Heartland

nick the stripper wrote:I'm not in a "Goth Band".

There are very few "Goth Bands" that I like.

I never thought of "The Sisters Of Mercy" as a "Goth Band".

I used a Drum Machine once before and it worked with the songs minmalist sound very well.

I think I said this before, I'm extremly influenced by minimalist composers and my songs are very minimalistic in sound.

They tend to have a strage drone to them, I actually don't know what I would class the music as, But I would hate for it to be labeled "GOTHIC"

I also need a Drum Machine because the space I make music in is very small and the venues I play are small.

Steady wilson ! I never said you were in a goth band. I also said drum machines have their place I SUPPOSE, no ?

OK I don't really like them partially because I think they sound kinda dated and there are newer and better ways of doing the same thing, but what I've also been trying to articulate is that the myriad goth bands who slavishly imitate the sisters seem to have as their hallmark a rather grotty old drum machine.

Addendum here. I also don't recall implying the Sisters were goth, just the bands that rip them off. Although for the record I do actually think I'd probably label them goth if forced to at gunpoint. My views on labels are probably self evident I would hope. My own band get constantly labelled goth, and while I'll accept we come from the gothic scene originally, are pretty dark sounding and even obscurely proud of our undoubted goth influences would still rather be drowned in warm cat vomit that admit anything other than common ancestry with the goth scene of the current time.

Although I'll add the disclaimer that this latter part is very much "almost entirely" there are some very honourable exceptions to the rule.

Back on topic. Sadly if I see a band unpacking one of those little plastic boxes I tend to run a mile. This is from bitter experience you might say. ON the other hand, if there's an impressive looking rack of gear or audio PC I would be just as inclined to stick around as it were a nice drum kit.

Clarification I hope.

filthyrikky wrote: I mean s**t, you won't find any bigger proponent of the works of Skinny Puppy, 242 or miriad others than me, but I simply don't associate the clanky old Boss DR7 et al with these artists.

Too true.. I saw KMFDM live last year and essentially it was a live band with an Apple G-book running all the sequenced tracks.. I didn't give a damn.. they still RAKWED!

Obviousman wrote:Is a drummachine able to do a descent solo ?:

is a drummer ? mine does a good impression of kicking his kit down the stairs at the end of a song, but i suspect that that's not what you meant. even spelt correctly, 'decent solo' and 'drums' don't commonly occur in the same sentence without a negative link.

good drummer or good drum programming, who cares. you only have to punch the information into a drum machine once, but they are tricky to edit on the fly if you need to change the set order or extend/curtail a song for some reason

i'd take a drummer most times though, they're good for helping with the gear cos they're so used to lugging stuff around anyway

As a mere bystander, I've always thought digital drums must constrain a live show. Jimmy Page couldn't have given a nod and a wink to a blind Doktor.

I go for the plastic box, even though I'm not a musician.

Interestingly, I was thinking about the topic of drum machines this past week: There is a huge emphasis on making the drums sound 'real' . I actually prefer the fake sounds of the older drum machines.

Good examples were the Sisters tom-tom sounds - no resonance, just a dull thud. It was one of my fave aspects of the Sisters sounds, as were their thin, hissy hi-hats and cymbals.

(A loud 'crash' cymbal sounds absolutely horrible to my ears.)

Then there were the Simmons drum sounds - they were the people who made those octagonal syndrum pads. The snare was a slow 'doozhh' rather than a tight 'baff'.

Despite this, some drum machines were just too cheap and tinny. Early Sisters recordings display such a trait. A good mid-range machine (expensive at the time) like the Oberheim DMX or Linn Drum was best.

Black Biscuit wrote:I go for the plastic box, even though I'm not a musician.

Interstingly I was thinking about the topic of drum machines this past week. There is a huge emphasis on making the drums sound 'real' . I actually prefer the fake sounds of the older drum machines.

Good examples were the Sisters tom-tom sounds - no resonance, just a dull thud. it was one of my fave aspects of the Sisters sounds, as were their thin, hissy hihats and cymbals. (A loud 'crash' symbal sounds absolutely horrible to my ears.)

Then there were the Simmons drum sounds - they were the people who made the octagonal syndrum pads. The snare was a slow 'doozhh' rather than a tight 'baff'.

Despite this, some drum machines were just too cheap and tinny. Early Sisters recordings display such a trait. A good mid-range machine (expensive at the time) like the Oberheim DMX or Linn Drum was best.

But to reiterate- if you do LIKE these kits...they are easier and cheaper to get hold of as a a couple of multisamples, and to whit you'll probably have hundreds of other sounds too...

Simmons pads can of course be used to trigger any sound you can hook em up to BTW- they're ultimately just MIDI triggers. Although the simmons is a bit dated now it has to be said.

One thing I will comment here about is that live I can't imagine using a drum machine these days. The bottom line is that a drummer does hold the band together via sheer on stage presence. There's almost no danger of going out of time wheras when I was in a drum machine band in the early 90's every time the sound engineer turned the drums down the whole song fell apart. I recall one memorable occasion watching Children on Stun where poor monitoring meant the band had to restart about 6 or 7 songs due to inability to hear the drum machine.

