Guest meneedit Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 I have come to the conclusion that I am not going to get anywhere until I buy myself a drum machine. It's just not possible to make good beats without one Regardless of how much you can do with sound you cannot polish a turd. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ages ago on this website I asked you guys which was the best drum machine to get for electronic drums. Anyway, somebody on this site did me a huge favour and gave me samples of his drumkit so that I could decide whether I wanted to buy that particular drum machine or not. I was ready to buy it until at the last second I thought hang on what am I doing! I need one with electronic drum sounds. The other thing that annoys me is the fact that I have been making drum beats with shitty samples for many years and I still know nothing about drums... ...I know what a kick, hihat and snare are, but I don't know the difference between a splash and a crash. I know that a crash is supposed to be used to start a new section or to make an impact when the beat starts up again but I dont know when a splash is supposed to be used. Probably the thing that pisses me off the most is the fact that out off all the samples that I have (lots and lots), I only have one or two long hihat sounds. the rest are short which is no good considering I want all my songs to be different. Just listen to the beat right at the start of "Ulrich Schnauss - Nobody's Home". That is an open hihat without that awful mid range sound. Now, surely Ulrich would have a decent electronic drum machine. Its kind of stupid how there are no sites that give demos on drum machines as well. How can we be expected to know what sort of sounds it has if there are no demos, ffs!!!!!!! So all I am sking from you guys is the name of a kick ass drum machine and also that maybe you guys could teach me a few tiny things about drums. I am after a drum machine that is has the sort of beats that are heard in these tracks: Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up Prodigy - Diesel Power The Crystal Method - American Way The Crystal Method - Name Of The Game The Crystal Method - Ready For Action Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest typogra Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 ill say that i dont think simply owning a drum machine will automatically do work for you.. but here is what vintagesynth says the crystal method uses: Access Virus Akai MPC3000 Apple G4 Arp 2600 Big Briar MF101 Big Briar MF102 Clavia Nord Lead Clavia Nord Mod E-mu Audity 2000 E-mu E4 E-mu XL-7 E-mu Xtreme Lead E-mu E-64 Fender Guit/Bass Korg Electribe/S Korg Electribe/R Korg MS2000 Korg Prophecy Moog MemoryMoog ProCo RAT Roland JP-8000 Roland Jupiter 6 Roland SH-101 Sherman FilterBank Waldorf MicrowaveXT Yamaha DX7 obviosuly, this shit is too expensive, so just get a couple of vstis and renoise! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest meneedit Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 obviosuly, this shit is too expensive, so just get a couple of vstis and renoise! Money doesnt matter to me Just as long as I know it has good high quality sounds. By the way which of those things listed are drum machines? Oh and to everyone else, if your gonna tell me that theres no such thing as a drum machine with electronic drums I wont believe it. I add FX to drums as well but cannot extend snares without the use of either extremely heavy distortion or a reverb. And using a reverb to extend a snare totally sucks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulie Walnuts Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Okay, if you're after a drum machine in general, I'd recommend the Elektron Machinedrum... (check out the audio demo's on their site to get an idea what a drum machine can and can't do) But you should know, no drum machine on the planet will ever give you Prodigy or Crystal Method beats because they're mostly sampled breaks (unless you use a sampling drum machine like an MPC or SP-1200 - but you can do effectively the same thing in software) - cut up and processed, and sometimes mixed with either 909 (samples or real thing) or hand-made drum sounds (synthesized in audio design software like Soundforge using sinewaves and pitch envelopes)... Breaks processing is a real art-form - It takes years to get very good at it... Do an internet search for Declassified Breaks, or 101's Breaks Collection, or get down to Dogs On Acid (The Grid) and do a search there... I can't remember what the break the Prodigy used on Smack my Bitch Up is, but it's well known - I've got it somewhere - You take your break, cut it up, tighten it up, up the tempo, send different sounds to different mixer channels, EQ and compress them differently - Use dynamic EQ - Noise gates - Chuck the whole thing through a multi-band compressor/limiter... The Grid's an essential resource for this... You'd normally use a standard drum machine, or drum machine samples, to beef up a sampled break... Stick 909 under everything... Layer 5 different breaks on top of each other... Learn Recycle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulie Walnuts Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Most drum sounds you hear in electronic music these days are synthesized in things like the Nord Modular, Operator, Reaktor, etc... ...and most dance producers use simple synthesis in Soundforge... Some good Sound on Sound articles online about synthesizing drum sounds... Snares and bass drums are easy - Hihats and cymbals can be difficult... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest meneedit Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Okay, if you're after a drum machine in general, I'd recommend the Elektron Machinedrum... (check out the audio demo's on their site to get an idea what a drum machine can and can't do) But you should know, no drum machine on the planet will ever give you Prodigy or Crystal Method beats because they're mostly sampled breaks (unless you use a sampling drum machine like an MPC or SP-1200 - but you can do effectively the same thing in software) - cut up and processed, and sometimes mixed with either 909 (samples or real thing) or hand-made drum sounds (synthesized in audio design software like Soundforge using sinewaves and pitch envelopes)... Breaks processing is a real art-form - It takes years to get very good at it... Do an internet search for Declassified Breaks, or 101's Breaks Collection, or get down to Dogs On Acid (The Grid) and do a search there... I can't remember what the break the Prodigy used on Smack