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What kind of drum machine do I want?

jrthebassguy

jrthebassguy

Apr 19, 2000
7,414
94
Houston, Texas
#1
So, I'm looking at getting a drum machine for home recording purposes. I want to do a solo music project, think like The Postal Service or Jonah Matranga. Let me see if I can get more specific about it...


1. Needs to sound like a real kit, or at the least a really good electronic type of sound...aka nothing cheesy. Think The Postal Service kinda stuff.

2. Something that's easy to pick up, but has a lot of options to expand upon.

3. Under $400 (maybe more depending on the case)



Does something like that exist? I'm a complete newb when it comes to this kinda stuff.
 
#4
my 2 cents...I use a fairly cheap stereo Casio keyboard and manually play separate drum tracks for kick, snare, cymbals, etc.
It's not what you asked, but its one sure way to get more natural sounding fake drums, and better sound separation and tweaking of individual drums eq's and such. But it is slow and tedious.
Also use an old Boss drum machine in the same way.
 
#5
NI Battery is only like $100... All you need is a VST capable sequencer to work with (I recommend Cubase of course :), some of which are cheap/free like audacity (I believe it can be modded to work with VSTs) or Reaper. ezdrummer is another option. If you don't want to bother with the extreme learning curve of this stuff, use loops with Acid...

I don't think I'd ever recommend a "real" drum machine anymore. Software these days is cheaper, sounds better, is easier to use, more flexible, etc etc...
 
#6
I used an Alesis SR-16 for awhile and found it to be good for the $$, easy to use and good sound. You can pick one up on ebay for 90 to 160 bucks. But I would have to agree with hunta, software is the way to go and would be my choice if I were to purchase anything in the future.
 
#8
Do you have a computer?
Get Fruityloops for free or really cheap, there ya go. You can probably find others. Go to

Link Removed is a sample of what it can do. Subdubious (not me) did everything on that page with just one program. This is just so you can hear how versatile the program is. So dumb down what he is doing and you can easily get a great kit sound.
1000 times better than any drum machine and easier to use. You can map out entire songs, add effects, change the volume of each hit so it sounds real(big plus) and you already have the hardware.

Drum machines are completely out of date IMO, now I won't make that argument about hard disk recorders quite yet.
 

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