About Drum Machines

Benefits

Drum machines are helpful to every level of musician. A novice could program a rhythm or groove and practice bass runs, for example. Composers use drum machines to help compose a song, and to get certain tricky parts nailed down. Some musicians use drum machines connected to MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to program and play multiple instruments simultaneously.

Modern drum machines are computer-based. By using software, the musician can perfect the tracks on the screen, and with copy-and-paste, can easily duplicate entire sections of a song (the verse, for example), eliminating the need to program the same section twice. This is also a great advantage, because the user has the ability to see the entire track laid out on a time line, something that wasn't possible on machines from the pre-computer era.

Although introduced in the late 1960s, the drum machine didn't break into the pop mainstream until the early 1980s, for the most part. Early models didn't have sampled sounds, which caused the drums to sound "fake." Early models also had to be programmed by hand, using either "step programming" (adding the sounds by placing them at certain intervals within each measure) or "real-time programming" (programming the sounds along with a click track). Today's software-based machines allow much faster programming, as you can add any number of percussive elements in the fraction of the time that older drum machines required to lay down a rhythm.

The phrase "drum machine" often brings up association of cheesy, tinny rhythm tracks, featured in some of the oddest hit singles ever (1983's "Da Da Da" by Trio or "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats come to mind). However, some of the most respected bands and albums have used drum machines exclusively on the finished product, including "October Rust" by Type O Negative and "Heartbeat City" by The Cars.

While most musicians argue that a drum machine is a mandatory tool for composing and demoing new music, songs recorded using drum machines often sound sterile and mechanical. While this doesn't detract from the final product in many genres (electronic, dance and techno, for example), many feel that using drum machines eliminates the nuances that only a human timekeeper can give the music.