Recommend me a Drum Machine!

[losthighway]

So I'm in a funky spot as a creative person. I get to play music every week or so playing drums in one friends project, and keys in another. But my main vehicle for songwriting has retired and I am in grad school/running a studio so I can't really assemble a band. I do the man and acoustic guitar setup sometimes, which is fine, but I want to find a way to play solo with more options. This could mean a drum machine. Something my girlfriend and I could play violin, saxophone, electric guitar over.

My criteria is this:

1. Cheap. Some old used availability model.

2. Intuitive. Something that is easy to make cool sounds with.

3. Cool sounding. I didn't say 'good' sounding. It can sound ghetto, but it needs a musical charm.

Tell me what cha know.

[calaverasgrandes]

My first impulse is to reccomend the Alesis HR16b, It is old enough to be under $100 in most places. It has a ton of space on it. I used one for a while with about 10 very long songs I programmed into it. The manual is built in. It's on a flip up lid on top of it. It's pretty boring sound wise, not an 808 or anything, just sampled drums. I think its 12bit or something? It doesnt sound like 16/44 for sure. good enough for Godflesh's first few albums.
The Boss DR550 is nice but will cost more.
The Zoom rhthymtrak has bass sounds as well as drums.
The Tr-707 is an 8bit machine that is hated/loved by many.

[iamthecosmos]

A Boss Dr Groove. They're awesome for the money. I got one from ebay a couple of years ago for ?50.

[roscoenyc]

Do you have a laptop?
EZ Drummer is a hell of a lot easier to use than any drum machine I ever had.

[calaverasgrandes]

I use mostly PC based software drum-machines now. But I do know a lot of perpetually computer handicapped folks for who a hardware drum machine is easier. Not to mention it is sometimes just easier to make music when there is no keyboard mouse or monitor in the room.

[The Scum]

After years of other things, I'm using Hammerhead on a 10 year old laptop. It's got a solid headphone driver, so I can hear it in headphones without it crapping out. The laptop also has a CDROM drvice, so it'll play CDs, too.

If you want standalone, look at the Korg Electribe ER1. It's got some synthesis controls over the sounds for tweaking, not just sample playback.

A TR808 synced to a TR909 is heavenly.

If you need something that can do odd time signatures (and 12/8 can be considered odd by these machines), you'll have to dig a little deeper to make sure they can do it.

[douglas baldwin]

+1 on the Alesis HR16. I had one for a bazillion years and literally beat it to death, to where the pad sensors would no longer respond. Took it apart, cleaned the pads with tech spray regularly, and over the years it s-l-o-w-l-y gave up the ghost. I LOVED that machine.

So two-three years ago I bought the Alesis SR 18, figuring they could only make it better. I think it ran out of memory in about three songs, and the response on the pads seemed sucky, and I forget what all else disappointed me, but it did not cut it. So I figured,"drop the coin for the best," and got the Boss DR-880. Sucky reprise. Sub-menus within sub-menus, and those lovely Boss/Roland instruction manuals in Japlish... can you say "buzz-killer?"

Then I figured, WTF, try the Zoom RT-223. It's cheap.

BINGO!

So many cool sounds! (Tablas, gongs, voice drums, sound fx as well as gajillions of standard drums) Built in effects! (Reverbs and flanges and sync'd delays and filters and compressors and more.) BASS sounds like fingered electric bass, thumb-slap bass, acoustic upright, three or four synth basses (and the sine wave bass can rattle pictures off your wall!), all super easy to play and transpose! Great pad response! Super intuitive to use! And quick! (Everything you do gets saved automatically.) You can do everything from tight studio to big-room rock to brushes to vocal hip-hop to electronica... And you can tweak the sounds right into sci-fi land so easily with ultra-low and ultra-high detune. It does all kinds of wack time signatures - 5/4, 5/8, 7/8, etc. etc. And it's portable and doesn't guzzle batteries. And it's the smallest of all the machines I mentioned. I take this thing and a set of headphones with me on plane trips and family vacations and just have a ball with it. One caveat: erase most of the dorky patterns to get the most out of the memory.

Ya wanna hear it? Of course ya do! Go to my web site here:
www.thecoyote.org/listen.cfm
The following tracks have the Zoom RT-223 for drum tracks:
Postmortal Postman
Mamajuana (I wrote this tune off of
Keeyater
(Just by the way, the opening music on my site uses the Alesis SR-18, and "Peligro Extrano (Stranger Danger)," which is on my Home page, uses the DR-880. Notice any big-whoop difference? I didn't think so.

