Another drum machine question....
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Posted on Nov 08, 2004 10:53 pm
Cougar
Member Since: Nov 08, 2004
I'm mainly a keyboardist, not a drummer. I don't want to hassle with trying to program a cool sounding drum track because, well, the pros do it so much better. I'm looking for a drum machine that has a whole lot of excellent preset rhythms, with "A" and "B" parts, a couple fills per rhythm, and you might as well throw in an intro and ending for each. I use Deck II, and usually record most tracks "live", but it's easy to go back and cut and paste drum sections. I just started researching this question, and the Zoom MRT-3B sounds like a possibility, but what do I know? This is mainly for home studio work, and I'm looking to drop not a lot more than a hundred bucks. I'm sure most people on this board have loads more knowledge about this than me, and I'm open to suggestions.
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Nov 09, 2004 08:56 am I am not sure about preset rhythms, though I am sure they exist, I can't say where...but it would be quite easy to get any drum machine to plug in to Deck and just make some simple MIDI sequences to play along with wouldn't it?
CougarMember
Since: Nov 08, 2004
Nov 09, 2004 09:39 am Well, maybe my terminology is wrong. One of my keyboards is a cheap-o Yamaha PSR-410 that comes with a built-in (nonprogrammable) drum machine with something like 80 preset "styles", y'know like "rock shuffle" and "samba", etc. Most of them are pretty lame, but a few of them aren't too terrible. (Well, they're programmable as to tempo, but that's about it.) I'm looking for a bigger set to choose from and some more professional-sounding stuff. Any ideas, anybody?
WillumIdiot.Member
Since: Apr 22, 2004
Nov 09, 2004 09:36 pm get into midi :)
Really, once you learn to program drums a bit you can do it REALLY quickly, i.e. get one bar of drums and copy/paste em 16 times over and change stuff a wee bit and before you know it you got a drum track, works a treat.
Much better than screwing around with programming a crappy drum machine thingy with intros and outros and stuff... in the end you're quicker with midi!
Nov 09, 2004 09:58 pm willum is right, me thinks. fruitylooops is pretty satisfying, despite its shortcomings. you can really breeze through it and have a working beat in 5 seconds.
Nov 09, 2004 10:01 pm i am waiting for spectrasonics to come out with a software version of what you speak of. currently they have a huge preset engine called 'stylus' that is loaded with breakbeats. but theyre breakbeats. if they ever do this for rock, it could conceivably put hundreds of big rock beats at your fingertips, with banks of automatic fills.
now that i program drums and am getting slowly better, i might not require such a thing. but it would be worth checking out.
Nov 09, 2004 10:02 pm I have used FL, though not for a long time, then I got to look at Kinetic from Cakewalk, it takes all the great ideas aof Cakewalk, and find cool ways to deal with some of it's hassles...I would suggest checking it out while checking out FruityLoops and compare them.
www.homerecordingconnecti...tory&id=394
WillumIdiot.Member
Since: Apr 22, 2004
Nov 09, 2004 10:53 pm get into midi :)
Really, once you learn to program drums a bit you can do it REALLY quickly, i.e. get one bar of drums and copy/paste em 16 times over and change stuff a wee bit and before you know it you got a drum track, works a treat.
Much better than screwing around with programming a crappy drum machine thingy with intros and outros and stuff... in the end you're quicker with midi!
CougarMember
Since: Nov 08, 2004
Nov 10, 2004 02:55 pm Thanks for your responses, even though your answers were NOT WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR. :^)
Kinetic does sound pretty awesome at a very reasonable cost, but I'm working on a <cough> Mac, hence the preference for the Bias Deck home studio software, which I do like pretty much, although I'm running a very outdated version.
So... are you guys really down on the Zoom MRT-3?
Nov 10, 2004 03:07 pm Mac?!
Well, nobody's perfect, welcome to HRC anyway ;-)
Nov 15, 2004 01:51 am I have the mrt-3 and its got lots of presets.
CougarMember
Since: Nov 08, 2004
Nov 16, 2004 12:50 pm All right, Kamikaze, that's what I'm looking for! Now I'm checking out the original Powerbook G4 my brother just laid on me (he picked up a new rig), and the thing doesn't have an audio in! Please transfer the rest of this (G4) discussion to the Mac G4 topic that's near the top of the board at the moment.... I need some info about USB audio capture....
