Full ACK! 
yeah it is super easy and powerful DAW. I also like Studio One on my PC. The other DAWs like Ableton and Cubase drove me crazy with their workflow. I do have an Ableton Push 2 controller that made Ableton less painful to work with but still not ideal for me.
The Kawai R-100 sounds like cheesy goth industrial to me. But I’m sure putting this through an Analog Heat or something would make it less cheesy sounding.
That’s the classic sound of a whole genre (wax trax, skinny puppy etc.). I don’t know about cheesy (would apply to TR-505 or TR-626 maybe). Sounds of the R100 are very punchy, esp. when compared to the Yamaha counterparts of that era. There were three different ROMs and one can burn own ROMs (similar to the Oberheim DX/DMX, but all sounds on one chip). And you can make classic hip hop a la Run DMC with it, too (longer patterns than Roland machines).
2 Likes
(1985) Should be Oberheim DMX (8bit) but the 12 bit R100 (1987)/R50 to me always sound like Run DMC, maybe because of the groove-factor or the like. Anyway, that’s the vibe 
https://reverb.com/news/5-drum-machines-used-in-rap-classics-that-arent-the-808
Classic, yes. But still cheesy to my ears. I always thought that, even in the 80s. Some bands of course overall still sounded good (and still do) despite the drums… Anyway, thanks for the examples.
1 Like
That’s truly a very special kind of synaesthesia 
1 Like
My new Elektron Analog Heat arrived today and really makes my lame cheap drum synths come to life so happy with that new purchase! I could easily use a few more of these bad boys in my studio or may be get the OTO Boum for another fun FX processor?
1 Like
Try Nobels ODR-S overdrive special (1995 or so)
I can vouch for the gotharman spaZedrum
The thing is an absolute beast
Alot of the vidz online dont do it justice , it has both analog and digital drums so you can run 4 A parts and 4 D parts at once and upto 16 parts with cutoff.
Gotharman can only build 1 more before May 2023 due to universal parts shortage. Sell the Md if you are tired of it.
I sold mine Dec 2021 and have no regrets , and besides you will probably get alot more than you paid for it. The Modor dr2 also looks pretty beastly
2 Likes
Haha maybe so. But I don’t think my taste is that unusual. Bands like Big Black, for instance, preferred the TR-606 and the Drumulator. Did Skinny Puppy even use the Kawai? I thought they used a whole variety of other machines, including the 707, and all heavily processed.
3 Likes
That looks interesting and worth checking out! How is the user interface and sequencer on it?
The manual is very indepth so can be a bit daunting until you know your way round. Its pretty much a modular drummachine.
The drum shaping is pretty simple thanks to the touch screen. Then u can attach filters and effects. Also has an XY setup to use on touchscreen similar to chaos pad for sound and sequence morphing. Can also set up edit knobs for volume , filtering etc
To use like live mixing.
Alot of menu diving but more than worthwhile.
Check the free online manual to see the level of madness.
I love the sound of the Modor and Perkons , but the gotharnan slays them both hands down.
The sequencer is real tight , unlike my md which had a habit of drifting. Can play fwd , back, Back and forth , and can set up as a rota , hard to explain. Access to gate , velocity and tuning.
Check the manual friend…you will see
1 Like
I don’t see what can’t be achieved with the MD using its routing possibilities and ableton
Yes, from here it’s very special. I think one could say that the drum machine of an 80s band or group defined their sound very much and sometimes the whole genre.
I think the Sisters (of Mercy (took decades until I realized that the band’s name is from a song by Leonard Cohen (and I think that’s strange given the somewhat protective attitude of Andrew Eldritch (summarized memory from read interviews, maybe wrong) towards intellectual copyright )) used a Boss Dr-55 in many records although it is only referred to Dr. Rhythm (as a band member).
In some cases it is the available machines in the record label’s studio that lead to that effect.
Sadly it took me very long (when it was important: times of no internet and no local scene) to finally find out about which band used which drum machine. This info isn’t always available, sometimes it is just circular quoting. Old interviews help, and, surprisingly often, Youtube comments of people who worked in the studio or knew the band/producers in person.
Like so (from one of the R-100 videos on Youtube, embarrassed to link because of bad English when spoken without script and rehearsal and it’s about the comment, not the video):
Actually, this [R-100] was not used much on Wax Trax records, but it sounds great nonetheless. I think it appeared on some PTP tunes, but it isn’t the source of the famous Ministry and Revco drum hits. Most of the Wax Trax sounds were custom Oberheim DMX EPROMS created by Adrian Sherwood and Keith Leblanc during the Ministry Twitch and Cabaret Voltaire Code sessions, sampled into the Fairlight CMI II, copied by Al Jorgensen and then sampled into their own Fairlight CMI II and later their AKAI S900 and S1000 samplers. They did use the R100 on the PTP album, tho.
Where did they get the sounds used on the DMX Eproms?
they made them themselves. People would use the Oberheim PROMmer EPROM burner to sample their own sounds, in effect turning the DMX and DX into samplers. Keith Leblanc and Adrian Sherwood are studio wizards and had full access to the analog processing gear at Southern Studios in London, on top of Leblanc being a drummer (he was the session drummer for Sugar Hill Records and played drums on many of their seminal releases). Their whole thing was about coming up with original drum sounds no one else was using.
I am sure the 707 has seen many industrial projects, because of its inherent sound. Due to the flame option it can also sound very DAF-like (although they had Robert Görl as veeeery impressive live drummer).
In terms of punchiness (meat-ness if we want to stay in the metaphoric fast food restaurant) this is my personal list of drum machines I experienced in the flesh, beginning with the punchiest of the bunch (only machines from that era).
-
Kawai R-100
-
TR-707
-
TR-606 (completely different, less industrial to me)
-
DR-110
-
Boss DR-550 mk I
-
Boss DR-5 (great for industrial baselines and direct interaction with guitar, step sequencer with long patterns, but really unintuitive to program)
-
DR-55 (Bassdrum contains some meat, hi-hats and snare: analog cheese)
-
TR-626 (very plastic-y, sounds so different from 707 although so similar in concept), more like tofu-based-vegetarian-meat-substitute
-
TR-808: outside competition, when I used it, it always resulted in Miami Bass or Electro, just cannot program Industrial beats with it.
Other machines that should have seen a lot of use:
- Alexis HR-16
- Alexis SR-16 (later)
- Kawai R-50e
pretty sure it’s a DR-55 in Body Electric
This at first sounds like a heavily processed TR-707 but the rhythmic feel doesn’t fit, maybe something else, a machine that can record unquantized, and the clap would have been down-pitched, which could have been achieved by tape-tricks, but it’s rather some DX - what do you think?
giving a third thought for digitone. even it has just four tracks, it has 8 voices so perc instruments can still ring into each other if they’re on one track.
you dont need to use it as a fm synth, you can use it like a sutractive synth thanks to its unique fearures.
the only downside is that as of now, ratchets need workarounds.
(howver, the first video uses just one monophonic track.)
8 Likes
https://www.sisterswiki.org/Doktor_Avalanche
Edit: Sorry for derailing further, but this needed some more valid contextualisation. 
1 Like