The Machinedrum

In the last physical incarnation of my studio I had, what I believe to be, the greatest drum machine ever created. Elektron's Machinedrum SPS-1. This classically designed analog modeling masterpiece takes the styling of the Roland TR series that everyone is familiar with adds modern control and jam packs it full of more features than you know what to do with!



The day I bought mine from Nova Musik here in MKE, I plugged it in and got slightly depressed...out of the box it didn't sound like a TR-909...and for the money I spent on it I could have bought a TR-909 and possibly a TB-303 off of Ebay. I mulled over it, still depressed for my rash decision in purchasing it and went to bed. At some point in my nights sleep my brain switched and I woke up excited that I went with the Machinedrum, thinking, just because it doesn't sound like the 909 out of the box doesn't mean it isn't a great machine. Just because 20 years of House music had forced the 909 into being the only choice for your drum tracks didn't mean it had to remain that way any longer.

With renewed enthusiasm I dove into learning the ins and outs of it. The control is almost limitless when it comes to tone generation and sequencing. Elektron sets you up with a number of pre-made drum tone banks to pick and choose from as well as allowing you to generate your own drum tone sets using their analog modeling models. Along with straight drum sounds there are a vast array of 'fx' tones that can be used and created for more versatility. Each tone has a range of real time controllable parameters, from basic volume and pitch control to moderately complex LFO control. On the sequencing side you use standard 16 step patterns (up to 64 steps per pattern) to build the layers of the song sequences, with a number of ways to control how those patterns play such as adding on effects.

Unfortunately for this little nod it has been around 5 or so years since I sold mine (much to my regrets) and many of the features and tricks I knew and loved have fallen into the mists of time. I remember shortly after I purchased mine I came up with the lack of being able to reverse the tones as an annoyance for me, as I had gotten used to having reversed drum tones at hand with my Korg Electribe sampler...when not 2 months later they released an updated version that had sampling capabilities!! After a quick peek on Elektrons website it seems the Machinedrum is even more powerful than previously...making me drool to get my hands on another one, even with all of my music production being based on computers. The amount of control, ease of use and general kick-ass-ness of this amazing machine makes me want to forgo drum programming on the computer, even with all of its limitless abilities.

So, if you don't have one, and still use hardware, I strongly urge you to sell all of your drum machines (after sampling from them) and pick up the Machinedrum...here's a small hint of what this thing is capable of.