Re: Hardware Drum Looper Recommedations

[Mark Hamburg <mark_hamburg@baymoon.com>]

On Feb 8, 2006, at 8:14 PM, Kelly Coyle wrote:

> Have you looked at MachineDrum? I think it has many of the  
> qualities you are looking for, and is hella cool besides.

The MachineDrum is essentially the ultimate in retro drum machines  
from the standpoint of being very grid oriented. You don't have any  
choice but to be quantized. I'm not sure what it does with velocity  
information from external sources.

I really like my MachineDrum but I might have been just as happy and  
saved a chunk of money by going with an Electribe of some sort.

What none of the drum machines I've encountered do is let you set the  
loop length on the fly. They are generally oriented toward specifying  
a pattern length and a tempo.

The original Handsonic is a typical Roland product in that they've  
got most of the pieces but they don't get it quite right. It's got  
more or less the same effects as the SP-808 but you can't readily  
hook the parameter knobs to the effects the way you can on the  
SP-808. It's got a sequencer, but it isn't really useful for  
improvising. Etc.

Mark