What is the best drum hardware "sequencer"

[ghettosynth]

Totally agreed on the RYTM - it's a beast!

I guess I'm still not clear on exactly what the OP is looking for. Drumbrute, Drumlogue, Elektrons, etc., are designed primarily as standalone units and none of them are great for controlling other instruments, especially not software instruments.

Sounds like he wants a 'brains' hardware that acts like a sequencer rather than a DAW which just happens to also be a drum machine for something like £200. I just don't think he will find anything for that amount.

https://youtu.be/Rl_uizPDwbU

I like that video, in particular how clueless he is regarding the need for "build-ups and drops" and how he talks about it like he's some kind of expert when, from my POV, he's a noob just discovering shit that the rest of us have known for years. Bobeats, OTOH, had a more nuanced and interesting POV on the matter.

Richie Hawtin's perspective on this really resonates with me. He primarily composes using a live hardware oriented perspective and has stated explicitly that he finds programming tracks not as satisfying or successful, for him.

Personally, I don't like the sound of the Artuira drum machines that much. I think that you're going to go down a road of disappointment with hardware that is that restrictive in terms of sound. Novation Circuit Tracks might give you a wider variety of sound and more of that immediate software-less experience while still giving you decent midi output. I just don't see how it beats the Maschine Mikro for less money.

If you are five or six years old then your fingers might be small enough to enjoy the Roland T8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1gqSP9_Rwg

[GearNostalgia]

Totally agreed on the RYTM - it's a beast!

I guess I'm still not clear on exactly what the OP is looking for. Drumbrute, Drumlogue, Elektrons, etc., are designed primarily as standalone units and none of them are great for controlling other instruments, especially not software instruments.

Sounds like he wants a 'brains' hardware that acts like a sequencer rather than a DAW which just happens to also be a drum machine for something like £200. I just don't think he will find anything for that amount.

It is not so complicated really.

I will describe how I make beats and see if that makes things clear.

1, I start up Cubase and open up a drumlibrary on a track. Then I open the midi track and loop a few bars and click in notes for kick, snare, hats...

2, Then I move, add, remove notes until I am happy or until I loose interest and close it down.

I bought a beatstep to control the loop.

With the beatstep I found out it is useless for my purpose. For each notestep there is a knob that control the note value. No display. So to add in a kick I have to dial in the C1 for each step and then start adding notes on the pad... Super slow setup and to edit snare I have to dial in a new notevalue. Arghh... that is so slow.

So I need to find a unit that makes it easy to select what note is edited and it looks a lot like the workflow in the drummachines with "preset" buttons to select kick,snare,hat....

After looking at suggestions here on the forum the Elektron Rytm seems Ace with the Euclidian mode and all. If it was just a bit more expensive than the rest I would get that, but it is like 5 times as expensive. My eyes are looking mostly at Arturia Drumbrute that seems to have a decent sequencer as well and Arturia seems to be less of Asshats than Behringer.

[pdxindy]

After looking at suggestions here on the forum the Elektron Rytm seems Ace with the Euclidian mode and all. If it was just a bit more expensive than the rest I would get that, but it is like 5 times as expensive. My eyes are looking mostly at Arturia Drumbrute that seems to have a decent sequencer as well and Arturia seems to be less of Asshats than Behringer.

You describe a workflow of sequencing drum tracks in Cubase. Why are you then looking at hardware drum machines that are primarily about the hardware sound engines?

You have to decide if you want to sequence drums in Cubase, or get into hardware drum machines.

If you want to sequence drums in Cubase, then you want a midi controller for that. Otherwise you end up spending money on hardware sound engines you aren't even going to use.

[GearNostalgia]

If you are five or six years old then you fingers might be small enough to enjoy the Roland T8.

I like the BadGear show. Funny editing and all. But sadly I am many times older and have many times fatter fingers so no Roland micros for me.

Richie Hawtin's perspective on this really resonates with me. He primarily composes using a live hardware oriented perspective and has stated explicitly that he finds programming tracks not as satisfying or successful, for him.

Sounds about what I am feeling too. It kills my vibe if I spend too much time on mouse clicking.

[GearNostalgia]

After looking at suggestions here on the forum the Elektron Rytm seems Ace with the Euclidian mode and all. If it was just a bit more expensive than the rest I would get that, but it is like 5 times as expensive. My eyes are looking mostly at Arturia Drumbrute that seems to have a decent sequencer as well and Arturia seems to be less of Asshats than Behringer.

