Thoughts on drum machines?

[GuitarDeac]

Saw one of our brothers gigging last night for the first time and he was using a drum machine in his rig. I suppose was a beat buddy but I wasn’t close enough to the pedal board to tell. It was okay I guess and added something to the tunes but it seemed fake and contrived to me at least. Curious about the boards thoughts on this. Thx.

[KevWind]

Well obviously its all a totally subjective sense of aesthetics
For me If your talking about just a drum machine and an acoustic guitar never tried so I guess the concept never attracted me
How ever I have seen a few acoustic guitar driven performances , used with a looper to create fairly complex arrangements where I liked it .

[SpruceTop]

Back in the 1980s, I used Korg Drum Machine for a while. I used only its bass drum and snare, and it helped get the beat across and made it lighter on my right hand but I felt that I was cheating and it was kind of cumbersome in getting the speed where I needed it. I went back to only guitar and voice.

[doctone]

Even JT has used one on stage, so why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxh-bxdWiyk

[Nymuso]

I thought about one until I watched some friends who used one and were constantly fiddling with it between songs. No thanks.

[catt]

Last few years, i've been playing forro and other Latin styles on accordion. I used to know some hot percussionists, but have been out of commision since 2019. I'm prbly going to go back out, and use some back-up tracks on a small bluetooth speaker. There are plenty available online, for example: https://youtu.be/XM1OzhOBMmI?si=c7PHkZM3X09HJ2hr

[Charlie Bernstein]

I hate them.

[Monty Christo]

They're useful for filling out a home recording when you don't have a drumset, mics, and a drummer, although now there's software that sounds much better than most stand-alone machines.

My biggest gripe is that machines are too metronomic and technically perfect. Human drummers rush or drag the beat from time to time, add a bit of rim to the snare, and bounce between the bell and the edge of a ride cymbal. Machines just hammer out the programmed beat with unrelenting precision; it's always in perfect time, but it gets boring.

[Guitars44me]

As a lifelong drummer I am seriously unimpressed with ANY backing stuff. Tracks, loopers, computers, drum machines… yawn.

If you can’t do it without electricity at all, I will pass.

But some folks will surely disagree, as always! Hahaha

I will go make popcorn….

Whatever makes you happy!

Paul

[lkingston]

I used to be a keyboardist and used a drum machine and bass pedals to fill out the sound on duo gigs. I grew to really hate the sound.

One of the problems is that if the drum machine is loud enough to follow, it is also very prominent in the mix: maybe even louder than the guitar and vocals.

As far as drum machines go, the Beat Buddy is probably the best of the bunch. It does velocity layers (so that loud strikes sound like they were hit harder) and round robin rotations where there as at least some variation in repeated hits. I had one for a bit and then decided I didn’t like it either.

Now it’s just me and the guitar.

[Howard Emerson]

Originally Posted by GuitarDeac

Saw one of our brothers gigging last night for the first time and he was using a drum machine in his rig. I suppose was a beat buddy but I wasn’t close enough to the pedal board to tell. It was okay I guess and added something to the tunes but it seemed fake and contrived to me at least. Curious about the boards thoughts on this. Thx.

Context, taste & restraint is everything.

This is one of the first commercially available drum machines being demonstrated.


Here is the same machine, in the hands of a frugal genius, circa 1971:



Eric Clapton made him a very rich man.

HE

[Bowie]

I used them in the 90's but it wasn't to fake a drummer, it was for a specific (industrial) tone. If I wanted to replace a drummer there's software that's far easier to use and more convincing than a drum machine.

[PineMarten]

Originally Posted by Howard Emerson

Context, taste & restraint is everything.

This is one of the first commercially available drum machines being demonstrated.


Here is the same machine, in the hands of a frugal genius, circa 1971:



Eric Clapton made him a very rich man.

HE

I actually like that era of drum machine and style of use better than some of the stuff that tries to more fully replicate a drummer. I've seen some live John Martyn video from the 70s with something similar used sparingly too. It's a shame that most of today's simpler drum machines are either going for sampled real drum sounds or the 80s Roland/Linn thing, if there was a cheap little modern box that did that early sound I'd probably play around with one.

[Howard Emerson]

Originally Posted by PineMarten

I actually like that era of drum machine and style of use better than some of the stuff that tries to more fully replicate a drummer. I've seen some live John Martyn video from the 70s with something similar used sparingly too. It's a shame that most of today's simpler drum machines are either going for sampled real drum sounds or the 80s Roland/Linn thing, if there was a cheap little modern box that did that early sound I'd probably play around with one.

They ain't cheap no more, but they're still available!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/20459734587...mis&media=COPY

HE

[bzl]

Originally Posted by GuitarDeac

Saw one of our brothers gigging last night for the first time and he was using a drum machine in his rig. I suppose was a beat buddy but I wasn’t close enough to the pedal board to tell. It was okay I guess and added something to the tunes but it seemed fake and contrived to me at least. Curious about the boards thoughts on this. Thx.

I use this: