Hardware Drum Machine thread

That said, I'm not really into tuning drums to the bassline/melody. It's usually more about physical sensation to me than harmony with the rest of the track.

Only drum machine I ever had was a 606 which drove my SH-101, I fuppin loved that little duet but had to sell it cos I was broke (still am). Hats were great on it, cymbal was shit. Liked the kick and snare alot though.

I loved programming a 3/4 sequence on the 101's sequencer and having the 606 driving it with a 4/4 beat. Then spend hours knob twiddling the 101 and getting acidy squelches. I need to win the lotto and get them back!

  On 8/17/2012 at 12:59 AM, flak said:

Only drum machine I ever had was a 606 which drove my SH-101, I fuppin loved that little duet but had to sell it cos I was broke (still am). Hats were great on it, cymbal was shit. Liked the kick and snare alot though.

 

I loved programming a 3/4 sequence on the 101's sequencer and having the 606 driving it with a 4/4 beat. Then spend hours knob twiddling the 101 and getting acidy squelches. I need to win the lotto and get them back!

basically the same situation here. still have the 101 but dropped the 606 to pay off the debt crunch i made for myself.

as stupid as this may sound, i really did like the toms on the 606 as well, but basically never used the cymbal. if the cymbal had a shorter decay, it could alright but it always was way too noisy and prominent.

  On 8/15/2012 at 4:15 PM, oscillik said:

  On 7/20/2012 at 9:19 PM, Kcinsu said:

But it will be arpeggiated out of tune... I just don't get why not have the pitches be standard chromatic pitches? Like I said, tuning your drums is a pretty common thing to do.

 

I can't think of a single x0x Roland drum machine that had chromatic tuning

This isn't a Roland drum machine.

wut? you serious lol?

x0x = anything in the Roland line with a "0" in the middle (and some that dont like the 626) - so, TB-303, MC-202, TR-808, TR-909, TR-707 etc etc

pretty sure he's talking about his machinedrum. give the man a little bit of credit; i think most frequenters here will simply learn what an x0x machine is by osmosis

yeah, you would hope so...

Who are you saying doesn't know what x0x means?

I was saying that you shouldn't be invalidating my desire to have chromatic tuning on the MD by stating that Roland's line didn't have it. Different companies, different eras, different approaches. Sure there is the emulation of the TR sound on the MD but it goes way beyond that.

i think i misunderstood you - thought you were saying x0x wasn't a roland drum machine... sorry, my bad.

  On 8/18/2012 at 8:20 PM, Kcinsu said:

Who are you saying doesn't know what x0x means?

 

I was saying that you shouldn't be invalidating my desire to have chromatic tuning on the MD by stating that Roland's line didn't have it. Different companies, different eras, different approaches. Sure there is the emulation of the TR sound on the MD but it goes way beyond that.

it is still an unbelievable cock tease to be sitting here with my minicommand hooked up to the thing, with 'md notes' mode on and play it on a keyboard but not being able to play an actual melody, jesus fuck it's SO close to being amazing.

do you have an iPad?

or a mac?

there might be something wrong with the md notes thingie..

cuz i can totally generate correctly pitched melodies in a pattern with my code (with some slight detuning...) - might be that it uses the wrong machine-specific pitch mappings or something.. do you use the default control mapping in your MD?

i haven't implemented keyboard/midi input yet, but i could throw something like MD notes together during the next days.

so there:

this thing plays incoming MIDI notes on the connected Machinedrum.

isn't the GUI beautiful? no.

you need to have a working two way MIDI connection between the MD and your computer because the app will fetch information about the machines you are using in the currently loaded kit.

The only setup I've tested this with is using an Elektron TM-1 to connect to the MD, and the IAC virtual device for note input. It's probably not a good idea to use the same MIDI interface for both your note generator and the MD.

So after you choose the right devices, hit the "get kit" button, this should fill up a list of tuneable tracks.

By default, it will play on one selected track (mono). You can probably imagine what "cycle tracks" does...

I'm posting this here to show that you can totally tune the MD... it's just a little poop app to prove a point. (though it made me refactor my MIDI code which is a good thing.)

you need OS X 10.7 or higher to run this (tested only on 10.8.1).

finally, use this app at your own risk.

download here: http://cl.ly/0p2o2H1Z0H0e

some of the machines are completely out of tune btw (e.g. TRX B2). this is because their pitches don't linearly scale, for a reason, and I haven't mapped this out yet..

interesting...

