Possibly your first drum machine. Probably not your last. I love mine.

Not Crap. Godflesh.

Never used one so I can't vote. My first an only actual drum machine was the DR-770. I get that the sounds of these machine(s) is an aesthetic but I'd never want to build/edit thru one of those tiny green-ish screens again.

Where's the choice for "It's fine." Can't vote.

They are fine. Annoying as shit to program. I hate how these style of drum machines (Boss DR-XXX too) have everything in menus. It just isn't very intuitive on how to string patterns together and create songs. Totally fine if you just want one pattern to play on repeat with no changes or fills.

Kudos to it being the Commodore 64 of drum machines. How long has this thing been in production?

I'd honestly rather have it's predecessor, the HR-16

tommy wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:57 am Totally fine if you just want one pattern to play on repeat with no changes or fills.

Yeah, I used to program mathy metal stuff into one. Took many hours stretched over days, and probably not enough memory to hold a catalog of songs in that vein. What can I say, I had more free time then..

It did make me appreciate the nuances of physical drumming. For instance, while the kick and snare was usually best quantized to a grid (gets really fucked up and obvious if the glitch is repeated on a loop), accents and hi hats were often better done 'by hand' slowed way down then sped back up. Slow down some real drum takes some time: drummers are usually not 100% in sync with themselves.

I got one cheap and could never integrate it into my creative shenanigans too well. Cumbersome thing. Any advice?

I'm a Yamaha fanboy, but love those Godflesh records.

Apparently the Ministry sound is some Kawai model. Drum machine shootout? I guess all that could possibly result from that is the vintage market getting even stupider with price gouging.

Years ago, I did an industrial project and taught myself how to program an SR-16. Not crap.

For the money SR16's are tough to beat, though I'm crap at programming drum patterns and everything ends up coming out sounding like Phil Spector girl group beats.

losthighway wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:48 pm I got one cheap and could never integrate it into my creative shenanigans too well. Cumbersome thing. Any advice?

I used to own one and I noticed a definite trick with it...

If you're recording to a DAW session, it doesn't align with the click track.
You have to trim the edges so they're beat-perfect within your DAW session.
I used to use Logic so I'd trim the edges for a 4-bar or 8-bar section or whatever, then loop that. Rinse, wash, repeat.
It takes extra time but it makes it sound much cleaner.

At this point I'd probably really pay attention to that one Jesus and Mary Chain album it was supposedly used for.
It's definitely possible to record some cool music with one.