More MachineDrum thoughts...

Okay, I’ve spent the better part of a day and a night working on a track where the rhythm parts are entirely MachineDrum, and I have some more thoughts on the box. Whether you find these useful in informing your purchase decision, or reinforcing it, is entirely up to you. In no particular order:

1. The synthesis methods are quite comprehensive. If I can think of a percussion sound, there seems to be a block in the MD dedicated to producing it. For the most part, they sound quite good, if a bit artificial. That last may not make sense, but I’ve been using the same 909 sample set I made myself for almost a decade, and I’m just used to the way it sounds; these made-on-the-fly sounds just sound a little made-on-the-fly.

2. I’m having a hard time coming up with a foot that will sit in the mix really well; I’ve noticed in a lot of the tracks I listened to where I knew the MD was doing the drumming that the foot didn’t really sit, and I’m experiencing that here. Since that’s the single most important part of electronic music, it needs to be perfect. I’ll work some more on that; there’s almost certainly a reason for it, and where there’s a reason there’s a solution.

3. I’ve settled on a methodology for working with a DAW. I make the pattern(s) in the MachineDrum, then use the Mute Tracks function to mute all but one, and record them individually in to the DAW, so everything is separated out. This seems to work the best for my normal methods. I couldn’t see myself actually arranging a song in the MachineDrum. That’d just be lame.

So I guess that’s about it for now. The preset kits are kind of lame, but it’s easy to touch ’em up or make your own new ones. The preset patterns are essentially useless, but if you buy a $1300 boutique drum machine expecting to use the presets, you might as well save yourself $1250 and pick up a couple disks of Acid Loopz from Sony.