Re: Drum machine PRE AMP???

["Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Hey Adam,   you wrote:

"I'm running a BOSS Dr 880 directly into my PA (Bose LP1 tower).  I am 
thinking that I want to compress the sound and maybe warm it up a bit to 
make it sound less "machiney".  Any thoughts or advice as to how to 
process 
the sound before it hits my PA?""



I've been using drum machines for years and years in live settings and 
wanted to share some things I've come to believe about their use to
answer your question in a round about way.

What I've found is that a drum machine is a drum 
machine.........................honestly,  no matter how much you 'tube' 
it 
up,  it's still going to
sound mechanical for the most part, with these notable exceptions:

I have found seven things that can make a drum machine sound more organic 
and effective in live music.

1)  In nature,  transient waves travel a little faster than lower midrange 
and bass notes.   Drum machines (due to sampling and playback) cause
this time alignment of frequencies to flatten out.      The Barcus Berry 
Sonic Maximizer from my understanding,   puts selective and very short 
delays
onto low midrange  and progressively onto bass notes.   This allows the 
transient and treble waves to hit your ears miliseconds before the lower 
notes.
It's a psycho-acoustic effect but it just sounds more 'organic' or real. 
They can be had as a song these days in a one rack space unit.

2)   Additionally,  the phase relationship of treble and upper midrange 
sounds can vary wildly when we are moving around in a physical acoustic 
space just
do to the distance of our ears from one another (hearing the same sound in 
phase doubles the volume,   hearing the same sound out of phase , 
theoretically
complete cancels that particular frequency..........though his never 
happens 
in reality because we are always in some kind of an acoustic space with 
reverberant qualities.
The Aphex Aural Exciter,  again, from my understanding (and I'm a lay 
person 
when it comes to acoustics and psycho acoustics explanations)  randomly 
changes the phase
relationship of the upper harmonics in a sound .  This process 'excites' 
the treble response of a sound and , again, though a psychoacoustic 
effect, 
lends itself to
a more 'real' sound.    These units can also be had relatively cheaply 
used 
on line.

3)  Most people make the mistake that because the stasis of a drum machine 
lacks energy that if they make their drum computer programming more 
complex 
that it
will compensate for this energy.     I have found this to be a mistake. 
My feeling is the best drum computer progamming is that which gives the 
most
'air' and space to a mix...........................it is the programming 
that is relatively syncopatively neutral precisely because it gives much 
more freedom for the
voices in the music that actually will be organic.         You'll never 
find 
a drum beat in a drum machine that has the kick on beats 1 and 3,  the 
snare 
on 2 and 4 and
hi hats that play straight 8th notes.   You wont' because it isn't flashy 
and doesn't help music store clerks sell the drum machines to prospective 
clients.
In the 80's,   if you randomly went up and down the radio dial and 
analyzed 
every single rhythm you'd be astonished to discover , however, that this 
was
the very same drum machine used on 50% of the pop songs released.

So,  you want to write a funky rhythm?     Make all your syncopations be 
8th 
note syncopations and if you want to add a 16th note offbeat,   add only 
one
in the measure...................the funk is implied and then up to you to 
bring home with your other writing.

4)  Also,  a lot of people , fearing the stasis and mechanical quality of 
a 
drum machine, tend to turn them way far down in volume as a way of 
underplaying
the static quality.  Again,  I have found the opposite approach much more 
effective.   The machine lacks energy, intrinsically,  so make up for it 
by 
playing
it almost louder than you would have an acoustic drum kit.  The volume 
will 
give it energy and it will sound huge if you purposefully keep your 
programming
minimal as in  example #3 above.

5)  Judicious and very, very subtle use of cutoff frequency, resonance and 
volume can make even the simplest of hi hat patterns sound more realistic 
if 
you
have those abilities to program on your drum machine.    If so,   remember 
that drummers tend to have one hand stronger than another hand.
16th note hi hat patterns will sound more realistic if you cut a little 
high 
end off of every other stroke (simulating a weak left hand in most 
drummers).
Similarly you can take a little bit of volume of of every other strokes. 
Quickly copy a 16th or 8th note hi hat pattern to 10 different patterns 
and 
then spend
20 minutes tweaking each one so that they are just a little bit different 
than the others.   Now you can take any   piece of music and randomly add 
kicks
and snare patterns to copies of these hi hat rhythms.     Remember,   make 
the effect as subtle as possible , yet still 
noticeable..................make a note
of how much wiggle room you can have with each parameter and then be 
random 
in your assignment of cutoff and volume cuts for every other note.
This will cause a decided percolative effect on your tracks over all.

6)   Remember,   if everything is loud, nothing sounds big because there 
is 
no contrast.    Make sure your hi hat and ride sounds are considerably 
quieter than your
kick and snare parts and will make the latter sound much bigger.     Oddly 
enough,  you don't even need to vary the volume settings of your kicks and 
snares because
the brain has this habit of identifying a few key elements in a sound and 
then assigning it that 'real' classification.
This is why in the 80's and still up until this day,  a lot of producers 
program their kicks and snares and then have live studio drummers come in 
and overdub hihat
sounds.  The Police's innovative drummer, Stewart Copeland made a lot of 
money doing just hi hat overdubs on recording sessions.   You hear some of 
those records and you could never tell that a real drumset wasn't played 
because your mind grasps the 'authenticity' of the hi hat overdubs and 
completely misses the sonic stasis of
the drum machine parts.

7)  Additionally,  if you don't have all this sophisticated equipment or 
even ability to program things like cutoff and resonance,  sometimes it's 
a 
very hip thing to
just send your hi hats out as separate outs and put them through a cheap 
stomp box Phaser or Flanger (or if you are lucky,  a Filter box).
Set your sweep times to long times that are NOT synced to your rhythm.  
This 
will cause the hi hats to swirl in such a way that it is a little 
unpredictable.

Remember it is human error that makes most drumming sound real (that and 
considerable technique and musicality in the composition of the drum 
parts).

I hope this helps,

yours,   Rick Walker

ps if you still want to put a pre amp onto your sound,  I"d suggest that 
you 
not use an ART preamp as someone on this list pointed out that very little
of the sound is actually routed through the A12 tube in that unit.    If 
you 
can find a used Alesis BitRMan or Alesis Ineko pick one up. They have a 
zillion
cool little sounds (including bit reduction, lo fi, distortion, tube amp 
simulation, flange, phase, rotary speaker, ring modulators etc.)  They are 
an incredible
bang for the buck..............just ask Scoots Galore (aka Michael 
Klobuchar) a regular contributor on this list for years about them if you 
need a recommendation.