Zoom RT-223 is ruling my universe 4evr n evr.

[roygbiv]

Do you have a laptop?
EZ Drummer is a hell of a lot easier to use than any drum machine I ever had.

+1 on this! Below is probably too much info, but I feel the need to gush.

I've had the program for a couple of years, bought it right before I got in a band with a great drummer.

So the program sat around unused, other than when we would use its sounds when our drummer would play MIDI drums for the kick/toms.

Last week, after dealing with very stressful work crap (grant writing), I had an inspiration - wrote a song, start to finish in ~ 30 min. That is way unusual for me.

That time included the 5 min it took me to figure out how to use EZDrummer as a "drum machine".

It's great - very intuitive to use. You simply drag and drop beats/rythms, fills, whatever you want.

Also has great sounds, and visual feedback on the screen - no drum machine can touch it, IMHO.

You just sample various beats, when you find one you like, you drag it on to the screen. Stretch it out for however many bars you want. Then, sample a different "fill", find one you like, drag that onto the screen. All of this "dragging" involves MIDI files that trigger drum sounds in EZDrummer, so you can easily go back and change the beats you originally chose, by deleting and dragging in a different beat/fill.

Seriously, give it a try. A godsend for quick demo songwriting. One thing - you may want to cough up the cash for the "vintage drum" expansion pack, as the built in sounds that come with EZDrummer are a little too polyester shirt/gold chains for my old ears raised on 70/80's "alternative rock".

[tdbajus]

I love an HR-16 as well (i have 2 of them, plus an HR16B) but thos old drum machines, if they have been used a lot (and sometimes when they have not) are bound to fail, and not be repairable. If you don't love one all ready, I would avoid setting yourself up for heartbreak.

I have been fooling around with and old-assed copy of ableton Live (version 5?) and my old assed titanium G4 laptop, and have been getting tons of utility out of it.

I'm always bummed when I see a laptop on stage, but if you are going to use it for demoing somgs, their Impulse instrument couldn't be easier to use- you just drag samples from the finder onto the pad, and BOOM! instant custom drum machine.

I've got a huge library of old analog drum samples now, and I've spent this last swine flu-sodden week building little drum machines. Tons of fun.

[Brett Siler]

I 2nd the Korg and Zoom recommendations. The Korg is great for sythasized drum sounds and there are lots of knobs on it to tweak sounds and come up with some really cool textures. The Zoom is cool for its versitility and some what realistic sounds on some patches. It also does some cool 808 type sounds and some nice sounding sub bass for hip hop stuff.

[thunderboy]

My friend used an HR-16 for many years and did a lot of great stuff with it.

Then it burned down his house.

jt

[Trick Fall]

I've been using an Ensoniq ASR-X for years as a drum machine, but I got EZ Drummer about six months ago and just love it. I still program beats in the ASR-X every once in a blue moon, but EZ Drummer, is just so much more immediate. I have also been using the boom plug in that now comes with pro tools and I really like that as well. I also copy the EZ Drummer patterns into a boom track which can yield some interesting results.

[Dr Rubberfunk]

Yamaha MR10, presets only for that Shuggie Otis vibe, and extra pads for getting your drum machine freak on. Here's a virtual one : http://www.keyboardmuseum.com/d_machines/mr10.html

[percussion boy]

Listening to what you want and all the skills you have, I get real curious about your getting some kind of easy loopmaking device, and just creating your own grooves that way. That might or might not mean using drums to make the loops, you could just as well use kitchen utensils.

Looping is nice 'cause it often captures the rhythmic vibe of the player better than punching pads on a drum machine, unless you love punching pads.

Two specific ideas along these lines:

Hardware: Korg Microsampler
Software: Ableton Live, even the little cheap version (Lite?)

I've used Live a bunch and done a lot of fooling with the M-S, although I didn't end up forking out for it. Nice thing is the mic, pre, sampler, and keyboard are all one little battery-powerable box, and sound quality seems decent.

Hope this helps.

[calaverasgrandes]

another way you can go about this is to just search ebay for drum machines, then check out the ones you can afford on vintagesynth.org to see if they suit your needs.
Maybe also cross reference that wiht some harmony central reviews.
Some drum machines will require a mixer to hear all the outputs, some only have one output so its not an issue (but they are less flexible to mix!) I really like drum machines that have a stop/start footswitch jack. You can configure most DAW software to follow this midi start and midi stop when you are recording.