As fas as I'm concerned a GOOD drummer (and as far as I'm concerned I work with the best in this country) is a joy to perform alongside live. I think drum machine bands lack "gears" on the whole- the ability to shift from subtle to insanely heavy in the blink of an eye, which I personally enjoy big time.

filthyrikky wrote: The bottom line is that a drummer does hold the band together via sheer on stage presence

Yes I would agree with that. I saw Inkubbus Sukkubus a few years ago and they had a drum machine and well, they sounded a bit karaoke to be honest.

wintermute wrote:

Obviousman wrote:Is a drummachine able to do a descent solo ?:

is a drummer ? mine does a good impression of kicking his kit down the stairs at the end of a song, but i suspect that that's not what you meant. even spelt correctly, 'decent solo' and 'drums' don't commonly occur in the same sentence without a negative link.

Sorry, misspelled it a bit, but, it gave you the chance for a very fine joke, so

Anyway, I think indeed most drummers are not able of doing it (hence the many drummers-jokes? ), but isn't a drum machine is even less able of doing a solo??

Black Biscuit wrote:Interstingly I was thinking about the topic of drum machines this past week. There is a huge emphasis on making the drums sound 'real' . I actually prefer the fake sounds of the older drum machines.

I think you're right there, it gives a way more 'honest' sound too, you're not hiding you use machines... That's why I like early electronic music better too then modern, which pretends to be all real, I like better when it's a bit dolltish, mostly... Which doesn't mean I approve the karaoke-style, mentioned before, of course

Do drummers have a 'soul' I know one and he has an R one but that's about it

Let me just ponder a while............

What would the Glitter band and Adam & The Ants have done? Take two drum machines into the shower??

both of the drummers i know are charming young men.

horses for courses, The Who woulda sounded s**t with a drum machine, The Sisters with Keith Moon is a scary thought!

James Blast wrote:horses for courses, The Who woulda sounded s**t with a drum machine, The Sisters with Keith Moon is a scary thought!

Absolutely yes. Horses for courses. I have my preferance but I freely acknowledge Ladytron with Gene Hoglan would sound...erm...

My argument is why drum machines when there are such spanking wonderfull
things as reason and battery out there for the PC ? It's like "I prefer cars to motorbikes but I'll take the battered old robin reliant over the BMW 330i because my idol drove one round about the time of the punic wars".

to translate 'horses for courses' :
they both have their place, can we now move on...?

Drum machines can't ad lib, nor can they convey the range of what for a better word I'll call 'oomph' cos they're effectively binary machines. They're a lot clevererererer now than the ones I used to play with and they'll twig that you're programming a roll and will embellish crescendos etc but it's all a bit too... clean?

Not that I'm a jazz fan - far from it - but can you imagine trying to get a programmer to get his head around 17/35 time and syncopation? It's hard enough getting a drum machine to flam convincingly ffs!

Anyway; I used to play drums and depending on the amount of space we had at gigs I'd use (bits of) an acoustic kit, an electonic practice kit (kick drum bolted horizontally to a floor tom for 'double bass' and the occasional atom drum bop (TM 3 Johns) ) as well as the drum machine we used to reduce costs in the recording studio. Once you've paid £30 in studio time just to set up a kit, and a further £20 whilst tuning it the temptation to say "Fukkit; use the 727..." is almost impossible to resist. Always dropped in hi-hats and cymbals live though; you still can't get a decent electonic cymbal for under £2,000 a pop. Good Zildjians or Sabians are 10% of that.

Also live, the drum machine used to give me a breather halfway through the set when me legs got tired and to give me chance to recover before our 240bpm cover of "Paint It Black"

BUT.... at the end of the day Sisters with a drummer? Nah... Just wouldn't be right somehow, although Depeche Mode have made a good transistion albeit of the 50/50 like we used to.

mik wrote:Drum machines can't ad lib

Wouldn't put it past modern tech to make that possible. Hell, there's probably a VST or LADPSA plugin that does it already

i've been playing the drums off and on for 22 years in all kinds of musical genres from symphony orchestras(classically trained you know,for what its(not)worth)to every kind of rock band(some of it even moderately listenable) so obviously i have the greatest respect for drummers.that said,i have always thought of 'machines as another instrument for the creation of percussive sounds rather than a rival.

IMHO there are few drummers who can play a continuous beat for very long without resorting to "fills" or "breaks" to alleviate cramp or "wandering beats" and hardly any who can justify playing solos.

Have you heard Quardrophenia, Who's Next, Zep 4, any Can, Hawkwind with Simon King, King Crimson (Bruford in the 70s, before he got to clever-clever), Alan White with Yes?

There is an argument for both camps.

ain't gonna argue with about the moon or john bonham-though i reckon ginge baker was the best stixman for t'hawks

...saying that,is "warrior on the edge of time" simon king?defininitely my favourite studio 'wind lp(i dont know if theyre currently as uncool as ever but there was a time when i thought HW were the dogs bollox)

Warrior On The Edge Of Time was one of the albums with the two drummer line-up, Simon King and Alan somebody (I forget now). Hawkwind live, around that time, were an amazing experience, Man.

James Blast wrote:Warrior On The Edge Of Time was one of the albums with the two drummer line-up, Simon King and Alan somebody (I forget now). Hawkwind live, around that time, were an amazing experience, Man.

they weren't bad a few years ago! (man)

Hippy!

you brought it up!
btw Hugh Lloyd-Langton does acoustic gigs in a local pub in my town

I was outta ma mind on dope and speed in them days, Libby