The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Anyone has suggestions for a decent drum machine? I have pro tools with the reason but it seems that software based isn't working for me. I think I need to be able to "play" the drums at least by hitting buttons. Right now the purpose is making movie soundtrack like music, I see lots of cheap vintage drum mahines on ebay but I would like it somewhat realistic. Thanks.

Eddie

You could just get a cheap drum set.

"Vintage drum machine" generally means the Roland TR808, which was the big hiphop drum machine of the early rap era (followed a couple years later by the TR909). The 808 and 909 have become popular in newer indie music (Postal Service, Blue October, etc.)

Today, the industry standard drum machine is the Akai MPC2000. Not exactly cheap.

Standard 'cheap' drum machines include the Boss DR series. I've gotten to play with these quite a bit, and the button action is significantly better on the higher models, the lower models sound like ass, etc.

To me, however, it sounds like a midi controller keyboard would suit your purpose, and provide extra utility as well. If you have samples you're happy with (sample sets of the 808 and much more can be found online), just use the keyboard to input them. The drum setup on keys is pretty intuitive, and you'll feel comfortable with it after tinkering a while.

Also, the sounds on most drum machines (barring the actual drum machines that other drum machines sample) suck ass. A $300 midi controller will have better velocity sensitivity than a $300 drum machine, so your dynamic control will be better (therefore more realistic).

I say get a keyboard. Then, you can use it for like, keyboard parts, too.

I have several midi keyboards. Can you give me some direction on the MIDI drum route? I've tried software based drums i.e. Reason but I just can't get into it. I suppose if I could hit the keys of a keyboard that would make me more comfortable. I don't really want to get a real drum set.

You gotta set up your keyboard as the input controller in Reason. I don't personally have any experience with Reason, but I belive Craig (Starfinger) is quite the guru. Maybe he can give you specific pointers if you can't figure it out. Midi can be uncooperative at times, so be prepared for lots of tinkering.

Keyboard drumming is fun. I'm pretty gangster at it. I'm like the Steve Gadd of keyboard drumming.

Send Lunkhead a PM. He does drums on his keyboard with Reason.

Ken

I'm not sure exactly how it would work in ProTools, but it ought to be similar to Cubase, where you create a MIDI track, select your whatever MIDI port your keyboard is plugged in to as the input, and select the ReDrum module as the output. The drum samples are mapped to the second octave below middle C by default. This is assuming that you've been using Reason in "ReWire Slave Mode" mode, where it's basically functioning as a soft synth for ProTools (assuming that's how it works, since that's how it works in Cubase). You've also got to make sure that your ReDrum module is going to whatever outputs of your Reason "Audio Out" are being sent to ProTools. Then you can keyboard drum to your heart's content, though frankly I'm finding ReDrum to be pretty limited. You only get slots for 10 samples, and it doesn't do cool things like trigger a sample of a soft drum hit for a soft note and a different sample of a loud drum hit for a loud note, so it's not going to make "realistic" sounding drums as quickly as other software drum machines. I'm investigating using something like BFD or Battery instead, but even with those the setup would basically be the same as for Reason.

battery 2 is great, but the midi mapping for the kits seems to be mostly random

as far as a controller goes, i like the looks of this thing:

http://www.audiomidi.com/MPD24-MIDI-Con ... P8234.aspx

-craig

The Trigger Finger is also a quality controller, very similar to that product.

What's the advantage of using a controller like that instead of a keyboard for playing MIDI drums?

Also, this looks like a pretty sweet ($1200) controller for MIDI drums:

http://www.zendrum.com/

Check out the videos of the drummer who played the samples for the BFD jazz&funk kits jamming out on the ZenDrum+BFD.

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Actually, the Synthaxe and the ZenDrum are different instruments. The Synthaxe was originally meant to be more of a guitar replacement, but Futureman has converted his to work basically like the ZenDrum, which was partially inspired by Futureman's Synthaxe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SynthAxe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendrum

So says the wiki that shall not be named, as far as I interpret things...

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The Sober Irishman wrote:The Trigger Finger is also a quality controller, very similar to that product.

yeah, but it's m-audio
barf city!

Well, they are similar, not the same. "the same" and "similar" don't mean the same thing to me, but whatever. Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear from Sober or Starfinger on the merits of an MPC type controller over a keyboard for MIDI drums...

the appeal to me is that these dedicated triggers don't have the conceptual baggage of a keyboard. i can never remember what key a certain sound is bound to when triggering with a keyboard.

-craig

The 'merits' of a 16-pad layout vs. keys are purely preference. Hiphop guys who have grown up using drum machines are comfortable with the layout and feel of pads, so they tend to buy the nice mpc2000 stuff when they've got the cash.

People who already own keyboards, or who are familiar with basic music theory and could get more potential use out of a keyboard than a drumpad probably ought to use a keyboard for drum input.

By the same token, if you're a killer drummer and you're being forced to do some kind of midi input, for god's sake get a v-drumset.

Cool, thanks for the info.

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The Sober Irishman wrote:The Trigger Finger is also a quality controller, very similar to that product.

Shoot. You just reminded me I have one of these in my closet! Have to break it out.

<a href="http://ion-audio.com/">Ion Audio</a> is Alesis' low-end brand, and their stuff is basically just normal Alesis stuff with a different label and reduced functionality (e.g. no MIDI input). I have an iED01 which is an okay but cheezy entry-level setup, and you can get the brain (iDM01) separately if you look around (though they don't seem to sell it separately anymore). There's also the iED04 which is pretty compelling.

The sound quality on the iED01 is merely adequate and, again, it doesn't accept MIDI input, so you couldn't use it as a sampler triggered by sequences stored on your PC (or even attempt to synchronize them together), but if you're just fingerdrumming it's okay (and the trigger buttons on the face are velocity-sensitive), and it does have a whole bunch of kits available.

Mostly I use mine as a controller for Logic's much-better drum patches.

I'd like to get you guys' opinion on which is the most user-friendly, hipdrum machine out there today. I came from the MIDI era when the Alesis SR16was the ***. Now that I'mreviving my (hopeful) career as a self-produced singer/songwriter, I'm out of touch with what's current, and don't want todepend on what some salesman at Guitar Center tells me. I need something I can program full drum tracks with, I'm not afraid of programming but don't want to spend my life on a learning curve. I will be recording some live percussion along with the drum tracks - congas, tambourine, various shakers and probably taboulis or whatever you call those middle eastern gourd-looking drums. Any and all advice/guidance would be
greatly appreciated.