Yamaha RX11 - Video tutorial/workflow on one of the 80s best drum machines

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It was good enough for Erasure when they toured their debut album Wonderland in the mid 80s so if you crave that 80s drum machine sound you'd better check out this very nice machine.
I still use mine both live and in the studio and here I show you why:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIwetbScAtw

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80's best drum machine? :lol:

I had one. It tided me over until I got a Roland R-5. IMO, Yamaha's best drum machine from that era was the RX-5. Roland's was the R-70.
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
-Henry A. Wallace

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Bombadil wrote:80's best drum machine? :lol:

I had one. It tided me over until I got a Roland R-5. IMO, Yamaha's best drum machine from that era was the RX-5. Roland's was the R-70.
Sure, the RX5 is more advanced. Sometimes I just want the raw sound going easy and fast and there the RX11 excels. Both great though. I think the Roland TR-626 is the greatest Roland of the 80s.

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I remember longing for affording one of those, back then.
But there was a sudden drop in price on Roland 909, 30% cheaper than Yamaha.
Always liked cymbals in the Yamaha better, the right sizzle kind of.

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elkanah77 wrote:
Bombadil wrote:80's best drum machine? :lol:

I had one. It tided me over until I got a Roland R-5. IMO, Yamaha's best drum machine from that era was the RX-5. Roland's was the R-70.
Sure, the RX5 is more advanced. Sometimes I just want the raw sound going easy and fast and there the RX11 excels. Both great though. I think the Roland TR-626 is the greatest Roland of the 80s.
I guess it depends on the motivation. I always wanted a drum machine that would emulate real drums as closely as possible. Throw a bit of reverb on the snare, keep the drums down in the mix, and if I pretended hard enough, I could almost believe they were real. Never quite, though. If you're doing electronica or other modern forms of music, then the artificiality is a plus, not a minus. I think the first one I used was a TR-606, but I can't be sure. The RX-5 was my favourite to work with, though.
I'm just glad that there are now sample-based drum programs that actually sound authentic.
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
-Henry A. Wallace

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Bombadil wrote:
elkanah77 wrote:
Bombadil wrote:80's best drum machine? :lol:

I had one. It tided me over until I got a Roland R-5. IMO, Yamaha's best drum machine from that era was the RX-5. Roland's was the R-70.
Sure, the RX5 is more advanced. Sometimes I just want the raw sound going easy and fast and there the RX11 excels. Both great though. I think the Roland TR-626 is the greatest Roland of the 80s.
I guess it depends on the motivation. I always wanted a drum machine that would emulate real drums as closely as possible. Throw a bit of reverb on the snare, keep the drums down in the mix, and if I pretended hard enough, I could almost believe they were real. Never quite, though. If you're doing electronica or other modern forms of music, then the artificiality is a plus, not a minus. I think the first one I used was a TR-606, but I can't be sure. The RX-5 was my favourite to work with, though.
I'm just glad that there are now sample-based drum programs that actually sound authentic.
Whatever does the job. That's key :D

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Ah the days of learning how to program drum patterns.

Having played with more than enough piss poor drummers I didn't want mine to sound like a real drummer I wanted mine to keep time properly and follow direction.

Back in the 80's living in Florida it seemed like there was a pawn shop on every corner. One smart owner started to rent drum machines because they kept on being returned in a week or two. I loved renting them. Even into the 90's people would buy em. Not open the manual, get mad when they couldn't figure out how they worked and then dump them. Of all the 80's drum machines I'd owned or rented the Alesis HR-16 ,which came out in '88 was by far my favorite for realistic sounds. It wasn't my favorite for programming or pad. Generally I would use either my keyboard or Ibanez 2010 midi guitar as a controller. All was laid to rest when I got my Boss DR5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xd5t67ULUE

I wrote and produced completed more songs with the DR-5 than all of my other drum machines, sequencers combined. I used to have one man band shows at local Holiday Inn's where I'd use it to record onto minidisc and bring it to the gig for backing parts. Now I can't even look at it. These days it's all coming out of one guitar. I'd rather play my own approach which is a combination of finger-style and tapping jazz unaccompanied.
Synapse Audio Dune 3 I'm in love

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dbl post, deleted
Last edited by tapper mike on Tue Apr 24, 2018 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Synapse Audio Dune 3 I'm in love

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I remember that by the end of the 80s, the pawn shops were full of Yamaha drum machines that they couldn’t seem to get rid of. Every other brand would sell quickly.

Also, I recall an interview with Vince Clarke, circa The Innocents, in which he was complaining that sampled drum machines sounded too real. He had someone combing the globe to buy up older drum synths so he could get away from that RX11 sound.
Incomplete list of my gear: 1/8" audio input jack.

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Regardless of whether of which drum machine sounded better or more or less lifelike, the RX11 and 15 suffered in one big way compared to the Rolands, and that is that they simply didn't "print to tape" well, and that goes for straight to digital as well. They sound good soloed and going through the sounds, but in the track they sounded weak no matter how they were processed. I'd say my biggest regret about my recordings from that era was that I owned an RX-15 and the studio I worked at had an RX-11, and at the time I wasn't unhappy with them. About a year after we had other options for drums, mostly samplers but also other not expensive drum machines, I couldn't bear to listen to the tracks with the 11 or 15 as the drums. They sounded lifeless and flat. On the other hand, mixes from that same period when people brought in their silly Roland 909s or 707s, recorded and mixed no differently, did NOT sound lifeless and flat. They sounded good enough that ten years later I didn't wish to heck I could replace them in the mixes, which I did, and still do, with the recordings with the 11 and 15.

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