my Bitch Up is, but it's well known - I've got it somewhere - You take your break, cut it up, tighten it up, up the tempo, send different sounds to different mixer channels, EQ and compress them differently - Use dynamic EQ - Noise gates - Chuck the whole thing through a multi-band compressor/limiter... The Grid's an essential resource for this... You'd normally use a standard drum machine, or drum machine samples, to beef up a sampled break... Stick 909 under everything... Layer 5 different breaks on top of each other... Learn Recycle. Hey man thanks for that :shade: I appreciate it. couple of questions though.... -What is Dynamic EQing? -What does a multiband compressor compared to a normal compressor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sinkfield Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest noradrenalin Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 i would say its actually harder to make really interesting beats on a drum machine. it takes a lot more time and energy and you dont usually have the kind of controll that a computer gives you. if you're set on it though, i would suggest you get something like a boss dr 202. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ~ism Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 buy an ER-1 for less than 100 quid. and then realise you didn't need the drum machine after all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Moss Acid Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 tr-909 or tr-707 buy yourself a usb to midi lead and squezence drums on ableton wahala! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest noradrenalin Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 the 707 is fun and pretty cheap but the samples are not so hot and both of mine broke pretty fast. a friend of mine also had one and it broke... so be careful about that one. the tr-505 is a trusty little machine but again the samples are not so great unless you have some way to change the sounds a lot (lots of fx etc). my favorite x0x drum machine that i've owned so far is the 606. it's by far the easiest and fastest to use that i've found and the sounds are decent. there are volume knobs for each sound but thats the extent of the control you get over them. i like the boss dr-202 because it has so many drum kits built in (including the roland x0x kits) and it has built in fx and filter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest user Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 This thread actually made me cry a little bit. Hey man just buy a mc 303 it has all the instant fat beats you will ever need to make all of your songs sound completely different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kcinsu Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 yeah, it took me awhile to figure out that there is no drum machine that will sound like a beat in a track. SO much of it is processing: compressing, gating. EQing, distorting, layering. There are good drum machines that give you solid stuff to work with, but there is nothing that will sound hot just tapping out a beat. what I use, personally, is BFD (a 9 gig sample library of 7 acoustic drum kits, multisampled up the ass, with multiple mic'ing) for my acoustic drums, and making my own break breats, and then ultrabeat (which is a built in drum machine in Logic Pro) for my electronic drums. But I never get what Im looking for, straight from those programs. Theres a lot of editing and processing. For the acoustic kits, I bus all the different drums to Aux tracks, where each on is compressed, EQ, gated, whatever, and then I bus them all into a single bus, where I do a global compression etc on them. for my electronic stuff, I layer sounds, bounce the tracks, cut up the bounces, run them through effects, you name it. Oh, also, samples are very useful. Like, random samples of breaking stuff, throwing stuff, hiting things together. You get some really great sounds you wouldnt get out of synths. The art is taking all of these things and glueing them together to get the final product. I often have 3-4 different snares (or various samples that work) hitting at the same time, carefully mixed and whatnot, to get the sound I want. Its a lot of work, but damnit its fun. So yeah, my advice is don't tell yourself you wont get anywhere without a good drum machine. Try all sorts of different ways to get what you want. Read up on compression or anything else I mention that you don't know about. There are many tricks out there to be found! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braintree Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 Well, the only DRUM MACHINE that I've ever played with was the Dr 202, and I think it's pretty good for beginner's purposes, but not for any pro quality tracks. I have a KORG Electribe SX that is a sampler/drum machine/sequencer that I think is pretty good quality for the $500 price tag. You have to sample in a lot of sounds for drums, though. The stock sounds are that great. If you haven't played around with any samplers or drum machines before, then I suggest the Electribe S-1 [the predecessor to the SX/MX series]. Gives you a good idea on how to sequence and write beats. They usually go for about $100 nowadays, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest androne Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 buy an ER-1 for less than 100 quid. and then realise you didn't need the drum machine after all. priceless. :on2long: korg er-1 is cool, i dont know about your reasoning though, i thought at one point a drum machine would be the way to go, and too realized that I was completely wrong, may be good for you though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ghost trance Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 I second Paulie Walnuts' recommendation. The Machinedrum is amazing; it sounds loads better than the clips available on the Elektron website. Programming and sequencing within the unit is great fun. I picked up a used Machinedrum after using software for a long time and had forgotten the excitement of using hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kokoon Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 i love my R-8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cash madrid jive Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 you should rather just quit beats because if you dont have the energy to write a decent beat on the computer you're never gonna cut it with a drum machine, mate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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