Re: Drum MACHINES

[Chuck Silva <any1particular@mac.com>]

Hey Rick.

It is refreshing  to hear the voice of someone as eloquent as you. I  
too am a seasoned musician that spent the majority of my life-35  
years as a guitarist performing R & B and funk here in Detroit and  
through out the US.

I am relatively new to this wondrous music technology explosion!  
Thank you United States Military for facilitating the whole thing and  
creating the internet. Whoops! I don't want to get political or wave  
flags.

  I'd just like to thank you for your inspired and intelligent  
thoughts. As a trained musician, I looked down on 'Techno' and for  
years I resisted the technology. About a year ago out of curiosity I  
bought Reason. Now have thousands and thousands of dollars tied up in  
this powerful  musical venue.

Thank you Bill Gates, Steve jobs!


On Sep 25, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Rick Walker wrote:

> To me, the sampling revolution that has so influenced modern music  
> in the last 25 years
> has given us the potential to invent and discover new uses for sounds.
>
> I'm a drummer and have been , this year, for exactly 40 years,  but  
> I frequently resent the
> hegemony that the drumset has had over world popular music for a  
> long time.
>
> The hippest thing about drum machines , to me, is to use sounds  
> that AREN'T trapset drum sounds
> so that we can have new and cool ways to experience grooving.
>
> That's why I've been such a ceaseless advocate for the software  
> program Fruity Loops (FLStudio Producers Edition
> as it is now, more stately, referred to).    It has a drum machine  
> interface that is really easy to use but you just direct
> it towards any samples that you have on your hard drive and you can  
> make anything be a drum machine.
>
>
> Having also been a multiple percussionist all of my life I realize  
> that one of the great things about the drum set is
> that it has bass (kick drum) ,  middrange (snare drums, tom toms)   
> and treble (hi hats and cymbals) timbral components.
>
> When, as an example,  I play with a folk or acoustic pop artist,  I  
> will frequently use an instrument like a darbukka (dumbec)
> or djembe as an ersatz drum machine...............substituting open  
> tones for kicks,   slaps for snare drums and light,non-accented
> strokes as hi hats.
>
> Drum machines can do the same thing..................we can make  
> ersatz drumsets up using our imagination,  some DSP processing
> and some clever sound design (note:  tune sounds you have way up  
> high or way down low and find new contexts for them in their
> new stretched tunings).
>
> To me the Timbral revolution in modern music is every bit as  
> important as the Rhythmic revolution (one that was greatly  
> accelerated by
> the whole early 80's world beat movement that brought a lot of  
> ethnic- and sometimes, obscurely ethnic, rhythmic and timbral  
> influences into
> Western pop music and jazz).
>
> Synthesizers,  Sampling and radical DSP processing have really  
> changed the sonic palette of modern music in ways I find very  
> exciting as
> a musician and a composer.
>
> The problem with drum machines in their ubiquity, as I see it,  is  
> that, like the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer,  90% of the people who use them
> don't really get very creative with them.
>
> Remember,   when you pat out a rhythm on your guitar with muted  
> strings and loop it.............you are just creating a digital  
> drum machine.
> It may be more creative than pushing pattern 10a on a drum machine  
> but it's the same thing:  a sample being created and sequenced
> in real time.
>
> The sadly lamented late Joe Zawinul said that a beautiful  
> constructed Synthesizer patch is every bit as beautiful as a  
> Stradivarius violin.
> I actually agree with him.
>
> With drum machines,  we just need to strive for the 'beautifully  
> constructed'  part of that statement.
>
> Program on and remember............................someone may not  
> want to listen to your computer drum programming but
> I don't like to listen to bluegrass, frankly (even the best there  
> is). Both expressions of human creation are equally valid
> and as such are music with a capital M.