How Drum Machines Work

Drum machines have stored drum sounds that can be triggered by pads contained on the main unit. There are many styles of drum kits contained on a drum machine and the user can call upon any of them to create realistic drum sound for live use or recording.

Program beats using the built-in controls including a metronome to keep the time. Often, you first pick the tempo of the song and begin the metronome. You then can place specific drum hits within the record section. The section or bar of music will repeat and you can then add other sounds. It is best to start with the kick (or bass) drum pattern and layer the other elements of a drum set including the snare and high-hat on top of the kick drum pattern.

Drum machine come with different features and can be very expensive for machines that include libraries of famous drummers' sounds. The prices of drum machines range from $150 for the most simple type to over $500 for drum machines with built-in effects for music production.

Features

Drum sounds are recorded from real drums and encoded on a chip or in a small hard drive. Each hit of a drum can be used in a drum kit. You can often construct drum kits on a custom basis by combining different sounds into the same kit. If you enjoy the sound of the snare from the Samba kit, but the kick drum from the Rock kit, you can often combine them into a custom drum set for use in recording.

Many drum machines also contain MIDI in which a cord is plugged into the back of the drum machine and you can use a keyboard or any other MIDI device to trigger sounds and drum kits from the machine. This will allow you to play different drums simultaneously like a real drummer.

The effects that are built-in to drum machines often include lush reverbs, compression and delays that can be placed on individual drums as well as whole kits. These effects enhance the sound of the drums and add to the professional sound of the processed drum samples.

Drum machines can be used effectively in the studio for layering more drums over live drummers and when artists have no drummer available for sessions. You can program full songs into the memory banks of drum machines for live shows. Many drum machines allow you to store multiple songs as well, so it is plausible that a whole live show can be performed alongside a drum machine.