one-man band needs drums; drum machine help?

gorskkr · #1 03-04-2013, 03:22 PM

Hello all,

I'm a basic guy (not a pro!) that likes to jam and make my own musical compositions on my own time when I have free time. I play guitar and bass and use a loop pedal to make some cool stuff. Long story short; I NEED DRUMS!

My loop pedal (Boss RC3) provides 9 drum pre-sets and I'm able to adjust tempo, however, I want to create my own drum beats.

I'm thinking about going to sam ash and/or guitar center to see what kind of drum machines they have but have no idea where to start.

I'm the kind of guy that back in the day in school I was always hammering out 'beats' on my desk and annoying the piss out of everyone. So I want something that's INTERACTIVE that I can physically touch to produce my beats- I don't want a computer program where I have to "click" on boxes and hope I'm able to recreate the cool beat thats echoing in my head.

Thanks for your input!

P.S after I get this hardware do I need to look for a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to complete my song making process? If I'm opening up an entirely different can of worms with this question then please feel free to ignore and I'll post on that later.

gorskkr · #2 03-04-2013, 03:36 PM

http://www.samash.com/p/Alesis_SR18%...hine_-49958477

^^I saw this and this seems like it could be a good start...?

gorskkr · #3 03-18-2013, 03:56 PM

seriously, no responses? They don't even have to be good ones. i.e. "check out 'xyz drum machine' by 'blah blah drums inc'. my buddy has one and it doesn't sound too crappy.' <<-that would be fine.

I do want there to be a USB port option which rules out the one I posted above.

famousbirds · #4 03-18-2013, 04:04 PM

The thing is - drum machines, in a traditional sense, have a fallen out of fashion and there are very few being made these days. On the hardware side, samplers/MPC-style sequencers are en vogue, but they do way more than just drums.

So, there's the Alesis, the Boss/Roland, and the Zoom. These are all fairly similar, and none of these have changed much in years. I quite like the Alesis SR16, but the sounds are quite dated.

iOS apps seem to be the only place where people are still building drum machines. If you have an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, you may want to try some of those out.

didgeribass · #5 03-18-2013, 04:06 PM

I like my Zoom RT223.

zachoff · #6 03-18-2013, 04:14 PM

Laptop + Fruity Loops + EZ Drummer + Reaper would be my suggestion.

Fruity Loops to sequence the sounds you get from EZ Drummer. Reaper to capture those sounds. The EZ Drummer add-ons have even more sounds.

wobble man · #7 03-18-2013, 04:23 PM

Most drum machines don't have a USB port, but pretty much all of them will have MIDI out. The Boss DR-880 has a USB, but it just functions for MIDI and for data transfer.

If you want to go with a drum machine rather than a sampler or software, the genre of your music is of relevance. Many modern drum machines are more oriented towards hip-hop/trip-hop/electronica, but there are a few with more general sounds (Alesis, Zoom)

ics1974 · #8 03-19-2013, 05:24 PM

I am using DM1 on my iphone.

gorskkr · #9 03-25-2013, 02:33 PM

thanks. I did find out this weekend that drum machines are in fact out of style.

My problem is a reluctance to make drum beats by "clicking" squares in a DAW like ableton.

Did some of you say that I can download an app with my iphone, make a beat, then transfer it to my DAW?

Ultimately, what I'm trying to do is 'bang out' a beat and have ableton loop my drum beat. Then I'll pick up my bass and lay down a bass line. Then pick up my guitar and put on some crazy effects and make solo over the track I created. I'm very new to all of this, if you can't tell... This weekend I picked up monitor speakers, I also got an interface so i can connect and get my guitar and bass into ableton for recording. I trying to figure out how to use ableton as we speak. I'm going through the drum rack but every drum kit I find has weird sounding kicks and snares. I do have a Akai LPD8 hooked up with it (didn't cost much just $40) but it doesn't respond as fast to my fingers 'tapping' as I would like. I'm gonna play around with it more. If any of you have any pointers based on anything I've said, please feel free to mention it. I'm a complete noob but have big ideas and don't exactly know how to get there. So if you feel like responding, even if its very basic, chances are it will still help me out so don't feel embarassed about typing out 'noob' advice. thanks again.

ics1974 · #10 03-31-2013, 02:17 PM

I actually just picked up a Alesis SR-18 drum machine and its way better then my DM1 iPhone app. I now vote drum machine.

ugly_bassplayer · #11 03-31-2013, 02:18 PM

Ableton.

PaulYeah · #12 04-12-2013, 07:31 AM

When we say drum machines are out of style, does that include something like using a drum pad to program beats in Ableton?

Maz · #13 04-12-2013, 07:51 AM

I used to have an Alesis SR-16 and loved it. You have pressure sensitive drum pads that are comfortable to tap on, and you can tap in your rhythm and then step back through it in the menu and make corrections to offbeats. You can stack drums, send them to different outputs, change which drums you're using for any given beat etc, after the fact. The sounds aren't ultramodern but ime it had more "real" sounding drums than the boss, yamaha, or zoom offerings in it's pricerange. It also has a fairly intuitive ui.

I don't know about the newer Sr-18. I have heard it has more functionality but also that some people prefer the older Sr-16 over it. You can find them used on Ebay for pretty cheap.