Re: Drum MACHINES

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

> Remember,   when you pat out a rhythm on your guitar with muted strings 
> and loop it.............you are just creating a digital drum machine.
> It may be more creative than pushing pattern 10a on a drum machine but 
> it's the same thing:  a sample being created and sequenced
> in real time.
> 

hi Rick,
well, I have to disagree somewhat.
After all, I could save myself a whole lot of effort
by getting a drum machine for live playing if I thought 
the result would be just as listenable.

...and somehow I think you're already familiar with
the ideas I describe here :-)

(tho' thanks for all the drum machine tricks, never know when those are 
going to be useful) 



For a start, in the drum machine the samples are already created,
and are created for commercial reasons by folk who aren't using
them as a form of expression.



Acoustic percussion sounds ( and gtr perc )all have different attacks, and 
this influences
the rhythmic placement needed to make them sound in time, and also
opens up the possibility to rhythmically offset one sound against another.
Typically, a sound with slower attack can be played a bit earlier, but 
that's
just the start of what is possible. Essentially the range of what is 
perceptually
"in time" is much greater than if all the attacks sounded similar.

Drum machines have a very particular sort of sound which is designed so
that when you play the sounds rigidly, everything comes out exactly in 
time.
Or at least, all the ones I heard do.

I'm sure you heard the difference, and worked with it already. 
If you take a rhythm that was played on a vintage jazz trapset 
(nice and loose)and recreate it exactly with  the sounds from a Roland 
plastic box the 
results will just seem out of time. 
In any case, the drum machine doesn't have the resolution to do that
sort of timing.


but mainly the difference is 
one is live ( with the exciting possibility of failure ;-) 
the other is canned

andy butler