Requesting best buy for drums...virtual or drum machine

[bloozguy]

Over the course of the past year and a half...thru grant money and a community donation, we have converted a high school band practice room to a recording studio...virtual. A multi media PC computer with Sonar 3...using Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96 peripherals. A nice vocal mic...and so forth.

Little did I suspect in envisioning a system to spark teen enthusiasm and creativity that we would have a number of students interested in being the next RAP star...and of course, they have ZERO musical instrument abilities! Egads...

But...part of the gig for us, is that this grant is an after school program, and we need to try and accomodate as many students as is possible.

With that in mind...(and I've been wanting perhaps to build on the drum end of this system anyone), we have additional grant money to purchase either a software recommendation or physical peripheral drum machine.

I'm looking for something that is fairly flexible. That is...for the musician type, something that creates good drum sounds and is user friendly. For the Rapper wannabe...something that has ready to use or easy to create grooves, rhythms and so forth. I'll appreciate all suggestions....links to check out and so forth.

thanks in advance...

bloozguy

[Echelon]

Not sure how much money you want to spend, but Reason 2.5 is a great software program. As far as quality, the MPC2000 is a great drum machine, but a bit complicated for the beginner. Another option would be the cheaper ER-1 MKI or MKII. If your young rap stars have absolutely no skill at arranging music, something as simple as Magix Music Maker would be good. I've used all of these, and I think they are fairly good... but always remember that you get what you pay for.

[Carter]

EMU MP7 ($700.00) Is a great hardware drum machine for that kind of music, and you dont have to sample any sounds like the mpc. fruityloops 4.0 is a easy to learn software program for $100.00