You describe a workflow of sequencing drum tracks in Cubase. Why are you then looking at hardware drum machines that are primarily about the hardware sound engines?

You have to decide if you want to sequence drums in Cubase, or get into hardware drum machines.

If you want to sequence drums in Cubase, then you want a midi controller for that.

I DON'T WANT to klick in notes in Cubase. I am sick of it. I want to replace that with a hardware step sequencer and the record the midi loop on Cubase when it sound nice. So yes it is a midicontroller for drumloops I am looking for. From looking at the suggestions so far the generic controllers does not seems as intuitive to me from the interface aspect (maybe it is an allergy I have picked up from my dislike of the Beatstep).

[egbert101]

This is why I bought a Roland SP-404 MkII, to get away from the DAW and focus on creativity.

[GearNostalgia]

This is why I bought a Roland SP-404 MkII, to get away from the DAW and focus on creativity.

I like the visual aspect of a DAW to see my notes on a big screen, but I would like to add a more tactile approach to creating music use mouse only for the editing where it is efficient.

[ghettosynth]

The problem of drum note mapping has always been a bit tedious to solve. In days of yore, different drum machines used specific notes for specific drums and they weren't necessarily compatible. Enter the aforementioned RD6. It has a simple fixed set of drum note mappings so that no matter which kit you select in your DAW, the notes will always be the same. For the sounds to be the same, all of your kits must map the same type of sound, e.g., Kick, to the same drum note number.

There have been multiple solutions to this, including specific plugins to remap drum kits, e.g., Toontrack's EZPlayer Pro (now legacy and not available)

https://www.toontrack.com/faq/so-what-i ... o-exactly/

Seqeuncers like the Beatstep get around this problem by letting you select the drum note. Ok, great, that works. Now, however, it's a pain to switch kits and a pain to just get going with a groove.

If you use any pre-defined drum kit, it's going to have certain mappings and your sequencer will need to use those mappings. I don't know how Cubase works today, but it used to have Drum Maps that, once setup, at least made this a little bit easier. They allow you to name each note and see those names inside of Cubase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLmi51HXuY

Ok, but, for me, dealing with this kind of shit just feels like an afternoon in the office on that day when the coffee machine and the AC are both broken and the boss has a wild hair up his ass about a new filing system. Just end it please, I'm ready to meet my maker.

So, if you want to use a drum machine, cool, it will sound cool, and you can groove without having to worry about this shit. But, unless you're going to record the audio, it's still only going to generate midi notes that have to be mapped to sounds in Cubase.

Drum controllers don't fix this problem. You still have to map pads or rows to specific notes, as you've found out.

One solution that works really well is to throw the DAW in the trash and go DAWless. It's not that expensive, and oh, would you like to buy a bridge?

Maschine provides a reasonable middle ground in that it's intuitive and fast to get jamming with it's built in kits, like a drum machine, and you can use those kits easily in your productions without having to record the audio output. And, you can drag the midi notes to your DAW and they will work with Maschine as a sound source. You still have to think about the note to sound mapping if you want those notes to trigger your kits outside of Maschine. You still have to think about which pad triggers which sound if you want to use your kits inside of Maschine.

The tediosity of all of this is what often triggers the DAWless setups. My DAWless setup does not record Midi or make use of midi when it arrives at the DAW for final production. I just find it easier to do things this way in the modern era. I use hardware and a multitrack mixer/recorder to record my jams. I can just jam for hours without thinking about the "product" as Bobeats discussed above. I then take the SDCard down to my DAW, load it up, and slice and dice, or just put finishing touches, or just render it down to a two track as is.

Summary:

If you just want to record midi and choose your sound source in your DAW, then you will need to use kits that map sounds consistently to the same note numbers or you will have to edit any kit that you want to use to follow this. Once that is done then you can setup a Drum Map in Cubase so that editing drum parts feels natural and you can edit notes by referring to the drum part names. Simple drum machines, like the RD6, will facilitate this because they have only a simple mapping of fixed notes to each sound. The RD6, is super immediate. I always just work in pattern write mode and edit the patterns in real time. If you take the time to setup a drum map, then this can help you record parts, with the caveat that you will have to also synchronize via midi, which isn't always clean. You can sync via USB, so this would probably be reliable enough.

The big limitation with simple drum machines like this is that there typically aren't and advanced features like programming rolls, flams, or even changing velocity.

