Re: The Best Live Drum Machine

[Gary Phillips <gary@friendlyspider.com>]

Mark Hamburg wrote:

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.
----------------------------------------

Now this could make an interesting string....(if not already beat to death)
(slight pun)  I'm not a hard core looper, but I use a JamMan when I
play guitar at coffee shops, etc., and I love gadgets in my home studio
and am playing around with Ableton's Live.  I have wanted to incorporate
a drum machine or percussion loops with my low-volume live guitar gigs,
and even though it starts sounding inspiring at home, I can just hear too
many people, mostly musicians, in the audience groan:  "oh, no...he's got
a drum machine, ..might as well be playing a casette..."
Now it worked for Timbuk 3....  ("future's bright....shades", remember?)
I've tried looping some djembe and bongos into the JamMan, but it is
very difficult to get things miked and sounding anywhere close to the
original...I really will need a Repeater if I want to try this 
seriously....and

close mic or even try piezo transducers on the percussion.  I just think
that people take you a bit more seriously if they see you perform the
looped tracks as opposed to simply playing them back.  Now the
Machinedrum still looks very tempting because it can be played and
loopes recorded in real time, plus every parameter can be put under
MIDI contol.....  and the max of 32 step quantization would at least
ensure that you are tight....if a bit too tight....and it will handle odd
time signatures, swing, etc....and so it could be played with pads...
though I haven't heard back from Elektron or other users about how
it handles velocity....   though supposedly it can do everything thru MIDI.
Enuf on that...
Really....I'd just like to work with a real percussionist.....but as we all
know,
sometimes finding compatible musicians is difficult....a reason why, I
believe, a lot of us resort to looping.....

aside....I have this mental picture of a cartoon take-off of the 
one-man-band
dude (marching drum, cymbals on feet and head, trumpet, etc., et..) but
all replaced with electronica, wires, LCD readouts.........guess it's been
done.
--
gary
@friendlyspider.com