« good drum machine »

This drum machine is easy to use. I was making beats within minutes of having it out of the box. The downside is that it can only do two measures and a fill per pattern, but you can copy patterns, vary them, and trigger them with song mode or DPP. It is polyphonic, but some of the sounds will cancel each other out, which I find to give me a unique sound, and it seems to be based on what would be practical for a real drummer. It comes equipped with a lot of sounds, including classic Roland drum machine kits (the 808 and 909 are decent), and you can edit for instance the pitch and decay of the sounds individually, and create your own kits. It also sends everything over midi, so it can be used to trigger sounds on another device or within your DAW. The touch sensitivity of the pads is nice to give a more human sound than programming beats directly on a DAW. One trick is to put the beat as 16/8 to allow for more space to program your pattern. It saves everything automatically, so there is no menu diving or losing your patterns when you turn it off. It also has the ability to play bass parts, and it comes with some decent bass sounds. The tempo is not saved with each pattern as far as I can tell, so you will have to adjust the tempo, and I am not sure if this is true about song mode, as I haven't really delved into song mode, as I usually sequence via my DAW. Custom drum kits allow you to assign individual sounds to any of the pads, using both an A and B group for each kit. However, the pads are labeled with a standard layout for the default kits, and I find that sticking to this layout keeps things simple and easy. The pads are also arranged and labeled with the notes of a bass guitar, which is nice for bass players and also for programming the parts. It is so easy to use that I find it very inspiring for just jamming and getting the creative juices flowing. It can do any kind of beat, from jungle to hiphop to rock to jazz, using the default sounds, or you could use the midi to trigger sounds on your daw for example and use any sounds that you like. The tempo range goes from really slow to really fast as well. For the price that I paid, I could not be happier, and since it runs on batteries, it is portable enough to take anywhere that you might be inspired. This seems to be one of the better machines in the Dr. Rhythm line, having taken the best of the series and put it into one underrated machine. If you can find one at a bargain price like I did, go for it!