Elektron Musical Instruments

Man, I know what you are saying here. As a house
drummer, or a techno drummer, or (heaven forbid) a
rock drummer, one quickly comes up against the fact
that there are a limited set of the possible patterns
you can use. Like, sure there are 16^2 possible bass
drum patterns possible in a single bar, but please, do
you really want to use most of them ? No. Mostly, you
want hits on 1 2 3 4 and thats it. So how to work
within this form and still be creative ?

Well, first I think we need to understand that within
many of technos subsets it's not so much about melody
or harmony but timbre. An 808 bass kick sounds so
fucking awesome that people just want to hear it
louder, not more complicated. So, having a drum that
sounds really really good like the MD is a good start.
Then using bass drums that aren't just standard is
good.

What I've been doing myself is using four machines as
bass drums, all going to the same dedicated out, and
then stacking them in different ways, or slightly
changing just one, or say going AB CD AB CD (four
hits), or using opposite 'volume envelopes' ( well,
parameter locks) so i have
A(QUIET)B(LOUD) A(quiet)B(loud) A(loud)B(quiet)
A(LOUD)B(QUIET) on the four.

So it's more of a subtle variation on the accepted
form of 'four on the floor' than some new form.

Within house, we then can do the same things to the
'clap' (or sometimes snare) expected on 2 and 4, and
the offbeat cymbal hits ( OH on the offbeats sounds
good, but try OH OHCH CH CHOH or something).

The farther we get from the bass drum, which
(especially for DJS) really doesn't get to vary much,
the more freedom we have. I mean, provided you dont
roll constantly or just be unfunky, you can use many
more of the 16^2 available to you with the snare/clap
element, and with the high hats particularly, do
whatever just repeat it over and over. 

People are listening to your wicked bass drum anyway.
We as musicians lose sight of how "stupid" the dance
floor is when it comes to techno. They really don't
cae if that's a TRX or EFM bass drum. They want to
hear noises with good timbre really loud 120-150 times
per minute and anything else is just salsa on the
burrito.

Of course, there's also the issue of fills, which is
where you can do all sorts of 'new' stuff, and
bridges, where hell, go ahead and be autechre, its
cool.

My 2 bits. Tom.


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