Drum Machine/ Drum Pad for Recording

swingandstrings

New member
I am a guitartist, and I am looking for a way to get drums into my recordings. I have a TASCAM 4-track cassette recorder. I was planning to have tracks like ac. guitar, el. guitar, vocals, and drums. I was wondering if I should get a drum pad like the ones by Yamaha (a miniature electronic drum set) or an Alesis drum machine. I don't really play drums, but I have messed around with them before and I think I could pick it up pretty fast. Does the drum machine offer any advantages, like maybe a programmable bass line?

Thanks....
Chad
 
The Yamaha drum pad set you are talking about is not worth the investment. I have one that I picked up somewhere really cheap and use it as a midi controller to add some sound effects. I don't use it for anything serious, I just wanted it for the pads. The sounds on the set itself don't sound like drums and there is not touch sensitivity.

I have a DR5 and an old 660 that I use. I took time and learned how to program them. I don't use the drum sounds on them, rather I use the drums from a Roland XV88 and midi the DR5 or 660 to it. These are both very good for generating patterns.

I am not familiar with the Alesis drum machine, so I can't give you any thoughts on it.

Regards.
 
I started out with a Tascam 4 Track, and when I needed a Drum Machine I went with the Alesis SR-16. It has some killer sounds. It is a nice medium between vintage drum box sounds and more modern sounds. It also Includes some nice Percussion effects (I.E. Trashy drum hits, reverse cymbals etc.)

Note: The SR-16 features 4 1/4 inch outputs, and any sound can be panned left or right or assigned to seperate outputs. I maximized this by buying a small mixer (Behringer MX602A). I assigned the Bass Drum Channel 1, Snare Channel 2, and Cymbals, Toms, etc. to a stereo outputs. This allows me to tweak the bass and snare seperately, and I used the extra mixer channel for bass guitar. Then when recording you can have Bass guitar and drums on Channel 1 and 2 on the tascam. Voila...Guitar on 3, Vocals on 4. Hope this helps.
 
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