I have a 707. I've had 2. Now I just have 1.

I love it. It rules.

You can fine tune the pitch values of the MD's machines by using LFOs:

-Set your waveforms to square (and its inverted counterpart)

-Speed = 0

-Have it set to Trig rather than Free or Hold

-Set the Mix to the middle

-Set the Depth to 0

-Adjust the Depth and Mix for finetuning

Anyone interested in the MD and MnM pairing should check this out:

http://futureimagerecords.bandcamp.com/album/jetlag

It isn't perfect, but I'm proud for what Elektron have designed between those two machines.

I know of the LFO trick, but it is way too much effort. It just seems purposefully obtuse to me. I know they aren't going to change it, and I know I'm not going to fiddle with LFO tricks to make my drum in tune, so I'll live with it, but Im still annoyed by it.

  On 8/26/2012 at 1:54 AM, phling said:

so there:

 

 

this thing plays incoming MIDI notes on the connected Machinedrum.

 

isn't the GUI beautiful? no.

 

you need to have a working two way MIDI connection between the MD and your computer because the app will fetch information about the machines you are using in the currently loaded kit.

 

The only setup I've tested this with is using an Elektron TM-1 to connect to the MD, and the IAC virtual device for note input. It's probably not a good idea to use the same MIDI interface for both your note generator and the MD.

 

So after you choose the right devices, hit the "get kit" button, this should fill up a list of tuneable tracks.

By default, it will play on one selected track (mono). You can probably imagine what "cycle tracks" does...

 

I'm posting this here to show that you can totally tune the MD... it's just a little poop app to prove a point. (though it made me refactor my MIDI code which is a good thing.)

 

 

you need OS X 10.7 or higher to run this (tested only on 10.8.1).

finally, use this app at your own risk.

 

download here: http://cl.ly/0p2o2H1Z0H0e

 

some of the machines are completely out of tune btw (e.g. TRX B2). this is because their pitches don't linearly scale, for a reason, and I haven't mapped this out yet..

woah! can't wait to try this out. Are there any others besides TRX b2 i shouldn't bother trying? Sorry wasn't in the thread earlier, and yes i have an ipad but it has no midi interface

does this work with polyphony? the way MD notes works which is pretty cool is you have to load up the same drum sound in each slot to have 16 voices of polyphony, and it does some kind of rudimentary poly-chain mod where when you hold down the next note on a keyboard it simply moves to the next MD voice slot out of the 16 drum sounds

yeah it supports polyphony, but it's not as cool as with the MiniCommand yet, it doesn't do the hold thing (yet)...

but if the "cycle" checkbox is ticked, it will basically step through all the tracks with tuneable instruments and play them in order..

in the simplest case, for instance if you load like 4 EFM HH machines and nothing else, you'll have 4 voice polyphony..

but let's say you load 1 EFM HH machine into track 1, then a TRX BD machine into track 2, these two instruments will alternate on each keystroke, and both are tuned.. I've had some fun just running a simple arp into a kit with an uneven number of tuneable machines loaded, interesting polyrhythms..

if you play a note which is outside the pitch range of a machine, it will wrap around the lowest or highest octave this machine can play btw.

uh here's an updated version from last night with an added debug view.. also code-signed for the Apple watchdog: http://cl.ly/0B2C3O2h1M00

Sp-303 + vinyl

(if that counts)

The most under rated drum machine in my opinion is the Korg S3:

It sounds very clear and HiFi. There is something like 200 sounds in it including drums, waveforms and acoustic instruments. It's more than a drum machine in fact you can synthesize all kind of sounds with it. The drawback and the reason I think it is not widely used is because it's a quite complicated machine. There's a lot of parameter you can tweak, but you have to browse in a small 2 line green on black screen. The manual isn't very clear. So I use it as a rompler and I program my beats in FL Studio with the S3 connected with MIDI cables. I got it for 100$, a steal! If you see it at 100$ or less it is well worth the price. I even had the chance to find ROM cards with additional ethnic sounds for it at a music store!

I have to admit that--now that I got an SH-101--I totally want a 606, 707 or 909.*

I used to think the hype was silly, but now I'm a believer of said hype.

*For some reason, I'm still indifferent to the charms of the 808. Not sure why.

they cost 1200?

Could be.

Could also be that the thing is so

u·biq·ui·tous

that I'm less excited about hearing more of it.

I just picked up one of these:

Really great electro tones and pretty reasonable prices in these late 70's early 80's drum brains.