can also connect the drum machine to a separate mixer which can be nice.

if you like hammerhead..... why not just use FL? its the most superior step sequencer - and if you dig other programs like cubase or ableton you can just rewire it into them

it's way easy to make your own kits up in FL too...... sumthing battery made a lot harder than it should be...... just load your sounds into granulizer or sampler channels and start makin beats

check out sonic charge's microtonic vst.

designed by the same guy that developed the maelstrom from reason, among other things.

bit quirky, but worth a look in.

All drum machines have a character unto themselves, and that's a mixed blessing. Every bit of 'classic' hardware has it's own specific sound and can be pretty limiting in that respect, especially if you want to make sounds that haven't been 'heard' before yet still retain the fidelity of say a Roland TR-x0x box. Software opens this up a lot, but I haven't come across a vst yet that doesn't sound so... lackluster. There's plenty of free stuff that is certainly not bad, but none of the commercial ones (Drumular, Microtonic, Attack) sound any better. Certainly not better than Hammerhead anyway.

The best software drums I've used are Fuzzpilz' FuDrums for Buzz Tracker, which offer a massive depth of sound... especially when you throw in some PeerLFOs and PeerEnvs. You won't get any, er, analogue warmth from them, but then you won't from an Elektron Machinedrum either which the only thing comparable in terms of synthesising new and fresh drum sounds. The possible downside is that you'll have to get to grips with Buzz... but it's nowhere near as unstable as people who haven't used it think it is! Well, if you only use the newer, well-programmed plugins at least.

Speaking of the Machinedrum, my fustration with the software options for percussion lead me to drop the money on one, and I certainly don't regret spending all that moolah as it's a massive source of inspiration... it can absolutely do fucking anything! I was disappointed at first that all the snare synths in it were pretty weak, but you're given sine, noise and impulse generating modules as well so it's actually possible to model really snappy 808 snares and kicks in it too (or just bulk up the supplied algorhitm sounds a bit with some extra sizzle)! I tend to run it through Voxengo Tapebus to take a bit of the clinical edge off of it, or overload the signal on my mixer a bit to dirty up those hypersmooth transients a little.

  rex sole said:

All drum machines have a character unto themselves, and that's a mixed blessing. Every bit of 'classic' hardware has it's own specific sound and can be pretty limiting in that respect, especially if you want to make sounds that haven't been 'heard' before yet still retain the fidelity of say a Roland TR-x0x box. Software opens this up a lot, but I haven't come across a vst yet that doesn't sound so... lackluster. There's plenty of free stuff that is certainly not bad, but none of the commercial ones (Drumular, Microtonic, Attack) sound any better. Certainly not better than Hammerhead anyway.

 

The best software drums I've used are Fuzzpilz' FuDrums for Buzz Tracker, which offer a massive depth of sound... especially when you throw in some PeerLFOs and PeerEnvs. You won't get any, er, analogue warmth from them, but then you won't from an Elektron Machinedrum either which the only thing comparable in terms of synthesising new and fresh drum sounds. The possible downside is that you'll have to get to grips with Buzz... but it's nowhere near as unstable as people who haven't used it think it is! Well, if you only use the newer, well-programmed plugins at least.

 

Speaking of the Machinedrum, my fustration with the software options for percussion lead me to drop the money on one, and I certainly don't regret spending all that moolah as it's a massive source of inspiration... it can absolutely do fucking anything! I was disappointed at first that all the snare synths in it were pretty weak, but you're given sine, noise and impulse generating modules as well so it's actually possible to model really snappy 808 snares and kicks in it too (or just bulk up the supplied algorhitm sounds a bit with some extra sizzle)! I tend to run it through Voxengo Tapebus to take a bit of the clinical edge off of it, or overload the signal on my mixer a bit to dirty up those hypersmooth transients a little.

got my eye on a machinedrum. may try to swindle one. expect to see a reader compo in an upcoming issue of Reverb. lol.

k, there's alot to take in here...thank you all for your help! (:

my recommendation

I had an MPC2000XL at one point... I fucking loved it. My problem with it was laziness. I've been brought up on computer sequencers and have a hard time managing the boringness of getting into step sequencing on an MPC. I just ended up making a bunch of hip hop beats with it...

The scroll wheel on the new MPC's suck.

  kokoon said:

Awwwww, i'm getting misty-eyed!

that was my first drum machine. it was good to me.