Auditioning a drum machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Krakit
  • Start date Start date
I have to tell you if you cannot afford a good enough drum machine try shopping at the pawn brokers you can depend on them to have low prices on drum machines because the public doesnt buy them as much.

I paid 50.00 for a roland tr-909 perfect shape.
I paid 20.00 for a roland spd-20 perfect shape.(drum pads)
paid 350.00 for a Tama swingstar 7 piece set.
got acid 2.0 free off the site. and downloaded free loops.

So for less than most persons pay for a single cheap drum set, or expensive drum machine I have 4 wonderful options.
 
darrin- $50 for a Roland TR-909 ? If that's true you got the deal of the century. They are selling for around $1000 on Ebay and I've read about people in Europe paying as much as $2500.
 
Yo sleep, to give you an example, I did a cover of Jazz saxist's
Ronnie Laws "Always There" . Since you play bass you should know what I'm talkin' bout. On my particular version, I used a walking bassline in the key of F-minor using 9th and 11th scale progressions. My DR202 was able to play a scat/jazz drum beat with no difficulty whatsoever. However when we tried to use this same drum beat on my brothers MPC, we could not replicate it.
Even when we incorporated the machines "Quantizization Function" (which, btw added another snare hit to keep it on beat
which was not the drum sound I was looking for). If you read my earlier post, I stated that the MPC is recognized in the RAP world as the machine to use and you verified it by stating that Dr.Dre and DJ Premier also uses the same! But in actuality this machine
has limitations when it comes to NON-hip-hop and rap beats,(rock,jazz,swing etc). Like I stated earlier, I have had NO complaints about my 202 and I have learned to extract the best "canned sounds" 1 can possibly obtain from these machines.
(Hopefully, by this weekend I can post this particular song I'm referring to)
Peace
Mr.Q
 
Cool

Like I said before Mistercue,MUCH RESPECT GOES OUT TO YA,I believe you know what your talking about.I have no quarel with you.I just have always had bad experiences with cheap equipment.But I still think Brad`s gay!
 
I thought that the spd 20 was the great deal because it was going for 700.00 and the tama drums were 2000.00 new. Like I said when pawnbrokers dont know what to price things and are still able to be jewed down you can get terrific deals.
 
Yo' sleep! Brad was jus' havin' fun with you! He's 1 of the smoothest dawg's on this BBS of which his job is to record great songs,give excellent advice,criticsims,and opinions and finally to
rag on any fool who fall's into his verbal traps!
The Brad of Funkenstien" is 1 funny ma'f#cker!!!

Visit the "Dragon's Cave" sometime and check this crazy wigga' out!
Peace
Mr.Q
 
Back to the topic...

I've used a few machines... RX-11, HR16a & HR16b, DR660, and Roland R-8.

I keep coming back to the R-8. It has 8 outs, and you can program the beats to have a less mechanical sound (random changes in tone, in short). The first edition didn't have many sounds but there are several ROM cards you can get for it.

You can pick up a R-8 for aroudn 2-300 bucks. Look for the MkII version, which as all the ROM cards' sounds built in. Compared with $1200 high-end units you can't go wrong for the cash invested.

I still have the HR16b, which isn't that dissimilar to the SR16 in terms of sounds. The R-8 (and the DR660) are way better, imho.


--- You may now return to your regularly scheduled flame war ---
 
Yeah Yeah

mstembri00 yeah I can agree Rolands Drum sounds are deffinatly realer than alot of the other drum machines out there,but see that`s the beauty of having an MPC or SP,because you get a choice of what drum sounds you want.Don`t get me wrong you can have some wack soundin drums with an mpc or sp but that would be a operators error,not the machine.Is it better to have drum sounds that you can only tweak out but so much or nothing at all to where you could have whatever drum sounds your little heart desires?I say I want the choice I don`t wanna get one sound,I might want that Jazz low end kick but have a sharp Rock snare,then I might even want some shakers recorded live.Maybe I would want to sample everything Live,Kick snare toms rides hats the whole shabang,then add a funk bass riff maybe some ol dark Hip-Hop bass rif,then some live horns.And let me say there is nothing like a live Horn running through a Presonis MP-20,I know an Avalon would be the shit but the Presonis is a steal for real!But anyway that`s my opinion but everyone has one so I guess we`re all assholes!
Peace.


Mistercue what up,You still can`t tell me brad nots Gay:)
 
Wow ;)

This has turned into quite the flame-fest :)

I bought an RFX 323 a couple of months ago (maybe a week or two after my initial post), but I appreciate the passion in trying to help me out.

Now you should all take a nap :p
 
drum machine

gentlemen:

Just want to say that I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the passionate discourse on the drum machine subject. Got some good laughs too at the name calling and cussing. Good info and insights on both sides of the argument though. That is always helpfull to novices like me.

Muchisimas Gracias.



Thanks.
 
What about software?

Frank Zappa did almost everything on a computer for what... the last twenty years? I read somewhere he was writing music that was too complated for most humans to play.

I just got fruity Loops and so far I'm VERY IMPRESSED. It does everything and doesn't even ask for scale! But, there are a lot of software product out there, some for as little $25.00 (USA). and all have a demo that you can down load and play with. I have found them MUCH easier to program than any drum machine.THIS ONE It's called sequbeat and if you don't like the way it sounds, then you can put in the sounds that you want. And it's cheap!
 
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