Hardware Drum Machine thread

currently own:

SPS-1 MkI - this is my third one as it took a while to get my head round the full potential of the CTRL machines as well as balancing the internal levels correctly, certainly keeping this one now.

SFX-6 - the E12 kit on this is a little gem thats often overlooked. Get the arpeggiator rocking with parameter locks on the retriggers and your in Sean Booth territory.

MPC1000BK JJOSXL2 + MPC.com ultra sensitive pads - Although technically a drum sampler I do intend this to be the main center piece to my next setup which will be integrated with both Elektrons for main note sequencing. I just love the note repeat and sequencer cross muting. Steep learning curve with JJOSXL2 but I'm getting there.

Nord Modular G1 expanded - modular drums are king here and when coupled with my old Itronix touch screen laptop the programmer becomes a performance tool in itself. Not as Immediate as the SPS-1 but also does many other things.

Radikal Spectralis MKi - Still haven't had time to get into this deep groovebox and although I mainly got it to explore the hybrid synth the fixed filterbank is initially made for altering its on board drum samples, watch this space.

Have owned;

Quasimidi 309 - very underrated techno drum machine/groovebox that has awesome filters. The presets don't do it justice and the sequencer lacks some essential basic editing features but when sequenced by other stuff its quite a grungy beast.

MC303/MC505 - dated DJ toys. The RPS was novel but all in all shits sandwiches.

DR660 - good general purpose rock style drum box but the initial sounds tend to stay distant in the mix like its been orientated for a backing track purposes although it's very very featured for its age and Squarepusher apparently did some mad shit with one.

Tenori - not sure if you can call this a proper drum machine although you can certainly set it up as one. The weird note sequencing and very innovative solo mode makes it well worth a look.

Want to try;

Jomox

Vermona DRMIII

Waldorf Rack Attack

and I love my mates TR808 even though its limited in many ways

The RX-15 is awesome considering it only cost me £20 and has all the 80s charm to boot. The sounds I like and good for hip hop or funk.

Let me just say that the Electribe ES-1 is a fucking awesome drum sampler. I used it for a chip rave set last year and it sounded great loaded with 32khz breakbeats and 909 samples.

modey, have you got some soundclips of the ES-1 in action?

The only track I have online is this one, but I managed to get a really good sound out of it:

http://soundcloud.com/pselodux/electribe-portasound-jam-2011-01-11

I'll have a look through some recordings and see if I've got anything worth uploading though.

There's a little snippit of my rave set in this video:

that reminds me I forgot to mention the ER-1 mki, great little drumsynth machine for the money. sounds great thru a distortion

just bought one of those and the em-1. both were shipped to my folks place in the states 2 months back, and I have to wait until august to go get them D:

i used to have an EM-1 a few years ago...loved it! just had that and a multitracker, made plenty of stuff with it but not got any of it now :(

Just got myself a 505. You can use it as a midi sequencer/knob box as well, isn't it? Kinda poinless at this moment because I don't own any other midi gear. On the train home now, I'm excited to try it out. On wikipedia it says it can't play the open hh and the closed hh at the same time, which means that I can cut off an open hh with a closed one right? I've always wanted to do that but was too lazy to program it...

  On 6/30/2012 at 8:02 PM, th555 said:

Just got myself a 505. You can use it as a midi sequencer/knob box as well, isn't it? Kinda poinless at this moment because I don't own any other midi gear. On the train home now, I'm excited to try it out. On wikipedia it says it can't play the open hh and the closed hh at the same time, which means that I can cut off an open hh with a closed one right? I've always wanted to do that but was too lazy to program it...

yeah, that's a standard of the Roland x0x boxes

you can use the 505 to trigger a sampler or synth, the note range is limited, but you can edit the notes on a sampler

it's better to use with a sampler rather than synth because then you can program the note range to respond to certain notes only

in that case you could program a c to one drum then a g to another drum etc

you could even use one drum note to trigger a chord on the sampler

or you can plug the drum machine into a synth and get some random type of pattern

That's a good idea. I was thinking mainly of drums but 16 drums make up an octave and a bit of course. Now all I need is a sampler lol. Or well, a software sampler and a midi-usb interface.

Just snagged a DR-110 off ebay for $100. Comes with case and manual, hellz yeah.

I'm kind of in between homes at the moment, and so my studio is dismantled... I've taken this time to really learn my MD inside and out. I'm having so much fun with it! It's really refreshing to not be working on music at the computer... I couldn't right now even if I wanted to, so this is really good.

