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Drum Machines


Marvin
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The covers band have come up against the problem of a very unreliable drummer. Various options have been talked about including using backing tracks, pre-recorded live drums and drum machines.

The backing tracks we're still looking into and we know someone who might record the drum parts for us.

Questions then.

Has anyone use a drum machine for use in a covers band, and if so what were your experiences? What are the pitfalls basically I suppose? :)

And what is a good drum machine for the job? There are some fairly inexpensive ones out there.

Cheers

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I did ONE gig with as drum machine many, many moons ago. Thesound quality wasn't an issue, but the other musicians were hopeless at playing with a click. Part of that problem was probably due to inadequate stage monitoring - get that right and you should be ok.
I'd definitely go with the programmed laptop beats - stuff like EZdrummer can sound very close to live drummers - except in time. ;)

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IME a drum machine is as good as the built-in sounds and the skill of the person programming it - and a good programmer is ultimately worth more than super-realistic drum sounds.

For drummerless rehearsals they are probably OK, but unless the songs you are covering featured drum machine type feel and sounds then I wouldn't want to use it live. Also if you get used to playing with the drum machine you might find that your drummer is no longer accurate enough for you!

The other thing to watch is how much memory the drum machine has. They may claim to have 999 pattern and 99 song patches, but this is generally a maximum, the actual number of patterns and songs available is related to their complexity. In real life unless all your beats are very simple its a lot less than the quoted maximums. A typical song if the drum part is simplified right down to its essentials will probably need at least 8 patterns. If you were to program every nuance of the original drum part you could be looking at at over 5 times that number.

Personally I'd be looking for a better drummer.

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+1 to what Paul and Luke have said. The band I'm in use beats put through a laptop. It hasn't been an issue thus far. That said, if you're doing covers it may be alot more time-consuming matching what you're doing with the software with the original drums on the song. Depends on the complexity of those, I guess!

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My band use backing track for synths and drums, we use a laptop and cubase for the backing track, though I keep a copy on my phone and on a minidisc just in case. Cubase is great for programing beats, or you can download free samples, and having individual tracks for drums, synths and keys means we can change levels to suit venues, and send different parts to different monitors (all I need is drums in mine).

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The best drum machine I've owned was the Boss DR-880 - it has more kits/samples than any other dedicated drum machine (I haven't included samplers like the Akai MPC range) and in my experience, was a pleasure to program thanks to its interface and large clear screen. I used to take a lot of time programming the drumbeat for covers, particularly for fills etc. Soundwise, there are a lot of realistic-sounding kits which respond very well to velocity, which is crucial for making a programmed drum beat sound more 'human'.

It also boasts FX and guitar/bass amp models as a bonus.

Other alternatives, which are cheaper but don't have as nice a set of kits or interface are the Boss DR-670, the perennial Alesis SR-16 and its superior bigger brother, the SR-18.

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[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1331802975' post='1578969']
I did ONE gig with as drum machine many, many moons ago. Thesound quality wasn't an issue, but the other musicians were hopeless at playing with a click. Part of that problem was probably due to inadequate stage monitoring - get that right and you should be ok.
I'd definitely go with the programmed laptop beats - stuff like EZdrummer can sound very close to live drummers - except in time. ;)
[/quote]

I've got an occasional thing that uses backing tracks (drum parts recorded from Drumsite and bass parts recorded by me ;)). Because you've got a lot less going on behind you, the guitars could be a lot quieter..... but inevitably they're not (cos they don't sound the same)... so decent, and lots of it, monitoring is great for keeping everything together.

Edited by Fuzzbass2000
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[quote name='ironside1966' timestamp='1331935662' post='1581314']
If you want a real drum sound rather than an analogy drums sound you would be better of using something like BFD or Steven Slate SSD 4. http://stevenslatedrums.com
[/quote]

Were using ssd and the drums are really sounding great. Really looking forward to having all the programming done!

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[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1332067555' post='1582650']
Never my first choice but had a dep ( for a mate ) last night where I would have killed for a drum machine.

I spent all night trying to be the drummer, not sure what the drummer was trying to be..!!
[/quote]

Sounds like the drummer I was in a band with 6 months ago :)

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