FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Korg Drum Machine

Question:
I am a good level amateur piano player. My major interest is classical and jazz music. However, given the fact that music is a pleasure to do togheter, sometimes we organize some shows between friends where I play the piano and somebody sings. We mainly feature standards, pop hits and some bossanova. The quality is not pristine, but we have a lot of fun and I do believe this is the most important part of the music together. Very often we use just the piano but for some songs a drum background is needed. During the years I used firstly an old Korg drum machine (I can't recall now the model bit it is the one with a lot of coloured buttons on the front) and then a Roland CR-80 that recently died after many years of good work. I must say that the latter did a good job, as the preset patterns were good and this machine was really user friendly. As it is impossible to fix I need a new drum machine. I obviously will choose with my ears but I have no idea where to start from. What would you suggest to begin with considering that I absolutely do not know how to program a drum pattern (and I do not have time to learn it!)? Furthermore, I have a very powerful laptop computer (that I use for my work). Is there a software I could use for turning it into a drum machine?

Answer:
These are very excellent PC programs that let you create all kinds of music (including percussion). You can plug in midi devices and use that to create realtime music on a staff. It's alot of fun. I prefer Cakewalk myself, but it is a bit daunting to get into, there are a million and one buttons. The tutorial is very informative. In terms of drum machines, Roland's TD-10 is one of the best, but there are many other companies. I owned a Yamaha DTX-2 before and thought it was pretty cool. I hear DDRUM is pretty nice as well. Have a look at the Boss Dr-670 (or machines of a similar ilk) Very easy to program new beats/patterns into, and includes drums, percussion and bass voices. It also comes with 199(?) preset drum and bass patterns (of which you can choose to mute either voice on playback, as well as do the usual like set tempo, time sig etc). There are an additional 101 spaces to program your own patterns as well as play additional drum/bass voices over the pattern upon playback. So you can end up with something simple, or something complex - it's nice and flexible that way. I think Boss were trying to sell this as a unit for use with musicians and songwriters who want a drum machine backing. Have a look and see if it's what you're after.