I've been watching a lot of youtube videos and reading MD tutorials for performance ideas, and to see how people do it. I really love this machine... but watching through videos, seeing people doing cool tricks with their UW makes me really wish I had one (just have the sps-1 mki). But hey, couldnt beat the price (got it used on craigslist) so I can't really complain.

Also, bummer that elektron-users.com is down. Apparently the guy that originally started it died, and so people are having a hard time get the account back online or something (read that on the ableton forums)

  On 7/12/2012 at 5:08 AM, EleminoP said:

Just snagged a DR-110 off ebay for $100. Comes with case and manual, hellz yeah.

nice one! get the DIN-sync mod (there might even be a MIDI one now not sure) so you can sync it up innit.

  On 7/12/2012 at 6:04 PM, BCM said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 5:08 AM, EleminoP said:

Just snagged a DR-110 off ebay for $100. Comes with case and manual, hellz yeah.

 

nice one! get the DIN-sync mod (there might even be a MIDI one now not sure) so you can sync it up innit.

yeah man, thinking about trying to midify the parameters with arduino and some digital pots or something as well.

awesome, sounds good! i love the 110, wicked sounds...just having to use samples these days though, but have used the real thing a lot in the last few years - my best mate had 2 with the DIN-sync mod, sadly now sold so i can't borrow anymore :(

I remember recording my playing of a TR-606 through a cigarette box amplifier back in 1999. Wish I could find that recording.

looks like the elektron users site is back up! yay

For you MD users, does anyone have the pitch chart for the TRX-BD2? I have that nice pitch chart that someone made, but it does not include the bd2. I'd greatly appriciate it if you'd share!

Also, am I the only one that is really anal about tuning my BD's to be in key? The MD made it so annoyingly unintutive to do this. The notes aren't listed, just arbritary MIDI CC #s, and even between the machines the pitches differ... a value of 64 on one kick could be a C, and a value of 64 on a different kick could be G#. This drives me crazy, and I am constantly having to look at that damn chart!

  On 7/13/2012 at 2:35 AM, Kcinsu said:

Also, am I the only one that is really anal about tuning my BD's to be in key?

My bassdrums are never long enough to have a distinct tone to them; all of mine are short and punchy.

I have to say, after messing about on my old EMX-1, its a pretty nifty beatbox.

Only problem is, 75% of the drum sounds suck ass.

  On 7/13/2012 at 2:35 AM, Kcinsu said:

Also, am I the only one that is really anal about tuning my BD's to be in key? The MD made it so annoyingly unintutive to do this. The notes aren't listed, just arbritary MIDI CC #s, and even between the machines the pitches differ... a value of 64 on one kick could be a C, and a value of 64 on a different kick could be G#. This drives me crazy, and I am constantly having to look at that damn chart!

I typically tune all my drums if the sampler or drum machine is tunable. On older drum machines that I can't tune I might sample the loop into a Dr. Sample SP-202 and use the pitch and time stretch to tune it, or even run it through a pitch shifter if I'm up to it. Sometimes I'm just too lazy.

I always tune by ear - whatever sounds right.

  On 7/12/2012 at 6:10 PM, EleminoP said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 6:04 PM, BCM said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 5:08 AM, EleminoP said:

Just snagged a DR-110 off ebay for $100. Comes with case and manual, hellz yeah.

 

nice one! get the DIN-sync mod (there might even be a MIDI one now not sure) so you can sync it up innit.

yeah man, thinking about trying to midify the parameters with arduino and some digital pots or something as well.

I wonder if you could add controls to the sound circuits to allow more variation in the tones too. It's all analog after all right?

Let me know if I'm thinking about this wrong, but typically when I construct bass kicks from scratch I need to draw a descending pitch envelope until it reaches its "intended pitch" .. so I'd think that if you side chain your sub bass with any short kick, you wouldn't notice if the short kick was out of tune or not.

  On 7/16/2012 at 6:22 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 6:10 PM, EleminoP said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 6:04 PM, BCM said:

  On 7/12/2012 at 5:08 AM, EleminoP said:

Just snagged a DR-110 off ebay for $100. Comes with case and manual, hellz yeah.

 

nice one! get the DIN-sync mod (there might even be a MIDI one now not sure) so you can sync it up innit.

yeah man, thinking about trying to midify the parameters with arduino and some digital pots or something as well.

 

I wonder if you could add controls to the sound circuits to allow more variation in the tones too. It's all analog after all right?

certainly can - the one i was using had knobs to control loads of parameters - decay, pitch, tone etc

edit: here it is - control knobs are on the black box attached to the left hand side: