After posting this question I started searching Perkons solo vids on Youtube and it is way more versatile (when in capable hands) than I realized. Very interested.
Do you think a DT2 would fill this role as well?
Absolutely. A sampler can be anything you want.
1 Like
a4 is by far my favorite in this regard. the drum sounds are useful and interesting, and the synths are obviously up to the task. sound locks can go quite far unless the patterns are really busy. think the digitone would do quite well in this also
5 Likes
Good shout. I always forget about the A4 as a drum machine.
DNII is the best drum machine ever made.
5 Likes
A4 is an interesting option for sure, would like to cover drums as well as multi-timbral for some nice ambient arps every now and then.
My only concern is I hear really polarized opinions about it, some seem to love it and others just bounce off it.
1 Like
I might as well plug the syntakt here. I’ve had a lot of drum machines and this one is my favorite. If you don’t need sampling it’s worth looking at.
The dn2 looks really good for drum design too. Perkons seems really cool for some genres and if you’re going to be tweaking a lot of stuff live. I only ever hear people making aggressive music with it.
The two drum machines I find myself lusting after are rytm and the modor dr-2. I want an A4 too but it has the same issue as the perkons where 4 sounds at once isn’t quite enough to make a full sounding drum beat for anything except minimal techno. It’s also a lot slower workflow than a regular drum machine unless you rely on presets a lot. Also no retrigger.
A4 for me too.
For me nothing can even touch it, but I reckon it’s not for everybody.
2 Likes
a4 wasn’t really on my radar until i saw how beautifully it pairs with a modular. it was cheaper than some eurorack sequencers i’ve had before, so i got it with the synth part as an afterthought. but damn, i’ve really become a huge fan of its sound. one of those sound designers dream synths (not for everyone), that sounds great and makes my brain just reel with the possibilities.
if you’re not locked into a 4 track groove box workflow, you can do some crazy, crazy stuff with the neighbor tracks and feedback. my partner will play guitar or lxr-02 into it w/ every track cascading into the next with 4 stages of square wave amplitude modulation, 4x moog lpf, filter fm, 4x overdrive, many flavors of noise, 2x notch filter, 2x peak filter for eq, and a send on my mixer going to a rat chain > big muff chain that goes back into the a4 for more fx w/ the fx lane. really crazy stuff possible.
but yeah, does some damn fine drums as well
9 Likes
Sound example ? 
2 Likes
Very roughly speaking, if you want recognizable pop-electronica drums then the TR-8s does that very nicely. If you want easy experimental, something like the monomachine/MD. If you want to carve every sound from the fabric of the sonic universe, then an A4 is the way to go.
If I could only have one hardware synth, it might be the A4 - it’s that versatile. Paradoxically the more gear I have, the less effort I want to put into the A4. I’m pretty sure I could get something close to the Perkons sound out of the A4 but it’s really nice to work with all the sequencer rows and knob per function drum synths
The A4 could be both my favorite and least used drum machine at the same time.
13 Likes
Thanks for this great explanation.
I love the dream of playing with the A4 in the way you’re describing.
Personally, I’m a dad with young kids, who has maybe a half an hour to do music each night before passing out. I have to be realistic and face the fact that I don’t have the capacity to get the most out of an instrument like that.
6 Likes
I’ve wanted an A4 since it came out, and it was so unobtainable financially for me when I was in my 20’s, but now I have the same hangups about buying it. I guess you (or I) could always just use it for sound design sessions and feed it into a sampler and that would take away some of the pressure to spend all your time using it crafting beats from complete scratch.
1 Like
Wanted to necro this thread as it may be as good as any for my question.
I am looking at the possibility of adding an analog drum machine but not for techno-type music. I’m doing more ambient, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream school stuff.
Trying to figure out which drum machine would be most appropriate. It’s hard because most demos are focused towards distorted techno beats. Such as the Hexdrum - it sounds amazing but I can’t tell how suitable it would be.
Also used Analog RYTM mk2 are now down to a lower price than new DT2s.
I don’t have a ton of time to get wrapped up in sound design and staring at a box, something kind of immediate would be nice.
A Perkons could be great but they are pretty expensive for me.
Just curious if anybody else has been down this road.
I have some analog drum machines (analog rytm mk2, tempest) but I feel like the TR-8s fits the bill here. It’s the most immediate and easiest to fit in a mix in my experience.
3 Likes
You’ll find yourself doing a lot of ‘refining’ with AR & A4 in my experience with both of these machines. They aren’t nearly as immediate in term of how quickly you reach something you’re happy with as the rest of the Elektron gear IMO (not a criticism in any way). I didn’t keep the AR2 in the end as Tonverk is proving to be very impressive on drum duty.
1 Like
I’ve definitely been eyeing the TV since it just seems so impressive feature-wise.
I guess I was fancying the “analog” route as I’m trying to really get into that early days headspace where drum sounds had to be synthesized instead of sampled, but maybe I’m just being naive and dreaming a bit when really practicality would suit the reality of my workflow and time constraints.
I’ll say one thing if time is precious, i’ve never used anything that lets me put satisfying stuff together as quickly as Tonverk does, and the sound quality is outstanding.
I’d like a proper drum synth too. Don’t get me wrong, I sold the AR but still have the A4 and try my hand at synthesising my own drums but its not easy unless you know what you’re doing as its not on rails like the AR but I found the AR sounded a bit pedestrian as a result as far as synthesis goes. I rarely use it in conjunction with the other couple of machines I have because most of what I make on it sucks lol
2 Likes
I like the TR-606 a lot, one of my first vintage drum machines. Being able to program while it’s running is really useful, sounds are not really modifiable, but could mod for individual outs and process that way
Acidlab makes a really sick modern 606 with adjustable parameters
I also have a DRM MKIII which I like, but that requires external sequencer and feel the pitch parameter isn’t as finely tuned as I would prefer. Still sounds awesome and able to get a lot of non “drum” sounds
MAM ADX-1 is semi proto DRM and has less channels, but slightly more interesting sounds to me, but harder to find and more expensive than I got my DRM for
I’ve got some others, but don’t think they’d really be what you’re looking for. TR-505, TR-707, DR-55 and also use Model:Samples a lot for drum machine duty
1 Like
you may want to look into some of the MFB boxes. Tanzbar can do techno but you can also get it into “donkamatic” territory without much effort. They have some smaller boxes like the 522 that may be more straightforward.
That said, I adore my Korg SR-120 for softer 70’s drum sound. It’s a preset box but the presets are very good and the panel is fun to “play”. I’ve gone so far as to add mute switches for each voice and a Tubbutec uni-pulse so I can sync it to MIDI as well as trigger the sounds from MIDI (truly fun to trigger extra voices on top of the presets). But even without the mods it’s quite enjoyable. The snare and hats have a very nice “sandy” sound to my ears.
4 Likes