recommend a good drum machine?

[sonidero]

cewl. Just to try and save myself some searching time... does anyone know if you can program weird time signatures in any of these? Odd times: 5/4, 7/8, etc....?

Most of the Boss or Alesis or Korg can but you have to double bpm and use swing and all kinds of drummer shenanigans... Start off with some reggy temps...

[space6oy]

IIRC you can have time changes within one programmed song in that SR-16. i was playing drums in a dual bass band when i picked one of those up years ago, it was totally amusing programming my role in one of our songs in that thing. mess with a bit of EQ & reverb & it'd be totally easy to disguise it as live drumming in a recording. and that's coming from a drum machine junkie - i still have ten others + a few on my ipad.

[kaeth]

If you're going the Alesis route, I've always preferred the HR-16 to the SR-16 by far. Also the Yamaha RX-5 is awesome and relatively cheap.

[Deltaphoenix]

Man...I thinking about selling my NI Maschine and getting an Elektron Machinedrum sds uw+ mkii (did I get that right?).

[ChetMagongalo]

The Zoom MRT-3B can do 2,3,4,5,6,7 time sigs, and is super easy to program. I used to have one. Sounds as good as everything else in it's price range.

[dubkitty]

If you're going the Alesis route, I've always preferred the HR-16 to the SR-16 by far.

the samples on the SR-16 have too much processing for my tastes...i prefer to have the option of adding reverb to drums rather than it being imposed. nowadays i do most of my drum programming in GarageBand, but the HR has a unique sound and i may bring it back to add trip-hop drums to some of my looping stuff.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

get that HR16B if anything...the black one w/ the electronic sounds.

[hollowhero]

I would imagine that a drum machine/beat app would sound better than an alesis/boss drum machine with 20 year old tech

[gunslinger_burrito]

I would imagine that a drum machine/beat app would sound better than an alesis/boss drum machine with 20 year old tech

Yeah...I already program some mean drums on the computer. I don't have a laptop though, and need a way to play shows eventually. When I saw Thrones, he had some kind of drum machine that looked kind of like a rack/mounted thing..... that stuff was pretty good sounding. Either that, or the massive-ness of his rig covered any weiner-ness of the drum sounds up.

[sonidero]

I would imagine that a drum machine/beat app would sound better than an alesis/boss drum machine with 20 year old tech

Yeah...I already program some mean drums on the computer. I don't have a laptop though, and need a way to play shows eventually. When I saw Thrones, he had some kind of drum machine that looked kind of like a rack/mounted thing..... that stuff was pretty good sounding. Either that, or the massive-ness of his rig covered any weiner-ness of the drum sounds up.

Dude... He uses a Roland MC 505... You can get the same drums for cheap in a Roland MC 303 or one of those Boss DR's I was talking about...

And the drum machine/beat apps are just trying to be 20+ year old tech so why not just get the original and leave your phone in your pocket...

[mathias]

Ipad or iPhone go with DM-1 or imaschine

if you've got an iPhone, dm1 is free and it has way more than I expected a free drum machine too. I've been using it a ton. My friend with an iPad2 showed me the ipad version and it's got even more!

Edit: how I'm using it: there's multiple patterns. So I program in the different parts of the song and then tell it how many times to play each pattern, and it plays them in order. I can also hold and just trigger certain patterns. So I've got it mostly programmed right now for a Earth-like drone song with really slow drums. Each part is a drum loop but I can progress the patterns to for different parts of the song. Pretty wild stuff for someone like me that's never programmed drums before.. And that's all in a free app!

[theavondon]

The "hip hop" bass drum and snare on the SR-16 are totally badass. Set up a drum set with those, a tambourine, a snap, a clap, and three tuned cowbells and you're golden.

[sanfordandsonny]

Zoom MRT-3 or MRT-3b
Amazingness.

[Jwar]

Ipad or iPhone go with DM-1 or imaschine

if you've got an iPhone, dm1 is free and it has way more than I expected a free drum machine too. I've been using it a ton. My friend with an iPad2 showed me the ipad version and it's got even more!

Edit: how I'm using it: there's multiple patterns. So I program in the different parts of the song and then tell it how many times to play each pattern, and it plays them in order. I can also hold and just trigger certain patterns. So I've got it mostly programmed right now for a Earth-like drone song with really slow drums. Each part is a drum loop but I can progress the patterns to for different parts of the song. Pretty wild stuff for someone like me that's never programmed drums before.. And that's all in a free app!

How did you get DM1 for free???

[mathias]

Free on iPhone.