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Looper's Delight
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> >I keep trying to be tempted by the ER-1. My three big concerns are time >signatures, wishing that it had more synthesized drums and fewer PCM >samples >(you could now chime in and tell me that the PCM stuff is useful thereby >resolving that concern), and the fact that a variety of parameters like >swing can only be edited while it's stopped. The only PCM samples are, if I remember correctly, the unit's not in front of me as I type, the open and closed hi hats. They're pretty generic, but perfectly useable. The synth engine on the ER is really surprisingly flexible for as few parameters as it has. And the 4 synth voices aren't tied to being bass/snare/tom/whatever, which is cool. I like the fact that in pattern mode, it's basically always in record mode while playing, you can add drum hits in any bar at any time. > >I've got an MC-505 that is insufficiently "immediate" for me to be really >happy with it. It's taken years for me to get "immediate" with the MC-303. I pretty much hate the user interfaces of any of the "Groove-approved" Roland gear, I bought the MC-303 in a moment of weakness. > >I haven't worked myself up to just splurge on a Machinedrum though I keep >coming back to thinking about it. > >I also wonder at times about sixteenth-note quantization and whether it >makes things sound too mechanical. Certainly the Machinedrum demos sound >very mechanized. (Too be expected from a product named "Machinedrum"?) Years ago I read an interview with Stan Ridgeway, then still with Wall of Voodoo, where he said that drum machines ought to sound like appliances. I liked that. If you want human feel, get a human! I like layering real drums, whether played live or looped samples, with drum machine beats, sort of gives you the best of both worlds. > >Finally, I worry on occasion about a comment that I heard at Loopstock >(from >Max?) that I do find might be true: When the drum machines get turned on, >the audience stops paying attention. (Rough paraphrase.) So, one of the >other questions is how to make live drum machine use work well while >playing >other instruments. I think it's pretty important to keep the drum parts evolving. I think it's too easy, especially while playing live, to start the drum machine and just let it run while everything evolves around it. I like using multiple drum sources because it makes it easy to add/remove layers, process individual instruments, etc. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Trenkel New and Improv Music http://www.newandimprov.com improv@peak.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------