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Looper's Delight
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on 6/10/02 9:51 PM, Dave Trenkel at improv@peak.org wrote: > The Nord may not be your first thought as a drum machine, but it's > pretty great: step sequencers that can be combined to make patterns > of any length (Why do so many drum machines just allow you to do 4/4 > or 3/4?! If the ER-1 allowed odd time sigs, it'd be my favorite), and > a really flexible, totally programmable sound generator. I have a > collection of patches that do drum/percussion sounds and patterns, if > anyone's interested. I keep trying to be tempted by the ER-1. My three big concerns are time signatures, wishing that it had more synthesized drums and fewer PCM samples (you could now chime in and tell me that the PCM stuff is useful thereby resolving that concern), and the fact that a variety of parameters like swing can only be edited while it's stopped. I've got an MC-505 that is insufficiently "immediate" for me to be really happy with it. I haven't worked myself up to just splurge on a Machinedrum though I keep coming back to thinking about it. I also wonder at times about sixteenth-note quantization and whether it makes things sound too mechanical. Certainly the Machinedrum demos sound very mechanized. (Too be expected from a product named "Machinedrum"?) Current drum sources in my studio: * Roland MC-505 -- Rarely used. * Emu Planet Earth -- A lot of great stuff but I haven't found a great way to access it. I just started playing with the arpeggiators with the drum kits and it's pretty cool if not all that programmable. * Roland Handsonic -- Pretty poor sequencer on it but a lot of fun to bang on. Buried in a closet, I've got a Korg DDM-220 (SuperPercussion). I had an SR-16 that I sold because I never got comfortable with the pads and hence never programmed patterns on it. I had a Korg DDD-1 that I sold because it was a bit noisy and its MIDI implementation was crash prone. I've recently listened back to some old tapes, however, and while the DDD-1 definitely sounded synthetic it was also easy to program with some pretty cool drum riffs. Finally, I worry on occasion about a comment that I heard at Loopstock (from Max?) that I do find might be true: When the drum machines get turned on, the audience stops paying attention. (Rough paraphrase.) So, one of the other questions is how to make live drum machine use work well while playing other instruments. Mark P.S. If asked, I'd identify myself as a guitar player.