Recommend me a drum machine?

[Errant Tiger]

So I've been making weird guitar music for a few years and now I've got a couple Yamaha Refaces and all of a sudden I'm thinking it might be a good time to add some percussive noises to my stuff. Not to get all dancey or whatever but just... for texture, and the occasional making things sound a little more... beaty. I dunno, I've never played around with one and it seems like time to start. But I don't know anything about them, so I'm asking for recommendations. Requirements:

1. $300 (ish) or under
2. Pretty easy to figure out
3. I'm way more interested in hardware than software
4. Easy to connect to my pedals

Beyond that... I have no idea. Novation? Volca? Teenage Engineering?

[Blood_mountain]

So I've been making weird guitar music for a few years and now I've got a couple Yamaha Refaces and all of a sudden I'm thinking it might be a good time to add some percussive noises to my stuff. Not to get all dancey or whatever but just... for texture, and the occasional making things sound a little more... beaty. I dunno, I've never played around with one and it seems like time to start. But I don't know anything about them, so I'm asking for recommendations. Requirements:

1. $300 (ish) or under
2. Pretty easy to figure out
3. I'm way more interested in hardware than software
4. Easy to connect to my pedals

Beyond that... I have no idea. Novation? Volca? Teenage Engineering?

I can't necessarily "recommend" it, because I've never actually used one, but I've been considering one of these:

https://hackaday.io/project/164521-drum ... um-machine

Price is pretty decent and you can add some randomness to it, which is cool IMO because the monotonous nature of drum machines has always bugged me.

[jirodreamsofdank]

For a drum machine, I don't think you could do better than the Behringer 808 for the money, but it sounds like a sample player would be more useful for you, in which case I would recommend the Volca Sample 2. You can't sample in directly but you can transfer over USB.

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

I like the Volca Drums, which is a drum synthesiser. Volca Sample is also good, but that's a sample player. So it depends on what you want.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I found the Volca Sample to be a much more fun drum machine for me than the Beats, because of some of the other features, and there are plenty of good drum samples in it plus I added some cool ones of my own.

But depending what flavour you're after, I'd recommend either!

[Deltaphoenix]

The Arturia Impact Drumbrute seems to pack a lot into a $300 analog drum machine.
I would probably go for that over Volcas or Pocket Operators. 1/4” cables so it doesn’t need any special cables. I am sure the Sequencer is fun and it seems to sound pretty good.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Oh yeah I forgot the drumbrute was that cheap. I agree it's probably a better choice for the budget, better connectivity and larger and more tactile.

[fcknoise]

Drumbrute impact is good value. Model cycles is cool and different. A used digital thing and a distortion pedal is cheap and good fun. Neither option breaks the bank

[Errant Tiger]

but it sounds like a sample player would be more useful for you

I don't know shit about this stuff. Can you elaborate, please?

[coldbrightsunlight]

Well what sort of sounds do you like? All the "drum machines" that have been mentioned are analog or analog style drum machines (808, volca beats, drumbrute), which have a fairly specific and limited set of sounds. With a sample player e.g. the Volca Sample or Elektron Model:Samples, you can play back samples of anything. So load up a bank of your own drum sounds, for example, and you have a drum machine with more options, but usually slightly less control over each specific sound.

Personally I prefer having a sample based "drum machine" as it's more flexible, but I will probably get an analog drum machine again at some point because they sound pretty cool and are fun! So it's all about what you're after.

[cantremember]

If you've never really played around with a drum machine before the zenbeats app for yr phone is free and really easy to use. Might be something to get yr feet before you actually buy one. Otherwise I agree with coldbrightsunlight about the sampler option. I would also think that would open things up to get more nontraditional drum sounds and have those percussive textures you were looking for... The model samples seems pretty neat and I just read they have an app that makes it easy to transfer samples from yr phone to the unit relatively easy.

[JTurbide]

Probably over your budget and not a drum machine per say but I love my 1010 blackbox. I rarely use it but that's because I mostly noodle on my guitar. It is a really great sampler. Really cool for lofi jazz/hip hop stuff. I'd give it a look. The UI is really simple to understand and navigate through. I mostly use it to play drum beats while I mess around with my nord electro doing jazzy hip hop piano stuff.

[Deltaphoenix]

The sampler and the app recommendations are both solid alternatives for drums/percussion/boom noises. I would imagine out of the more normal drum machines mentioned, the Arturia has the most range in regards to being able to sculpt the sound, I am sure it can make great and noisy textures too.

Not sure if you use Apple stuff but you can do a ton with Patterning, even on the iPhone version. It has a great interface, is easily set-up for unique poly-meter/poly-rhythms. It has a massive library of great sounds that are organized into kits (user community provided samples/kits, tons of cool stuff sampled), you can make your own kits with the individual samples, etc.. I would start there and decide if you need/want anything else. You can go a long way with just Patterning as it has a lot of great parameters (for the sample, for effects built-in, for the sequencer).
I own quite a bit of synth/drum machine hardware - this app is a badass.

[Errant Tiger]

Well what sort of sounds do you like? All the "drum machines" that have been mentioned are analog or analog style drum machines (808, volca beats, drumbrute), which have a fairly specific and limited set of sounds. With a sample player e.g. the Volca Sample or Elektron Model:Samples, you can play back samples of anything. So load up a bank of your own drum sounds, for example, and you have a drum machine with more options, but usually slightly less control over each specific sound.

Personally I prefer having a sample based "drum machine" as it's more flexible, but I will probably get an analog drum machine again at some point because they sound pretty cool and are fun! So it's all about what you're after.

A good question, for sure, that I should really put some thought into. I like lots of different kinds of sounds, but have no idea what'll sounds good for my own purposes. Maybe a sampler is the way to go. The Novation Circuit seems like it does it all - sampler, sequencer, etc...

[tremolo3]

Not sure what kind of sounds do you have in mind to get out of a drum machine, but every $300-ish drum machine I've tried sounds cheesy and dated to me and can't associate them without anything but 80s stuff (industrial, electro, synth-pop, etc.)
I'd definitely get a sampler instead, or even the Volca Sample now that transfer of samples are much easier.