If you’re going to go eurorack drums I don’t really see why you’d want to go with all in one drums modules like LXR and QoP other than being cost effective, but what you are going for there is basically a smaller machinedrum and a 909. I think if you are going to go the eurorack route you should consider individual drum voices cause then you could switch things out and also get a mixture of analog and digital. I’d rather have 5 good drum modules that I use all the time instead of more drums that are less flexible. I’ve had 168hp+ of all drum modules and can function with as little as 6hp (2x pico drums) and have done so many times.
To echo a big point is modulation on drums. To be honest, depending on the music you make, really you wont be doing much modulation. Techno not much at all, at least to be functional and unique, but in my experience with IDM something like BIA is a lot of fun to extract many sounds out of in a linear drumming sequence (linear drumming being only 1 drum hit at a time and morphing those sounds as opposed to many drums at the same time). So depends on what you want to make.
If you think about the 909 the kick, snare, clap, and toms are analog and the hats and cymbals are samples. In techno I rarely use a snare and toms are fun, but not totally necessary. So I run a Jomox modbase09mkii, an analog clap either erica or tiptop, and either erica hats and cymbals or 2 pico drums and that’s a great sounding 909 with plenty of range and sound changes to work with plus patch points.
I read all of the comments and took them all in. You guys helped pull me back from the edge for sure.
I do really want modular drums and the LXR and QoP modules and Erica synths sequencer are still top of my list but I would be an absolute ass to ditch my MDUW for more modular.
Thanks all for reminding me of what I already knew none of my friends are electronic musicians (DJs and in bands etc mostly) so I can’t really bounce the ideas off of anyone when it comes to parting with specific gear, so I appreciate it.
Resurrecting this dead thread to disagree lol – but only a little bit. I think what a lot of people are missing here, and what I’m surprised hasn’t been mentioned, is the level of immediate and hands on control you have over a dedicated modular drum setup.
With something like the Erica Synths Techno System, or a roll-your-own variety, you have one knob per function. Everything is laid out clearly in front of you, you can leave it pretty much as set-and-forget. If you want to change the pitch, attack, decay, release, etc., on literally any of your drum sounds, you can reach out and do that in a microsecond. Two at the same time, if you like, and that’s without modulation.
The Machinedrum doesn’t do that. The Analog Rytym doesn’t do that, nor does any other drum machine on the market. You could set up a bunch of midi controllers in Ableton to achieve something similar, though not quite as deep or intuitive to look at, and of course and you’d lose out on the analog sound. You really can’t beat the workflow of a dedicated modular drum machine in some regards. Sending beefy analog modular drums into a DAW for more processing is the sweet spot, IMO.
Having said that, all of the other points everyone made are very true. Live gigging will be a pain in the ass. Recording and saving tracks will be a pain in the ass, or even recreating them in general. There is no product in the world that will give you the same immediacy of access and control over your drums as a modular drum machine with dedicated modules per sound, but it’s expensive and can be impractical for stuff like live performance, unless improv is your thing.
All good points. For the record I ended up ditching my Analog RYTM and some other stuff to put towards modular drums.
I always struggled with the sound of the AR…It can sound good and I made some good stuff with it but really the analog drums don’t sound that great with the exception of the kick, everything else took a lot of sculpting to get a decent sound and even then the palette was to me extremely limited, unlike the machinedrum which just seems to sound good 99% of the time and in various contexts and genres.
For modular drums I ended up with the Erica synths LXR02 and Erica synths Drum sequencer. Although it doesn’t exactly fall in line with what you were saying about modular drums being more direct with kind of Knob-per-function controls, the LXR has a menu system not too dissimilar to Elektron’s stuff, I don’t really mind it though as it’s easy and quick to navigate and most importantly it sounds amazing. It has a very wide sonic palette and a lot of modulation and the drum sequencer is nice and flexible too with 16 gate outs plus a couple of built in LFOs and the classic X0X style of sequencing it’s fantastic.
Although I did enjoy the analog rytm I used it more for samples than for its (rather weak) drum synthesis, I had bought it on day one and it grew exponentially over the years but even with that it wasn’t enough to get me to overlook its core sound and with the modular drums I also added the Intellijel Metropolex which all together turned my 9U into a mini techno workstation which I’m loving.
On a similar note I have to say I’ve sort of fallen out of love with Elektron. At one point Elektron was the heart of my studio I had the Machinedrum UW, Octatrack, Monomachine, analog rytm, analog four and Digitone…now I just have the Machinedrum UW, Octatrack and Digitone. I used to be the guy that would literally pre-order a new Elektron machine the second it was announced but since they’ve changed directions their offerings have been pretty boring to me. I love the MDUW the OT is fun and eccentric and the DN is an almost perfect FM synth but other than that I’m just not feeling the kind of middle of the road, consumer centric way they’ve pivoted to. They still make decent stuff for sure it’s just not the cutting edge weird eccentric stuff that resonates with me any more. I am fully enjoying my dive into modular drums though and with the Erica synths drum sequencer having 16 outs I only have 7 of them filled with the LXR02 so I’ve got plenty more room to expand