If you want more control and more advanced features on the device itself then you either have to commit to the internal sounds if you don't want to give up features, e.g., Elektron, or you have to commit to working with hybrid solutions like Maschine that give you some of both worlds. Arturia used to have Spark which was also a nice middle ground that was a lot simpler than Maschine. It too is useless without the software, so be careful buying a used version.

[Moe Shinola]

Have you thought about an Arturia Spark? I thought that was a controller with its own sequencer to use with the drum sounds in Cubase.

https://www.arturia.com/products/drums/spark2/details

[egbert101]

The tediosity of all of this is what often triggers the DAWless setups. My DAWless setup does not record Midi or make use of midi when it arrives at the DAW for final production. I just find it easier to do things this way in the modern era. I use hardware and a multitrack mixer/recorder to record my jams. I can just jam for hours without thinking about the "product" as Bobeats discussed above. I then take the SDCard down to my DAW, load it up, and slice and dice, or just put finishing touches, or just render it down to a two track as is.

https://youtu.be/gdtZv3XROnc

See, this is a rabbit hole rather than purely a preference.

I think maybe I'm wasting my time, but I am hoping to bring people over to hardware to get them out of the trap of the DAW. DAW is WORK by definition (Digital Audio WORKstation) whereas I'm trying to get people back into playing and having fun.

Hardware is more fun, and more immediate precisely to allow you to play. But even hardware is becoming more and more DAW or WORK.

https://youtu.be/4lQ_MjU4QHw

See, I want people to go towards art, and that is all I'm doing. I'm not selling anyone any shit or influencing people to buy a product. See the difference?

Or maybe I am wasting my time.

[GearNostalgia]

Summary:

If you just want to record midi and choose your sound source in your DAW, then you will need to use kits that map sounds consistently to the same note numbers or you will have to edit any kit that you want to use to follow this. Once that is done then you can setup a Drum Map in Cubase so that editing drum parts feels natural and you can edit notes by referring to the drum part names. Simple drum machines, like the RD6, will facilitate this because they have only a simple mapping of fixed notes to each sound. The RD6, is super immediate. I always just work in pattern write mode and edit the patterns in real time. If you take the time to setup a drum map, then this can help you record parts, with the caveat that you will have to also synchronize via midi, which isn't always clean. You can sync via USB, so this would probably be reliable enough.

The big limitation with simple drum machines like this is that there typically aren't and advanced features like programming rolls, flams, or even changing velocity.

Thank you for this long detailed input. I have noticed different drum mappings when changing sound libraries, but I am used to transposing to get it right. So as long as I know what note the device regards as the note for a kick or snare I think it will be a big step up for me to run a pattern and edit in in real time. I looked at the RD6 and it seemed ok, but then I looked at the RD9 and it seemed to be a step up with features more features in the sequencer. So that is why I was attracted to the RD9 initially. Some say the Drumbrutes sequencer and is equal or better. I will pick Arturia before Uli the asshat if that is true.

[SLiC]

If you just want a step sequencer for your DAW with 808 style workflow you cant go wrong with an AKAI Fire, super cheap! No point paying for sounds you don't need. Unless its analogue, no real difference in sound using your computer with a good controller.

https://www.akaipro.com/akai-fire.html - about 120 quid.

[GearNostalgia]

Have you thought about an Arturia Spark? I thought that was a controller with its own sequencer to use with the drum sounds in Cubase.

https://www.arturia.com/products/drums/spark2/details

Nope, that is new to me, but it seems good! And price is nice!

[GearNostalgia]

See, I want people to go towards art, and that is all I'm doing. I'm not selling anyone any shit or influencing people to buy a product. See the difference?

Or maybe I am wasting my time.

Somebody in the forum may be salespeople in disguise, but it seems to me that most are just generally trying their best to share suggestions. We are all different. I am not pro or against DAWs or hardware. I tyr to use the parts I like best. For me it is a combo of hardware keyboards, vsts and so on.

[egbert101]

Somebody in the forum may be salespeople in disguise, but it seems to me that most are just generally trying their best to share suggestions. We are all different. I am not pro or against DAWs or hardware. I tyr to use the parts I like best. For me it is a combo of hardware keyboards, vsts and so on.

Yeah, people have been doing their best to give you good suggestions on this forum, and to be honest, it's all well meaning and with good faith like most posts here. But there are indeed bad actors with bad faith everywhere. Even youtube influencers are beginning to feel the heat of guilt, and starting to get people out of the trap of being manipulated. It's an industry remember. A very big industry to make you part with your money.