a question from a fairly nooby person… how many drum tracks are “enough”
background: had esx (the blue korg) then the MD … now looking at the AR … feels so “limited” … or am I just spoilt?
was the MD such an overkill , that everything afterwards is like downsizing a bigmac to a carrot? (even a super tasty carrot? )
I specifically ask the “old guys” among you, because I d like to hear from experience !
thanks !!!
…well, the best drum programming is the one that keeps in mind at least a bit, what a real drummer can do…and what not…
you can overload a track easily with too much drums…
limitation rules…
if a kik and snare have no breathing realtionship to each other, no hi hat on the planet will make it better…
sure…at some point evrything starts to groove somehow, if you put layer over layer…
but that’s not the spicy way…nor the funky one…really.
very interesting point!
I’ve never felt limited on the Rytm for drums. Between the sample layers and choke groups, I rarely use more than 6 voices, and that’s doing whole tracks on Rytm.
Analog Four on the other hand, really opened up once I threw a Nord Drum 1 on the CV track. I felt very limited with it until then. Of course, I was also wanting to have a few synth lines in there too. If it were just for drums, I could easily get by with a single A4 using sound locks.
But everyone is different. MD is great because you can get some nice layers going on.
Really I think any of the Elektrons with sequencers can be fully capable drum machines on their own (even MonoMachine), especially if all you want to do is drums.
It’s also going to depend on the style of music you’re making. For example, industrial or aggrotech generally takes a completely different approach to drums than trip hop.
Personally I’m a big fan the percussive textures/wild cacophony that result from having as many drum machines going at one time as possible. Just using the AR by itself feels far too limited and probably makes it feel sad & lonely. (However, the more drums you use the less room there’ll be for everything else to fit in the mix)
As for sticking to what a real drummer can do - why does it have to be one? Why not multiple drummers?
Never felt limited with AR for drum. 12 tracks is already almost too much for that.
Besides, as you can Plock the samples…possibilities are almost endless!
its not the amount of drums you have, its the amount of variation in your drum beat that make it interesting.
@Trabant: get the AR and questioning is over - except one: How can I live without it? 
having a diversity of sound sources is a key ime
the best electronically generated tracks i’ve made
were made with 5 different machines
1, 2 or 3 sounds from each machine
I don’t know. You can make people sing and dance just to a Volca Beats. When enough is enough, is entirely up to you.
I tend to sample my own gear, build a set from it and then have four or five drum tracks. With more going on, I just get confused and my bladder is upset.
But then I’m old, so I’m not as fast with the mutes and unmutes as the Aviciis of today.
I’m quite liking my combo of the Roland R-8M and Yamaha RM-50 sequenced from the OT lately. I’ve been getting kind of nuts with layering drum sounds across tracks, and using different midi tracks for fills and such with the microtiming and different pattern lengths/multipliers…kind of makes it all feel a big more live instead of sequenced.
got the AR (and md mm a4)
wow ! seems like overkill… but hey, why not try! tomorrow I will try MM for glitches + md for ctl action + AR (hell I dont know) + A4 for plocks slocks and FX … will report back!
I think some of the most thrilling rhythm tracks I’ll ever hear are from Autechre, particularly on ‘Untilted’.
I’m not sure how many drums they use at a time on that one but it would be fun to watch a drummer have a go at such arrangements.
You’re right. With electronic gear you can easily replace drum sounds all the time, whereas a drummer is stuck to his drum set and a percussionist to his percussion set.
I read this “drums should be playable by a real drummer” advice as follows: the rhythmic structure should not be too complicated. You can layer sounds as much as you like (which is basically just sound design) and you can replace sounds as often as you like, but you shouldn’t have too many “complicated” rhythms playing at once (for instance a stack of 20 syncopated paradiddle thingies). A set of straight elements plus 1-2 more special tracks. Otherwise it will sound like a mess for the listener, because he can’t find enough structure anymore, and a “mess” is basically just something where you are not able to find the structure.
However, I also have to add that if you add enough complicated elements on a quantized grid, it gets simple again, because you just filled up your grid with different sounds.
==> Be creative in the layering/choice/replacement of sounds, keep the rhythmic structure (relatively) simple.
I use a AK + A4 and most of the time 2 tracks are enough - 1 for the kick - 1 for other sounds. This dousn’t stop me from adding percussive sounds on other tracks…
Many times only a Kick track is sufficient as i try to get the percussive side out of the other sounds by modulation etc… I mostly don’t wanna imitate real drum sounds … but parameter locking is a blessing to create rittems
i totally loved the tr 606 707 909 combination.
the fun thing having more than one drum machine (and a mixer) in my opinion
is that you can jam around for hours with just a few patterns on each machine
of course the rytm or md can do a lot more than any machine mentioned above, but
i´m sure you can´t simulate the sound and workflow of that combo.
possibilities to combine different drum machines/sound modules are endless.
it totally makes sense to say “wow - i really like the hihat sounds on that machine - i´ll use it mainly for hihats” on an old machine like the 606 it was easy. there was just that one hh sound, i programmed some patterns and could use it for any track spontaniously…
on modern machines like the rytm or the md it´s quite different. a lot of possibilities, too
many possibilities for some.
so many cool stuff out there these days. i´d like to try everything and combine
it whenever it feels good, but now in my “old days” i´m pretty relaxed and care much more
about music itself and other things. i try to think the other way round. what kind of sound i´d like to use for my music and what machine could be helpful for that?
a good microphone/preamp/fx chain and a sampler can do wonders too to get more individual percussion loops/sounds
that´s why i don´t own any drum machine at the moment.
and i´m not old by the way !