on grooves, drum machines, etc.

["Ryan Reid" <ryanreidfl@gmail.com>]

I find a lot of delight in syncing (i.e. not externally triggering) two drum machines with different pattern lengths, quantization "feel" (seems to be more than just raw PPQ spec in older machines), and occasionally swing settings (here the actual PPQ probably plays more of a role). While not especially useful in and of itself, it gives me some nice material to sample and splice up (conservatively, not DnB chopping for me). This is of course not in search of "human feel" or familiar idea of "groove" but something of an analog to it. And with sampling, one can introduce similar but subtly different snippets, differentially triggered by arbitrary differences in velocity. I've recently been toying with using logic gates in modular programs for some arbitrary but "automatic" and in-sync triggers. And then there's screwing with beat markers on loops in Ableton Live and overdubbing triggered samples to the pleasant "mistakes."

There are times, of course, when a single metronomic 4-bar pattern is what is called for. Last year I saw the duo Genders open for ADULT., using only single patterns (DR-660 I think) for looonng drawn out pieces and they wound up being a lot more interesting live than ADULT.  

I've had a lot of thoughts about ol' Karlheinz and "chance" and (lack of) repetition recently but I'm not yet prepared to refine them into a concise post. :) Later, perhaps.

Take care,
Ry