Electric Practice Devices

are you looking for one of those mentioned or you want some advise on wich one is better?

 

I'm moving it in misc.

 

I prefer software.

Band in a Box is great for practising chord changes and real book stuff.

http://www.pgmusic.com/bandbox.htm

The inferface looks a bit oldfashioned, but it works fine even on older computers.

 

those boss dr. rhythms are a pain in the butt to program, so that would rule those out for me, and I don't know about the others. But JMX has a good idea, or a pretty good keyboard...


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I haven't tried the things listed in the original post, but for practicing around the house I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the Korg Pandora PX3B.

It has a ton of effects, a lot of different drum programs that you can scale the tempo on rather easily. You can play it through an amp or through headphones. It fits in your shirt pocket and runs a pretty decent length of time on 4 AAA batteries. You can hook up a tape or CD through the auxiliary port and play along with tracks you're trying to learn. You can even record short phrases and slow them down without changing the pitch. My only disappointment with the PX3B is that you can only record very short clips (around 16 seconds).

All in all it's a pretty cool little tool. One of my best gear purchases.

Peace,

James

http://www.korg.com

 

If you're just looking for a drum computer,
check out this cool freeware program:

http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/

 

And here I thought that I was the only one!

 

I use a Roland MC303 MicroComposer or Groovebox for practising Jazz chord sequences. You can have 8 tracks - 7 synth and 1 drum track and it is very flexible. For practising, I usually just put in the chords on piano with a simple drum track for something like a 32 bar sequence. (I'm not that good at Jazz piano, so I programme this in "step time". But you can also record things in real time and build up drum tracks in several ways using pads, keyboard or just programmed )

But you can build up complex tracks and it has loads of "vintage" synth and sampled sounds - I also use it with midi sound modules.

 

If you have a computer you could buy "Smart Loops". Its a CD full of drum loops recorded by a real drummer in the studio. The drums sound excellent. You will need to get some kind of software to arrange the loops and fills.

 

Kidnap a drummer and keep him locked in the basement.